The Department of Energy is seeking bids on an estimated 10-year, $4 billion-$6 billion liquid cleanup contract at the Savannah River Site (SRS), in a long-awaited procurement that hit the street late Thursday that includes the permanent disposal of millions of tons of salt waste at the Aiken, S.C., facility.
The department currently envisions an eight-year base period and a two-year option period, according to the request for proposals released late Thursday. The contract continues the main cleanup work at the site: turning some 36 million highly radioactive liquid waste left over from Cold War nuclear weapons operations into more easily storable radioactive glass.
“The liquid waste services include but are not limited to: operations of existing radioactive liquid waste facilities for storage, treatment, stabilization, and disposal of waste; waste removal from tanks and tank closures; construction of additional saltstone disposal units; operation of the Salt Waste Processing Facility after facility commissioning, startup, and one year of operation; and liquid waste program and regulatory support,” according to the announcement.
The eventual winner of the competition will begin work in June 2017, when incumbent Savannah River Remediation’s eight-year, $4.1 billion contract expires.
Ramped-up disposal of salt waste from the tank farms is a major feature of the contract just out to bid, and DOE’s thinking about how that activity might be managed has changed significantly, compared with agency thinking revealed in the draft request for bids released in March.
Operations of the Salt Waste Processing Facility, built by Parsons Government Services and slated to come online in December 2018, are now an option on the Savannah River Site Liquid Waste Services contract, according to DOE’s final request for bids. In the draft, DOE said this work would be part of the contract’s base. The final request for proposals calls for processing 68 million gallons of salt waste at the Salt Waste Processing Facility over the contract’s life, including 42 million gallons in the eight-year base. In the draft request, DOE said SWPF would process 72 million gallons of salt over 10 years, including 45 million gallons in the base period.
The final request for bids calls for closing seven liquid waste tanks, including five in the base period; and cleaning up 10 tanks’ worth of bulk waste, including eight in the base period. Bulk waste includes sludge from the site’s liquid waste tanks. That is fewer tanks closed and cleaned than in the draft request, which called for closing a total of nine liquid waste tanks and cleaning up 11 bulk tanks over 10 years.
A spokesperson for one of the major partners for SRS cleanup incumbent Savannah River Remediation affirmed the company would bid again. Other partners indicated, but did not outright confirm, their interest. A fourth major partner could immediately be reached for comment Friday, the beginning of the Independence Day holiday weekend.
AECOM intends to bid on “the next high level liquid waste contract at SRS,” company spokesman Keith Wood said by email Friday.
“Through our partnership with the DOE, AECOM and our heritage companies have been successful at SRS in closing 8 high level waste tanks and pouring over 4000 glass waste canisters,” he stated. “We are making great strides in reducing the state of South Carolina’s greatest environmental risk while keeping our communities safer.”
A spokesperson for Bechtel Corp. said by email the company “is continuing to carefully evaluate the opportunity.”
A spokesperson for BWXT wrote in an email that “We are pleased to see that the RFP has been released and will review it carefully. BWXT is proud of the work we have done at SRS to date, and we look forward to continuing to serve the Department of Energy at their sites where our core competencies align with their missions.”
A spokesperson for AREVA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
