The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) could be just days from awarding a new contract for legacy nuclear cleanup operations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
A major procurements update from EM, dated Aug. 11, says the contract was due to be issued from June to August of this year. The Environmental Management office did not say last week whether it anticipated meeting that schedule.
One industry source said Fluor and CH2M are believed to have bid on the contract, but could not say whether the companies might be teaming with other firms. The source did not know what other companies might also be seeking the contract.
Fluor did not respond to a request for comment regarding a potential bid on cleanup at the nuclear-weapon lab, while CH2M declined to comment. Both companies sent representatives to a pre-solicitation conference on the contract in June 2016, along with an October 2016 site tour. Many of the major contractors in the DOE cleanup complex were also represented, including AREVA, CB&I, Atkins, Stoller Newport News Nuclear, and BWX Technologies.
Lab management and operations prime Los Alamos National Security currently handles legacy cleanup under a bridge contract that expires on Sept. 30. It appears unlikely the contractor – a partnership of Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, AECOM, and the University of California – would secure the follow-on contract after a February 2014 radiation release at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., was connected to a container of waste shipped from Los Alamos.
The new contract is expected to have a performance term of up to 10 years, covering management of waste produced at the lab from 1970 to 1998 – DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees LANL, is responsible for waste produced after 1998. Operations under the new EM contract include remediation of contaminated facilities at the laboratory; collection and preparation of legacy mixed-low level radioactive waste and transuranic waste for transport to permanent storage; and decontamination, decommissioning, and demolition of “facilities that impede the timely execution of environmental restoration activities.”
