A team comprised of Stoller Newport News Nuclear and BWX Technologies has been awarded a $1.39 billion contract valued for cleanup of legacy wastes at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
This will be Stoller’s first major operational contract at the nuclear weapons lab, where BWXT is an old hand as a partner in current environmental remediation and management contractor Los Alamos National Security.
“We are pleased that the Department of Energy has entrusted us with this important mission,” Stoller Newport News Nuclear (SN3) President Nick Lombardo said in a press release. “SN3 has served the department in New Mexico for decades, and we look forward to expanding that service in northern New Mexico.”
The existing cleanup contract expires at the end of March. In addition to a 90-day transition period, the new contract includes a base period of five years with two optional periods of three years and two years, DOE said in a Wednesday news release. The department said the contract includes a cost-plus-fee mechanism with a cost-reimbursement clause for the transition period. There is also an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity line item.
The contract calls for protecting the regional aquifer and cleaning up contaminated legacy waste sites in and around LANL, as well as decontamination, decommissioning, and demolition of various structures. The Stoller-led contractor, formally named Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos, LLC (N3B), must also prepare and characterize transuranic and mixed-low-level radioactive waste that will eventually be shipped off-site.
One industry source said he was somewhat surprised by the award because he’d heard a CH2M-Fluor team was considered a leading candidate.
BWXT declined to comment on the contract win. Stoller, a subsidiary of shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls, did not respond to requests for additional comment by press time.
Los Alamos National Security is comprised of Bechtel National, BWXT, AECOM, and the University of California.
The LANS bridge cleanup contract was originally scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, but LANS was granted a six-month, $65 million extension to finish up treatment of problem nitrate salt drums. After missing earlier deadlines, LANS said in November it had finished treating 60 potentially combustible containers of radioactive waste.
The drums contained a mix of nitrate salts and organic kitty litter similar to the combination that in 2014 blew open a container at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. releasing radiation and shutting down WIPP for about three years.
