Though none would commit outright to making a run at the work, most of the major partners on the Energy Department’s main liquid-waste cleanup contract at the Savannah River Site signaled interest in bidding on billions of dollars’ worth of follow-on work at the Aiken, S.C. facility.
About a week after DOE released a draft request for proposals for a liquid-waste cleanup contract that, including options, would be worth $6 billion over 10 years, three of the four big partners on incumbent cleanup prime Savannah River Remediation (SRR) said they would be interested in the work.
“AECOM has significant interest in this procurement and is actively reviewing the recently released draft RFP,” a spokesperson wrote in an April 1 email.
“BWXT values our long legacy of conducting safe nuclear operations at DOE’s Savannah River Site,” a BWXT spokesperson said Wednesday. “We are reviewing the draft solicitation that was issued last week with interest, and we intend to provide cogent feedback to DOE EM while we continue to evaluate the opportunity.”
“We are carefully evaluating the draft RFP and will continue to participate in the Department’s acquisition process,” a Bechtel National spokesperson said Wednesday. “We have a long and productive history at the Savannah River Site that dates back to design of the Defense Waste Processing Facility, up to our current role with Savannah River Remediation. We look forward to ongoing work at the site and growing our presence in the community.”
The remaining SRR partner, Areva, declined through a spokesperson to comment for this story. Another SRR partner, URS Corp., was acquired by AECOM in 2014. Both companies were part of the original partnership on the contract. Savannah River Remediation won its eight-year, $4.1 billion in 2009; the pact expires on June 30, 2017, and includes a pair of concurrent options DOE has exercised.
DOE plans to meet with all interested parties at the Savannah River Site during the week of April 18, and then to release the final request for proposals for the work in May or June, Jack Surash, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and project management at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, said in March at the annual Waste Management Symposium.
The eventual winner of the competition will begin work in March 2017, and be responsible for: processing 72 million gallons of salt waste at Savannah River Site’s Salt Waste Processing Facility, including 45 million gallons in the base period; closing nine liquid waste tanks, including six in the base period; and cleaning up 11 tanks’ worth of bulk waste, including nine in the base period. Bulk waste includes sludge from the site’s liquid waste tanks.
DOE currently envisions an eight-year base period and a two-year option period, according to the draft request for proposal.
One thing that figures to affect DOE’s final request for proposal is the fate of the 3H Evaporator that helps make room for more liquid waste at the Savannah River Site’s H-Area Tank Farm. One of the two evaporators operated by SRR, known as 3H, cracked sometime in or prior to February and began leaking waste.
Although the leak has so far not breached acceptable radiation levels in the evaporator building, SRR still has not nailed down a fix for the cracked pot. It could, the company admitted, take years to replace. An SRR spokesman on Wednesday said the company still has not decided whether to repair or replace the hardware.
Replacing the pot would take about two years, which would carry the work into the base period of performance for the follow-on contract DOE plans to put out to bid this year. These evaporator pots boil off water from liquid waste that comes from the H-Area Tank Farm. Boiling off the water clears out space in the tanks, which perpetually fill up with the waste byproducts of ongoing processing of nuclear materials.
