The Bechtel-EnergySolutions team appears to be considering challenging the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s recent award of the new Magnox contract to the Cavendish Fluor Partnership. EnergySolutions currently manages the 10 Magnox reactor sites and expects to earn $1.2 billion in the contract year that ended this week, according to a financial filing posted yesterday. The company bid on the new contract with Bechtel as part of the Reactor Site Solutions team. “We and our teaming partner have not decided whether to protest the results of the re-bid process. Our failure to win the re-bid will have a significant negative impact on our results of operations,” states EnergySolutions’ April 1 Securities and Exchange Commission filing. EnergySolutions and Bechtel did not respond to request for comment yesterday.
Any challenge to the Magnox award would need to go through the U.K. court system. Under U.K. procurement regulations, unsuccessful bidders have a 10-day period to request further information, which could potentially lead to a legal challenge. “The NDA is confident that the competition process was implemented rigorously, in line with UK and EU procurement regulations,” NDA spokesman Bill Hamilton said in a statement. “Our process was scrutinised in detail by external advisors over the two years of the competition, and recently received positive external validation by the independent Major Projects Authority, which forms part of the Cabinet Office of the UK Government. The NDA would continue with transition arrangements – legal processes and preparations for hand-over – until the results of a legal challenge become clear. It is too early to predict how this would work out in practice.”
