Honeywell this month marked its 75th year of work at what is now the Kansas City National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo. Run by the National Nuclear Security Administration today, the campus relocated in 2014 from the old Bannister Federal Complex, portions of which were scheduled for transfer to the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management in 2026, according to the office.
Bannister was the manufacturing hub for the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons for much of the atomic age. That mission moved to the current Kansas City campus about 10 years ago, when most DOE people relocated out of Bannister. In 2017, the agency turned over much of the old Bannister complex to a private development firm.
The final request for proposals for a new Technical Support Services contract for the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office could be out by the end of February, the Department of Energy said this week.
On Feb. 15, the Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center said the final solicitation should be issued within seven-to-14 calendar days. The procurement is already drawing a lot of interest from parties interested in succeeding the incumbent, Pro2Service’s Enterprise Technical Assistance Services.
The incumbent has a $179-million contract that started in April 2020 and is scheduled to run through March 2025.
A National Environmental Policy Act comment period has been extended until March 13 for both interim measures and a final remedy for the hexavalent chromium plume at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The prior comment deadline was Feb. 12. The proposed approach includes four options, or a combination of the options, which can selectively be used to remediate chromium-contaminated groundwater below Sandia and Mortandad canyons.
The plume dates back to use of chemicals to clean corrosion from cooling towers at a Los Alamos power plant between 1956 and 1972.
Indigenous and environmental groups are lining up in opposition to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s recent approval of a shallow disposal facility at the Chalk River Laboratories site in Deep River, Ontario.
Chiefs of the Quebec Algonquin Nations, with backing from the Green Party and Bloc Québécois have sought judicial review of the approval, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Wednesday. “Imagine: a huge pit of radioactive waste measuring a million cubic meters, less than a kilometer from a tributary of the St. Lawrence River,” according to an English translation of a French language press release by Bloc Québécois. “This is not only a very bad option environmentally: it is a disaster waiting to happen.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, said approval of the disposal facility for solid low-level radioactive waste was backed by the experts.
The Department of Energy is putting together an “interested vendors list” so contractors can easily form teams to pursue the Technical, Management, and Administrative Services contract at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
Companies that want to be included on the public list need not have responded to the January request for information, the Office of Environmental Management said in a Wednesday notice. Parties interested in being on the list, however, must respond to the pre-solicitation announcement by 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 29.
The incumbent provider of technical services at the Oak Ridge Environmental Management office is Maryland-based Link Technologies, which has a $34-million contract that expires in April 2025.
Department of Energy branches involved with nuclear weapons, cleanup and power reactors took steps to support underserved communities and draw more racial minorities into DOE-sponsored work during 2023, according to a report from Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.
Publication of the 2023 Equity Action Plan seeks to quantify steps by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Environmental Management, Office of Nuclear Energy and other DOE branches to carry out an executive order by President Joe Biden.
