With the details of the work sought essentially unchanged from the draft solicitation issued in May, the Energy Department on Thursday released a final solicitation for a five-year contract to transport transuranic waste over the road to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
The final request for proposals for a WIPP Transportation Services contract is a total small business set-aside for trucking services with a five-year ordering period. The contract is a follow-on that combines a pair of WIPP waste-hauling deals held by CAST Specialty Transportation and Visionary Solutions that will respectively expire on Jan. 12, 2017 and July 27, 2017. Those deals are worth a combined $240 million or so, split evenly between the incumbents.
Proposals are due by Aug. 29, 2016, DOE said in its press release. The winner would begin transition work in early 2017, according to the final RFP.
The contract includes, but is not limited to, carrier services for the safe transport of contact-handled (CH) and remote-handled (RH) transuranic (TRU) wastes and mixed hazardous constituents, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and asbestos, between various DOE sites across the country and other defense-related TRU waste generator sites to WIPP.
In early June, the agency briefed representatives of nine motor carriers about the contract, signaling shipments would ramp up slowly once WIPP reopens.
“It is estimated that once shipping resumes, a shipping rate of up to 5 shipments per week will be required through Calendar Year (CY) 2017, then possibly increase up to as many as 10 shipments per week through CY 2020/2021 as the WIPP waste emplacement efficiency is improved,” the Energy Department said in its written answer to questions from carriers at a June 1 site tour and pre-solicitation briefing.
WIPP has been closed since 2014, following an accidental underground radiation release and unrelated underground fire. The underground salt mine is slated to begin accepting new deliveries of transuranic waste from across the DOE complex in early 2017.
