The Amentum-BWX Technologies joint venture that runs the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico will be kept on at least until early 2022 as the agency moves ahead with its solicitation for a new prime, according to a nugget tucked inside the White House budget justification for the Office of Environmental Management.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) last week issued a final request for proposals for a potential $3-billion, 10-year deal for an operations contractor to succeed the Nuclear Waste Partnership at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The current contract, valued at $2.7 billion, is scheduled to end Sept. 30. EM holds two six-month options that could potentially extend the pact into fall 2022.
The option the government intends to pick up will stretch the deal between Oct. 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022 and “allow for the award of the procurement of the follow-on contract,” according to the 400-plus-page detailed budget justification posted online this week. The final six-month option will be exercised if needed.
Nuclear Waste Partnership’s deal at WIPP was first structured with one five-year base period and a five-year option period that was to run from Oct. 1, 2017, to Sept. 30, 2022. DOE later modified the second half of the agreement in September 2017 to a three-year option followed by a two-year option. The two-year option was split further into a one-year option and two six-month options.
Overall for WIPP, the Joe Biden administration requests $430 million for fiscal 2022, up from the $413-million enacted by Congress for the budget year ending Sept. 30.
The fiscal 2022 request includes $55 million for continued construction of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, up $20 million from fiscal 2021, along with $25 million for continued construction of a new utility shaft, $30 million less than the 2021 appropriation. The DOE and its contractor are still seeking approval from New Mexico to resume work on the new utility shaft.
DOE calls both projects critical to improving underground airflow at WIPP to the point where personnel there can again simultaneously dispose of waste while mining out new disposal areas. This degree of multitasking has not been possible since a February 2014 radiation leak that damaged the underground mine and kept the disposal site offline for about three years.
