Energy Department documents addressing issues from research needs to employee benefits at the Savannah River National Laboratory have been added to a federal procurement website.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management in April published a draft request for proposals (RFP) for the potential 10-year, $3.8 billion stand-alone lab contract. Comments on that draft RFP were due May 8, and the Energy Department aims to issue the final version this month.
The six documents posted since May 14 include a 200-page 2015 report on basic research needs for DOE environmental management of its nuclear sites, along with three more recent reports on employee health plans and pension plans run by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. The Fluor-led vendor is the current operations and management contractor for the entire 310-square mile Savannah River Site, including the laboratory. Links to the SRS’s Citizens Advisory Board as well as the South Carolina Nuclear Advisory Council were also posted.
The Savannah River National Laboratory is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center with about 1,000 employees. Some sources have suggested that having its own management contract might raise the profile of the laboratory, and bring more attention to what SRNL documents describe as its “world-class” scientific and technical research.
The July 2015 report states that “progress towards cleanup [of DOE nuclear sites] has been stymied in part by a lack of investment in basic science that is foundational to innovation and new technology development.” Using only currently available technologies, it would take hundreds of billions of dollars and more than 50 years of effort to remediate contamination left by the Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear arms programs.
The report alludes to more than a dozen SRNL research papers on environmental managements issues. The Savannah River National Laboratory has an annual budget of roughly $350 million.
