Nuclear Waste Partnership’s current eight-year, $2.4-billion contract for management and operation of the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is being extended for at least one more year, potentially two.
The DOE and Amentum-led Nuclear Waste Partnership agreed Sept. 15 to a one-year option through Sept. 30, 2021, contractor spokesman Donavan Mager said this week in an email. The agreement also authorizes two additional six-month option periods where the agency could keep the prime contractor around through September 2022.
By then, the DOE should have secured a new follow-on contract for operation of the disposal facility for defense-related transuranic waste.
The one-year extension is worth $269 million, bringing the total contract value to over $2.7 billion, according to a DOE press release.
In July, the DOE Office of Environmental Management issued a sources-sought notice and request for information for companies interested in running the underground disposal site. Responses were due in early August.
Without an extension, Nuclear Waste Partnership’s current agreement would have expired Sept. 30.
Nuclear Waste Partnership is a joint venture of Amentum and BWX Technologies, with Orano as a major subcontractor. The prime has been on the job at WIPP since October 2012.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management retained Nuclear Waste Partnership in September 2017 at the end of the current contract’s five-year base period, picking up the sole option on the pact: a three-year extension.
Earlier in 2017, WIPP reopened after a roughly three-year shutdown caused in 2014 when a drum of transuranic waste, improperly packaged at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, burst open underground and spread radioactive contamination into the mine.
The amount of waste being disposed of in the WIPP underground during 2020 is running well behind 2019 pace. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant received 121 shipments between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of this year, down from 225 from the first eight months of 2019. The drop-off is blamed on factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, bad winter weather during the first quarter and an annual winter maintenance shutdown that lasted a couple of weeks longer than usual due to repairs on aging equipment.
The waste disposal site is undergoing a major infrastructure upgrade program. In August, Nuclear Waste Partnership terminated a $135 million subcontract for construction of a new ventilation system.
