The H-Canyon processing facilities at the Energy Department’s Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina currently generate roughly 100,000 gallons per year of radioactive liquid waste, a figure expected to grow to about 200,000 per year in fiscal 2022.
After fiscal 2022, the amount of liquid waste going from H-Canyon into the SRS liquid waste program could reach 300,000 gallons annually, a DOE spokesperson said by email Friday. This is the only new liquid waste being added to the site’s stock of 35 million gallons left over from Cold War operations and managed by AECOM-led Savannah River Remediation (SRR).
The Energy Department recently announced it would extend the SRR contract, scheduled to expire at the end of March, by 18 months through September 2020.
In last month canceling the procurement for a new decade-long, multibillion-dollar liquid waste contract at Savannah River, the Energy Department said it wants the L-Basin and H-Canyon facilities integrated into the eventual follow-on award. The planned change is contractual rather than physical, according to DOE.
Both L-Basin and H-Canyon are now managed by site prime Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.
L-Basin holds spent nuclear fuel from foreign and domestic research reactors. After this fuel is dissolved in H-Canyon, the waste streams go into the tanks managed by SRR.
In addition to AECOM, the other Savannah River Remediation partners are Bechtel, Jacobs subsidiary CH2M, and BWX Technologies. It began work on an eight-year, $4.7 billion contract in July 2009. Since that contract expired at the end of June 2017, SRR has been issued a number of short-term extensions.
A team led by Virginia-based BWX Technologies, Savannah River EcoManagement, was initially awarded a $4.7 billion follow-on waste contract in October 2017. the losing teams protested, and in February 2018 the Government Accountability Office upheld the protest from an AECOM-CH2M partnership. The DOE had received updated bids from the vendors in April 2018 but recently decided to terminate the solicitation altogether.
Prospective vendors looking at a potential seven-year, $900 million contract to manage the 222-S Laboratory Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state have filed 70 questions on the solicitation.
The final request for proposals was issued Feb. 7. Bid proposals are due by 4 p.m. ET April 9, and the anticipated award date is February 2020.
The current laboratory work is split between two contractors.
The former Wastren Advantage, which has been merged into Veolia Nuclear Solutions, provides laboratory analysis and testing under a five-year, $50 million contract due to expire in September 2020. The testing supports tank closure requirements and material transfers between tanks used to store Hanford’s 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste, generated by decades of plutonium production.
AECOM-led Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) provides support services, maintenance, and other work for 222-S under its $7.1 billion tank waste management contract at Hanford, which has been extended through September.
The questions cover scope of work, workforce availability, pension issues, and a variety of details surrounding the performance-based contract that includes cost-plus-award-fee and cost reimbursement features.
In response to one question, the Energy Department staff said the 222-S Laboratory currently manages 25,000 samples per year.
