Time ran out Monday for companies to submit proposals on a five-year low-level radioactive waste disposal contract with the Energy Department Office of Environmental Management, business that is now held by Waste Control Specialists and EnergySolutions.
The Energy Department is expected to announce winners of the business, which could be worth a maximum outlay of $120 million, in April 2018.
The potential maximum value of the contract includes transport and disposal orders by DOE, including its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration and national laboratories, according to the request for proposals issued in August.
The winning vendors will provide disposal services for low-level and mixed low-level waste for a period extending from April 12, 2018, to April 11, 2023.
The DOE nuclear cleanup office is seeking companies or joint ventures for transportation and disposal of LLW and MLLW, as well as Section 11e. (2) byproduct material; technologically enhanced, naturally-occurring radioactive material (TENORM); and sealed sources. The waste orders could come from virtually anywhere in the DOE complex.
The contract would be an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) agreement, with firm-fixed-price task orders. The RFP language says no funds will be obligated to the contract directly. Instead, the money will be allotted for work through task orders issued under the contract.
There are three providers for LLRW disposal in the United States: Waste Control Specialists, of Dallas, at a facility in Andrews County, Texas; EnergySolutions, of Salt Lake City, in Clive, Utah, and Barnwell, S.C.; and US Ecology, of Boise, Idaho, at DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
The Energy Department received a half-dozen questions about the solicitation from prospective bidders. In the question-and-answer section on its procurement website, DOE said prospective contractors could bid on taking only certain classes of waste mentioned in the RFP.
