There is some surprise among Department of Energy contractors that the agency has not yet awarded a new contract for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, an industry source said Wednesday.
The major procurements summary from DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, as of Aug. 11, projected the new contract would be awarded sometime from August to October. During a Sept. 13 reception in Washington of the House of Representatives’ Nuclear Cleanup Caucus, the sense in the room was that an award was imminent. A couple sources since then had shared that view. One source told Weapons Complex Monitor on Wednesday he couldn’t speculate on why it hasn’t been issued yet.
Bidding on the new contract, which could be worth $4 billion to $6 billion, closed more than a year ago.
The current contract is held by Savannah River Remediation, a team led by AECOM with partners Bechtel National, CH2M, and BWX Technologies. One member of the SRR team, CH2M, is being purchased by another contractor for DOE, Jacobs Engineering.
The work involves managing storage and ultimately disposal of roughly 35 million gallons of radioactive waste produced during Cold War nuclear weapons operations at the facility near the city of Aiken, S.C.
Savannah River Remediation started work in July 2009, and since 2015 has received contract extensions keeping it on the job to Dec. 31, 2017.
AECOM, BWX Technologies, and Fluor Corp. all bid on the 10-year liquid waste management contract, according to previous reporting. Federal agencies typically do not comment on ongoing contract solicitations.
