Nearly a month past its own declared schedule, the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management still has not issued a draft request for proposals (RFP) for further cleanup of the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
On July 2, DOE said in a notice on the federal procurement website FedBizOpps that it anticipated issuing the draft document in anywhere from 15 to 60 days. While that would have been around Aug. 30 on the outside, no such solicitation document had been posted as of Monday.
Contractor URS/CH2M Hill Oak Ridge (UCOR) expects by next July to complete decontamination and decommissioning of the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) property. Formerly the site of the mile-long K-25 gaseous diffusion plant and associated uranium enrichment facilities, the property will eventually be used as an industrial park. UCOR’s current nine-year, $3.2 billion contract is due to expire in July.
The next Oak Ridge remediation contract could run for up to 10 years and be worth $6 billion, according to the Energy Department. In May, DOE indicated it could release the final RFP in November and the actual contract in May 2020. With cleanup winding down at ETTP, the winner of the next Oak Ridge contract would focus attention on the Y-12 National Security Complex and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
In addition to decommissioning and tearing down structures at those two facilities, the winner of the new Oak Ridge contract would manage various waste treatment and disposal operations, including operation of landfills. The contractor is also expected to do risk reduction and maintenance at various facilities, including the Transuranic (TRU) Waste Processing Center and related waste storage facilities at ORNL.
The Energy Department estimates there is around 30 years of environmental cleanup remaining at Oak Ridge. Companies expected to bid on the new Oak Ridge business include AECOM, Jacobs, BWX Technologies, and Veolia, among others.
