Days after the transition was set to start, the Energy Department has yet to announce who will take over the next decade of legacy nuclear cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory under a contract that went out to bid in September.
In its final request for proposals, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) advised would-be bidders that cleanup work would begin transitioning on July 3, 2017, to the winner of a potentially 10-year, $1.5-billion-plus Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract.
The day, offered for planning purposes in the agency’s solicitation, came and went this week without an announcement from EM by deadline for Weapons Complex Monitor. An EM spokesperson in Washington did not reply to a request for comment this week.
According to multiple industry executives, some working for companies that bid on the work, some working for companies that did not, there has been no indication that DOE would announce an award this week.
Incumbent Los Alamos National Security’s two-year, $230 million bridge cleanup contract expires Sept. 30. The contractor — a partnership of Bechtel National, BWX Technologies, AECOM, and the University of California — used to handle legacy cleanup under its contract to manage the laboratory for DOE’s quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration.
The conglomerate had those responsibilities stripped out of its contract after an improperly packaged barrel of transuranic waste from the lab exploded underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., in February 2014, causing a radiation leak that closed the facility for nearly three years.
However, Los Alamos National Security has stayed on the cleanup job under a short-term contract DOE awarded in 2015 while the agency organized a competition for the longer-term cleanup contract that was supposed to begin the transition period this week.
Los Alamos National Security’s management and operations contract for the laboratory expires on Sept. 30, 2018. The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration last week issued its presolicitation notice for the upcoming procurement process.
