Nuclear Waste Partnership, prime contractor for the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) disposal facility near Carlsbad, N.M., said Thursday it earned about $2.5 million in fees in fiscal 2015, good for almost 75 percent of the possible award.
Todd Shrader, head of DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a letter the company received a formal rating of “good” in the four assessable categories of its performance as the operator of DOE’s only permanent disposal facility for radio-contaminated transuranic waste: mission performance; mission management; environment, safety, and health performance; and cost control performance.
The conglomerate led by AECOM and BWX Technologies earned 75 percent of its possible award fee in every category except management performance, where it netted 70 percent of the possible award, according to Shrader’s letter.
The detailed award fee determination scorecard, which outlines DOE’s reasoning for the fees it awards, had not been released publicly at press time Friday.
Nuclear Waste Partnership is under the gun to get WIPP running again by DOE’s self-imposed deadline of mid-December. The facility, the only one of its kind in the world, has been closed since an underground fire and unrelated radiation release in February 2014.
