The Department of Energy has yet to decide what exactly it will do about a contested $13-billion tank management contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state that was placed on hold in July.
There are issues “that the department is still working our way through,” Hanford’s DOE site manager, Brian Vance, told an online meeting of the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board on Thursday.
DOE awarded the long-term contract to BWX Technologies-led Hanford Works Restoration in May, but after rival bidder teams protested the award to the Government Accountability Office, the DOE agreed to put the transition on hold while it evaluates any “error in our ways,” as Norbert Doyle, deputy assistant secretary for EM’s acquisition and project management, put it last week. The nitty-gritty of the potential mistakes are not publicly available because the department promised corrective action before the protests were adjudicated.
While acknowledging the agency could “compete that contract” again, Vance stressed no decisions have been made. “I really have nothing [new] to share,” Vance said during his remarks to the panel.
In the meantime, Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions continues to manage the underground radioactive waste tanks as it has for 12 years, Vance said.
The incumbent has been on the job since October 2008 and the contract, currently valued at a little over $8 billion, was recently extended through September 2021.
While some of Washington River’s executives are moving over to the new Amentum-led Central Plateau Cleanup Co., John Eschenberg, the joint venture’s president and CEO, is staying on “to provide continuity,” Vance said.
Along with Lynchburg, Va.-based BWXT, the other members of Hanford Works Restoration are Texas-based companies Fluor and Intera and Richland, Wash.-based DBD.
Vance also noted that transitions to new Hanford contractors are underway for Central Plateau cleanup and infrastructure site services. In addition, the DOE learned this week there was no protest filed over award of the new 222-S laboratory operations contract, he said.
Turning from procurement to remediation, Vance said work is about to start on three aging underground structures in the vicinity of the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Grout will be used to stabilize the facilities which otherwise would be in danger of collapse.
The 216-Z-2 Crib, the 216-Z-9 Crib, and the 241-Z-361 Settling Tank were built in the 1940s and 1950s and over decades stored radioactive waste from the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
After a large section of an underground tunnel collapsed at Hanford’s Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant in May 2017, the DOE and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency turned their focus toward other aging structures with potential for a similar fate, Vance said. The three structures “bubbled to the top of the list,” said the site manager.
Because of the risk of collapse, getting the structures shored up is a priority and will occur during the remainder of this calendar year, Vance said. The work should be done by the end of this calendar year, Vance said.
Once the three facilities are stabilized, the DOE will turn its attention to the remaining cleanup chores at the Plutonium Finishing Plant grounds. The job was mostly done earlier this year prior to the pandemic, Vance said. What remains is taking down a “relatively short wall,” removing rubble, and some ancillary cleanup tasks for the first quarter of 2021, he added.
In addition, Vance said most major construction at the Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel is nearing completion and DOE still plans to start vitrifying low-activity waste from Hanford tanks by the end of 2023. Construction is far enough along that access roads are being paved. The plant that will turn tank waste into a stable glass form for disposal.
