NAC International’s contract to transport irradiated rods containing tritium from the Tennessee Valley Authority to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina was renewed without competition in September, even though the National Nuclear Security Administration identified four companies that the agency believes could do the work.
The new five-year follow-on contract is being awarded on a sole-source basis to NAC, based in Norcross, Ga., which is currently the only company with the ability to transport” tritium-producing burnable absorber rods, or TPBARs. The contract extension was granted in September but the documents announcing the deal were published only Tuesday on the federal government contracting website.
Most of the work involves transporting TPBARs from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Units 1 and 2 reactors, where they are irradiated in 18-month cycles, to Savannah River, where they are processed to extract tritium for nuclear weapons. NAC also will transport some TPBARs to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., from TVA, according to the document justifying the sole-source award. The contract is worth about $16.7 million.
“These efforts will ensure that national security requirements can be maintained at the prescribed level, by producing new tritium to replace that lost to natural radioactive decay,” the document said.
Still, the same document names four commercial nuclear fuel shipment companies that “appear to have the ability to competitively propose a TPBAR shipment scope of work” but could not get their hands on suitable shipping containers in time to perform the required shipments. They are Washington, D.C.-based nuclear transportation management specialists Edlow International, Charlotte, N.C.-based nuclear fuel logistics company AREVA TN, Paducah, Ky.-based uranium transportation firm TAM-USA International and naval nuclear reactor manufacturer BWX Technologies (BWXT). BWXT, NNSA said, “has the expertise to fabricate shipping containers used by the nuclear industry. Fabricating a TPBAR shipment container should be within their expertise.”
Extending NAC’s contract for a further five years also will allow time to potentially develop, test and certify “new, larger-capacity shipping containers.”
TPBARs are specially designed rods that are inserted into nuclear fuel assemblies in substitution for normal fuel rods. Watts Bar 1 has irradiated tritium since nearly 2003. Unit 2 started producing tritium in late 2020. The tritium ultimately gets transferred to reservoirs that are installed in nuclear weapons. Modern thermonuclear weapons use tritium to increase the efficiency of nuclear explosions. Radioactive tritium decays relatively quickly and so must be produced regularly for as long as a nation wishes to maintain an arsenal of thermonuclear weapons.
TPBAR are irradiated at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 1 and Unit 2 reactors and are then shipped back to South Carolina in specialized shipping containers called NAC-Legal Weight Truck (LWT) transport containers in batches of no more than 300, according to the NNSA document. NAC has eight of those containers, of which three are designed to carry TPBARs.
A schedule of shipments laid out in the NNSA document show shipments of 1,800 TPBARs in year one which runs through fiscal 2024, ramping up to 2,400 in the second and third year, up again to 2,700 in the fourth year and 3,000 in the fifth and final year.
The NNSA issued a solicitation in April 2022 for other companies able to transport TPBARs but none responded. Even given the chance to consider other contractors, the NNSA document points out it could take seven to 10 years “to transition to another contractor and ramp-up to current production rates.
“To change contractors and lose a vital supplier’s capabilities would create a detrimental break in shipments, and significantly impact the Tritium Readiness Program’s ability to be prepared to provide new tritium, thereby jeopardizing the defense mission and placing the nation’s security at severe risk in the event of a national emergency,” the document said.
“The five-year period of performance will allow the Program time to continue ongoing studies and begin the implementation of a new, more innovative transportation program to meet future requirements beyond FY2027,” the document said. “While the requirements would not change as a result of the larger capacity casks, the government may experience reduction in the number of future deliveries resulting in a significant cost savings under the negotiated contract.”
