The next contractor in charge of moving defense-related transuranic to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., under a planned five-year contract may handle 500-to-800 shipments annually, the Department Energy said in comments posted online recently.
“Over the last 10 years, WIPP carrier miles have varied greatly from roughly 300,000 miles to more than 3,000,000 per year,” DOE said in response to questions posted online Thursday after a March 30 pre-solicitation conference on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services contract. The hauler should plan on logging between 1 million and 2 million miles per year, DOE said.
The DOE requires the winning bidder to set up a terminal and maintenance facility within 10 miles of Carlsbad.
Each shipment typically begins with a trailer of empty shipping casks leaving Carlsbad for the DOE waste generator site, DOE said. At the generator site, the contractor’s truck drops off the empty casks and picks up a trailer of loaded casks that will be hauled back to WIPP.
The DOE has targeted May for issuing a final request for proposals for the potential five-year, $100-million small business contract.
The incumbent is CAST Specialty Transportation, which has a five-year deal through May 27, 2022. While the current contract has a maximum value of $112 million, less than a quarter of that has been paid out so far, DOE has said in recent procurement documents.
After receiving only 192 shipments during the pandemic-dominated year of 2020, the DOE has said it envisions WIPP hitting about 300 shipments in 2021. That would be close to the 311 recorded in 2018, the facility’s best year since the February 2014 underground radiation leak that forced WIPP offline for about three years. Before the accident, WIPP received 724 shipments in 2013.
The DOE expects WIPP to return to pre-pandemic intake levels following completion of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, which is at least a couple of years away after the subcontractor for the project was terminated by WIPP prime Nuclear Waste Partnership last August.
