The Department of Energy will keep the current liquid waste management vendor at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina on the job for an additional 18 months, a move that comes about two weeks after it canceled plans for a new decade-long contract.
In a post on a federal procurement website, DOE said Monday it plans to extend the contract with AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation from April 1, 2019, through Sept. 30, 2020. The current extension expires on March 31.
Savannah River Remediation started work on its initial eight-year contract in July 2009. It has received a series of short-term extensions since the original $5 billion deal ended in June 2017. At the end of May 2018, it received a 10-month, $432 million extension.
The proposed contract renewal will allow the Savannah River Site to “continue critical requirements for treatment and disposal of liquid waste (LW) at SRS while the follow-on competitive procurement is completed,” according to the notice. The deal had not been sealed as of Friday, so no financial details were available.
The extension is allowed via an exclusion to normal competitive bidding practices in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Nevertheless, interested parties may submit a capability statement by 4 p.m. EST on March 26 via email to Charlene Smith, at [email protected].
A team led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies, Savannah River EcoManagement, was initially awarded a $4.7 billion follow-on waste contract in October 2017. However, both losing bidding teams protested, and the Government Accountability Office in February 2018 upheld the protest from an AECOM-CH2M partnership.
The Energy Department received updated offers from the original vendors in April 2018, but on Feb. 26 terminated the procurement worth up to $6 billion. The agency said much had changed at SRS since it issued the first draft request for proposals in March 2016.
In 2018 DOE’s Environmental Management office and National Nuclear Security Administration initiated a study on the future of the site. That includes whether the NNSA should assume management of Savannah River, which is now overseen by Environmental Management. The two DOE branches have predicted a decision in early 2019.
The Energy Department also wants a single contractor in charge of both liquid waste and “inter-related” L-Basin, H-Canyon, and waste operations now managed by site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
The planned change, however, will not affect the scope of work for the contract extension, which maintains the focus on storage and disposal operations for about 35 million gallons of waste left behind by Cold War nuclear weapons operations.
The Energy Department is in not as big of a hurry to refresh its deal with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, which is now working under contract extension that runs through July. Stuart MacVean, SRNS president and CEO, did say recently he does expect to receive another extension soon to the 12-month, $1 billion extension awarded last summer. The original 10-year, $9.8 billion SRNS contract was awarded in 2008.
L-Basin and H-Canyon generate the only new liquid waste going into the high level-waste tanks overseen by Savannah River Remediation.
L-Basin stores aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel from foreign and domestic research reactors in water-filled basins. After the spent nuclear fuel is dissolved in H-Canyon, followed by recovery and downblending of the enriched uranium, the waste streams go into the tanks. The Energy Department proposes to integrate these three missions to maximize risk reduction while minimizing future financial liabilities.
In the long term, it is conceivable DOE might simply roll the liquid waste work into the larger management and operations contract for SRS, a source noted Thursday. Liquid waste was handled under the management contract at SRS more than a decade ago, he added. The latest procurement schedule from the Office of Environmental Management, updated March 8, no longer lists a future award for Savannah River liquid waste operations.
It does still indicate plans for a new management contract, although no dates are targeted for a final RFP or contract award timeline. The DOE had announced last October it was postponing action on the draft RFP, issued two months earlier, pending the outcome of the NNSA-EM review.
Likewise, the current acquisitions list posted by the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center no longer includes an entry for Savannah River liquid waste.