The U.S. Energy Department is giving interested vendors four more days, until Tuesday, Oct. 8, to comment on a draft request for proposals on a nationwide deactivation, decommissioning, and removal services contract that could be worth $3 billion.
The agency’s Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center announced the deadline extension Tuesday on the FidBizOpps website. The procurement office in Cincinnati first posted the draft RFP on Sept. 5.
The Energy Department is considering a multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract, using firm-fixed-price or cost-reimbursement task orders that could amount to $3 billion over a 10-year period.
The agency held a presolicitation conference, tour, and one-on-one meetings from Sept. 24-26 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. Decommissioning of Livermore’s Building 251, a facility used from the 1950s to the 1990s for experiments in research connected to underground nuclear testing, would be one of the first task orders under the contract.
Companies that signed up for the September tire-kicking included AECOM, Atkins, Bechtel, Burns & McDonnell, BWX Technologies, EnergySolutions, Huntington Ingalls, Jacobs, Navarro, North Wind, Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Veolia, and Westinghouse.
In documents that accompany the draft RFP, the Energy Department said it is gearing up for deactivation and decommissioning of nonoperating national nuclear facilities in coming years. An agreement signed in May gave DOE’s Office of Environmental Management responsibility for deactivation, decommissioning, and remediation of unneeded facilities facilities owned by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Naval Reactors.
The Naval Reactors office says it will rely upon the cleanup office’s expertise for remediation valued at more than $2.5 billion.
Comments on the draft RFP can be emailed to [email protected].
Actual proposals are not yet being sought. A final RFP will be released at a later date, the Energy Department said. In its May procurement timeline, the agency envisioned getting the draft RFP out in August and the final RFP in September with a contract being awarded by May 2020.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday and then pleaded guilty Tuesday afternoon to federal insider trader charges, according to various national news outlets.
Collins, 69, and his son, Cameron Collins, 26, had pleaded not guilty, but filed paperwork in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Monday saying they would change their plea, according to The New York Times. Collins faces a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, the newspaper reported.
His resignation from Congress took effect immediately, according a copy of the brief letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), and subsequently posted on social media.
Collins served on the board of Australian biotechnology specialist and was accused of giving his son and others early notice the company had failed a key clinical trial on the effectiveness of its product to treat secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis. As a result, he was charged with using insider information to help people avoid big financial losses in the stock market, and lying about it to law enforcement.
In August 2018, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suspended Collins from the House Energy and Commerce Committee after documents were unsealed in U.S. District Court outlining the prosecution’s case. Collins, who has served in the House since 2013, is not currently listed among the active GOP members of the panel that oversees agencies including the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Despite the bad press from the case against him won re-election in November 2018 by carrying just over 49% of the vote in a three-way race, according to the Ballotpedia website. Two years earlier, he won re-election with 67% of the vote.
