The outgoing prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., earned 66% of its subjective fee and about 72% of its total potential fee for its work during fiscal 2022, according to a fee scorecard released Tuesday.
In a Dec. 20 letter to Nuclear Waste Partnership’s president and project manager Sean Dunagan, DOE Carlsbad Field Office manager Reinhard Knerr said the management and operations contractor won about $3.1 million out of a potential $4.67 million in subjective fee for the year ended Sept. 30.
Once that is added to more than $8 million in performance-based incentives, Nuclear Waste Partnership took home $11.1 million out of about $15.6 million of its total potential fee during the 2022 government fiscal year.
That is roughly equivalent to the Amentum-BWX Technologies team’s performance in fiscal 2021, when the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) prime contractor won 62% of its subjective fee and 72% of its overall fee.
By Feb.6, Nuclear Waste Partner will turn over control of the nation’s only deep-underground transuranic waste disposal site to a Bechtel National affiliate. In July, a new $3-billion prime contract was awarded to Bechtel’s Tularosa Basin Range Services, which will do business under the name Salado Isolation Mining Contractors.
Nuclear Waste Partnership is coming to the end of a contract, valued at $2.7 billion, which started in October 2012.
One of the areas for improvement DOE cited in the outgoing contractor’s last full-year review was the need to “achieve routine and steady waste processing and disposal at greater than 10 shipments per week.” The federal agency did credit Nuclear Waste Partnership for improving both cyber security and safety at the underground salt mine.
