Only one of the major partners in the conglomerate that operates the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) registered for an Oct. 5 tour of the site in connection with a big legacy cleanup contract the Energy Department just put out for bids, DOE records show.
According to a pretour registration list DOE posted online, a lone representative of BWX Technologies, of Lynchburg, Va., signed up for the daylong pre-proposal site tour. The company’s BWXT Government Group is one of the major partners in Los Alamos National Security (LANS), which also consists of Bechtel, the University of California, and AECOM.
The conglomerate has run the laboratory since 2006 under a management and operations contract with the NNSA worth nearly $2 billion a year. The deal is set to expire in 2017.
The lab’s legacy nuclear cleanup was once part of this NNSA contract, but that work was split off from the main M&O pact after the underground radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in 2014 was traced to a container of legacy Los Alamos waste that had been improperly packaged by a LANS subcontractor.
LANS has been handling the work under a temporary cleanup contract, worth about $310 million and set to expire Sept.30, 2017, awarded in 2015 by the relatively new DOE Environmental Management site office at Los Alamos. That pact is intended to buy time for awarding the Los Alamos legacy cleanup contract for which DOE solicited bids on Sept. 21. Including options, the new deal would be worth about $1.7 billion over 10 years.
The 20 registrants for the Oct. 5 tour included representatives from Fluor, CB&I, CH2M, Areva, Atkins, and Stoller Newport News Nuclear.
DOE’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center in June also conducted a site tour at Los Alamos alongside a pre-solicitation conference for the contract. BWXT was the only LANS partner to register for the conference, alongside 141 officials from companies including Atkins, Areva, CB&I, CH2M, Fluor, LATA Inc., Wastren Advantage, Westinghouse, and a host of other firms.
