Holtec International beat two competitors to take a roughly $4.8 million, firm-fixed-priced contract to design and build transportation equipment for tritium-producing burnable absorber rods, a spokesperson for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said Friday.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which Battelle Memorial Institute manages for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, awarded the contract on May 31. The lab based its decision “on the lowest priced technically acceptable offer,” according to an award notice posted online.
Under the contract, Camden, N.J.-based Holtec will by 2023 design, fabricate, and deliver two HI-STAR PBT casks, dedicated trailers, and other equipment for moving the tritium-producing burnable absorber rods (TPBAR).
Tritium, a radioactive hydrogen isotope, increases the explosive power of nuclear weapons. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has TPBARs irradiated in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear reactor for about 18 months to produce tritium. The agency then trucks the rods to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., where the tritium gas is harvested and placed in reservoirs that are then sent to the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and inserted into nuclear weapons.
The NNSA will use the Holtec-made equipment to truck tritium to Savannah River from Tennessee.
The Pacific Northwest National Lab spokesperson would not identify the two bidders Holtec bested after the roughly one-year competition for the TPBAR transport-equipment contract.
Seven companies attended an August 2018 preproposal conference in Richland, Wash., on the contract:
- Holtec Government Services, Camden, N.J.
- Leidos, Reston, Va.
- NAC International, Peachtree Corners, Ga.
- Orano Federal Services, Aiken, S.C.
- Robatel Technologies, Roanoke, Va.
- Vigor Works, Clackamas, Ore.
- Westinghouse Electrical Co., Monroeville, Pa.
The NNSA wants to increase tritium production as part of the 30-year nuclear arsenal modernization-and-maintenance program started in 2016. The Tennessee Valley Authority is seeking permission to irradiate TPBARs in Watts Bar Unit 2 starting next year. An application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was pending at deadline Monday.
