The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Thursday released performance evaluations for the major site operations contractors across the U.S. nuclear security enterprise, and all earned the vast majority of the available fees.
The NNSA contractors covered under the performance evaluations published manage seven sites across the country.
Notably, there was a changing of the guard at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico late last year, meaning the scorecard just released covers the last fee period of the former manager, rather than the first fee-period of the new incumbent.
In addition, the NNSA did not release a scorecard for Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, which is managing the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., under a one-year extension awarded in July.
Below is a list of the awards just announced, in alphabetical order, with links to the NNSA’s performance evaluations. All awards are for fiscal 2018, which began Oct. 1, 2017 and ended Sept. 30, 2018.
Kansas City National Security Campus, Kansas City, Mo. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technology.
The contractor earned about $47.5 million, more than 90 percent of the total available award. Most of the available fee, awarded based on performance in six categories, is at risk. Honeywell earned 86.5 percent of the available take, netting a little more than $25 million worth of at-risk fees.
The lowest fee-take of any of the six at-risk categories was for “Manage the Nuclear Weapons Mission.” There, Honeywell took away a little more than $11 million, or about 80 percent of the available total.
The Kansas City National Security Campus, which has been praised by NNSA leadership for its efficiency, manufactures the many non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., Lawrence Livermore National Security (University of California and Bechtel National, with AECOM and BWX Technologies).
The contractor earned just under 95 percent of the total available fee, bringing home almost $45 million for the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Fixed fees accounted for around 40 percent of the potential total.
Of the 60 percent of the fees at risk, Lawrence Livermore National Security took home more than 90 percent, or better than $25 million.
Lawrence Livermore contributes to weapons life-extension programs and performs non-nuclear experiments with high-powered lasers that help the NNSA assess, without the use of nuclear-explosive tests, whether the nation’s arsenal of warheads and bombs will perform as expected. Livermore also hosts the sometimes controversial National Ignition Facility, which besides stockpile stewardship tests performs experiments intended to help scientists understand peaceful uses of controlled nuclear fusion.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M. Previously operated by Los Alamos National Security (University of California and Bechtel National, with AECOM and BWX Technologies).
The now-departed Los Alamos National Security earned $48 million in the final year of its contract, or about 95 percent of its potential take, according to its latest performance evaluation. Fixed fees made up more than 80 percent of the potential award for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
Of the at-risk fees, which comprise not quite 17.5 percent of the total potential award, Los Alamos National Security earned some $6.6 million, or about 75 percent of the $8.8 million for which it was eligible.
Los Alamos National Security received its lab management in operations contract in 2006. The NNSA canceled the deal with the nearly a decade’s worth of options left on the table after a series of security and nuclear-safety mishaps at the lab, notably the 2014 waste-packaging error that led to an underground radiation release at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. The accident closed the facility for nearly three years.
The lab designed most of the nuclear warheads and bombs in service today, and is contributing to their ongoing life-extension programs. Los Alamos is also gearing up to become a large-scale factory for plutonium pits: the fissile cores of the primary stages of nuclear warheads and bombs.
The contract transitioned on Nov. 1, 2018, to Triad National Security: a nonprofit led by the University of California, Battelle Memorial Institute, and Texas A&M University, with integrated industry subcontractors Fluor and Huntington Ingalls Industries.
Nevada National Security Site, Mission Support and Test Services (Honeywell International, with Jacobs Engineering Group and Stoller Newport News Nuclear).
The Nevada National Security Site is the former Nevada Test Site, which before the indefinite moratorium that went into effect in the 1990s hosted atmospheric and underground nuclear-explosive tests.
Testing mission continues in Nevada, but without nuclear explosions. Among other things, the site conducts chemical experiments with plutonium.
Mission Support and Test Services earned more than $18 million, or just over 90 percent of the available total.
About 15 percent of the total was a fixed fee, while more than 80 percent was at-risk.
Of the at-risk portion, awarded based on performance in six categories, the Honeywell-led team took $13 million, or almost 90 percent of the available total. The team’s lowest-performing category was Operations and Infrastructure, where the total fiscal 2018 take was about $3.8 million, or 85 percent of the roughly $4.5 million available.
NNSA Production Office. Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas, and Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge, Tenn. Consolidated Nuclear Security (Bechtel National, with Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and SOC).
The contractor earned about 89 percent of the total available fee for managing the two sites, amounting to more than $35 million in fees for fiscal 2018. Only about 2.5 percent of the total was a fixed fee.
Of the fees at risk, awarded based on performance in six categories, Consolidated Nuclear Security earned 88.5 percent, or more than $35 million. The contractor earned 80 percent of the fee available in the the Operations and Infrastructure category — some $9.5 million out of a possible $12 million — marking a low-point among the six at-risk categories. Operations and Infrastructure is the second-largest fee category for Consolidated Nuclear Security, after Manage the Nuclear Weapons Mission.
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia (wholly owned Honeywell International subsidiary).
The contractor got more than $41.5 million in fees for 2018, about 98 percent of the total available award. The bulk of the award, some 80 percent of the total, was a fixed fee. Of the at-risk leadership award fee, the Honeywell subsidiary earned about $7.5 million, of a possible $8.3 million or so.
Sandia, the engineering lab of the nuclear security enterprise, contributes to life-extension programs on weapons designed by the other two laboratories, Livermore and Los Alamos.
Savannah River Site, Aiken, S.C. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (Fluor, with Honeywell International and Stoller Newport News Nuclear).
The NNSA had not released Savannah River Nuclear Solutions’ 2018 performance evaluation at deadline Friday. The contractor was supposed to be off the job by now, but uncertainty about how the NNSA and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management would share the site in the future prompted DOE to extend the incumbent’s deal a year, through July 31, 2019.
Savannah River is mostly an Environmental Management cleanup job. The site includes more than 30 million gallons of liquid waste from Cold War plutonium processing. However, it also houses the NNSA’s tritium production facilities, where the agency harvests yield-boosting tritium gas needed to keep nuclear weapons at their explosive peaks.
