The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest Site Office plans to negotiate a five-year extension to Battelle Memorial Institute’s contract to operate the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., rather than competing the contract. About a third of the lab’s total annual budget of close to $1 billion is for nuclear security and nonproliferation work, and about 6 percent of the budget is for operations related to the nearby Hanford Site. The extension would make 57 straight years that Battelle and its predecessors have held the contract to manage the lab for the DOE Office of Science. The current contract extends through September 2017. “Battelle and DOE are already well-aligned with common interest in advancing PNNL’s pursuits and assuring the continuity of PNNL for the benefit of the local community, the region and the nation,” said Roger Snyder, manager of the Pacific Northwest Site Office, in a statement on Friday.
The contract extension still must be negotiated, but PNNL Director Steven Ashby said in a message to employees that he does not foresee any insurmountable obstacles. Issues that will need to be addressed “center on the future of Battelle’s facilities, but also include our plans for increased academic engagement and greater diversity in our workforce,” he said. Battelle owns some of the buildings on the PNNL campus. Ashby told employees that the lab’s sustained performance had positioned Battelle for a contract extension. Lab officials have previously said that PNNL has ranked highest or tied for highest in overall performance in most of the last eight annual reviews of Office of Science laboratories. For fiscal 2015, Battelle earned $11.75 million of a possible $12.5 million fee, or 94 percent.
