While the coronavirus pandemic affected nuclear cleanup at the Department of Energy in ways great and small, it did not slow down the acquisition process in 2020, when the Environmental Management Office awarded about $31 billion worth of new cleanup contracts.
That includes $17 billion of contracts during the 2020 calendar year and some $14 billion in contracts awarded in December 2019 that were challenged by losing bidders. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management prevailed in those protests after the calendar flipped. Weapons Complex Monitor limited the count to contracts worth at least $1 billion.
For future contracts, requests for proposals for contracts with values exceeding $1 billion have also been issued for remediation at the Idaho National Laboratory and the Integrated Mission Completion Contract for liquid waste management at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
There was not much industry consolidation in the nuclear remediation business during the past year, although Los Angeles-based AECOM, a longtime fixture around the weapons complex, completed the sale of its nuclear-related government contracting division in January to a pair of New York investment firms that rechristened the operation Amentum.
Fluor, the Irving, Texas-based engineering and construction corporation, in February called off the sale of its government contracting unit that it had announced in September 2019, making a non-story out of what promised to be one of the biggest stories of pre-pandemic 2020.
But the pandemic itself was the biggest story for EM in 2020, as it was for the rest of the country and the world. At this writing, the cleanup office had tracked more than 2,000 confirmed cases, including 366 active cases, of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that broke out in China a year ago.
The top EM manager at the Savannah River Site, Michael Budney, said recently there are “north of 700” cases at the South Carolina complex that EM shares with the National Nuclear Security Administration. There had at deadline been more than 500 cases at the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has reported about 150.
Deaths potentially attributed to the disease have been reported at the Savannah River Site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and the DOE headquarters office in Washington, D.C.
All but one of the DOE cleanup sites, a uranium mill tailings project in remote Moab, Utah, scaled back to minimal, bare bones operations from mid-March to late May. At that point, the agency started to gradually ramp back up operations with a four-phase plan designed to rely upon telework far beyond what’s previously been tried at DOE while gradually bringing workers back inside the fence.
No EM site has yet advanced to stage 3: the point in the process where on-site staffing would be nearly equal to pre-COVID-19 levels.
Here’s a month-by-month digest of some notable happenings in 2020 around the EM complex:
January
2020 got off to a rough start with news that U.S. Nuclear Industry Council founder, president and CEO David Blee, 66, a familiar face around the weapons complex, died between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The organization would later tap nuclear energy sector veteran Bud Albright as its new leader.
The Government Accounting office rejected a challenge to the $137-million technical services contract won by Pro2Serve subsidiary Enterprise Technical Assistance Services at the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.
The former AECOM Management Services division officially became Amentum on Jan. 31 with the closure of the $2.4 billion sale to affiliates of New York-based investment firms Lindsay Goldberg and American Securities LLC. John Vollmer, who led AECOM’s government contracting business, stayed on as the CEO of Maryland-based Amentum.
February
The Donald Trump administration requested Congress fund EM at $6.1 billion for fiscal 2021. However, the House of Representatives and Senate would propose keeping the nuclear cleanup office at the fiscal 2020 level of about $7.5-billion. As of deadline, the government was still being funded by temporary continuing resolutions for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2020, though lawmakers were urgently at work on an omnibus spending bill.
In late-February engineering and construction company Fluor called off its previously-announced plans to sell its government contracting business. Fluor once thought it could raise $1 billion and shore up its balance sheet by selling its federal contracting business and other assets.
March
At Congress’ direction, DOE started revamping a controversial order that curtailed the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s access to nuclear sites and personnel, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette told a Senate panel in one of the last hearings before the COVID-19 lockdown of the spring.
The top EM cleanup boss at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Doug Hintze, hung up his federal nametag and retired.
The Office of Environmental Management started to dramatically scale back operations to near bare-bones levels at most of the 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites. Only about two months later would EM gradually start recalling workers back inside the fence – albeit with face masks, temperature checks and social distancing in place. Congress would later approve paid leave for staff who, due to the nature of their work, could not report back to the job site or telecommute.
April
A draft request for proposals for a potential 10-year, $3.8 billion stand-alone contract for management of the Savannah River National Laboratory was issued by DOE. The final solicitation would come out in June.Insiders have been saying for months they expect the award this year, which is now almost over. The laboratory is currently managed through the $14.8-billion operations contract under Fluor-led Savannah River Nuclear Solutions and that deal runs through September 2021.
May
The Government Accountability Office denied a challenge to the potential 10-year, $10 billion remediation contract won by Central Plateau Cleanup Co., an Amentum-Fluor-Atkins team, at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The protest was brought by Bechtel-led Project W Restoration. The decision came days after the congressional auditor upheld the potential 10-year, $4 billion site services contract awarded to Hanford Mission Integration Solutions, comprising Leidos, Centerra, and Parsons.
June
RSI EnTech’s roughly $191 million contract to provide support services for DOE’S Office of Legacy Management was upheld by the Government Accountability Office. The contract was protested by Oak Ridge-based Navarro, which had a contract worth $366 million over five years, as well as another bidder, LATA-Atkins. Navarro would get better news when it retained the environmental work valued at $350 million over 10 years at the Nevada National Security Site.
July
The $13-billion long-term Tank Closure Contract awarded in May to BWX Technologies-led Hanford Works Restoration was put on hold by DOE as it considered correcting certain problems identified in bid protests brought by two rival bidders. The protests filed with the Government Accountability Office were dismissed as DOE considered its next move.
August
The Department of Energy gave its blessing for operations to start-up the long-awaited Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The facility built by Parsons will treat 35 million gallons of radioactive waste currently held in 43 underground tanks.
September
Nuclear Waste Partnership, the Amentum-led prime that manages the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico terminated a $135 million subcontract for construction of a new ventilation system. The subcontractor would subsequently sue Nuclear Waste Partnership as a result of the dismissal. The ventilation system is key to returning WIPP operations to the cadence that was routine before the 2014 underground radiation release that shuttered the mine for almost three years.
October
The potential $21-billion DOE solicitation for liquid waste management and related environmental work at the Savannah River Site hit the street. The current business is held by Savannah River Remediation.
November
The DOE inked a modified agreement with California officials to dismantle its final eight buildings at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, Calif., where the federal agency did decades of nuclear energy-related research.
Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent President Donald Trump in the November election although Trump doggedly pursued dozens of unsuccessful legal challenges in state and federal courts and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court.
December
The DOE nuclear cleanup office confirmed there have been more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 contracted at EM sites as of Dec. 10.
Media reported that President-elect Biden planned to appoint former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) secretary of energy.
