Bechtel, Reston, Va., and Fluor, Irving, Texas, are leading separate bids for the potentially $10-year, $21.5 billion management and operations contract for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, people familiar with the competitive landscape said this week.

Amentum, Germantown, Md., is also in the mix as a partner, one of these people said.

The Savannah River Site Operations Acquisition contact, owned by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, will include landlord services, cleanup of solid radioactive waste and management of the chemical separations facility at H-Canyon, the spent fuel storage facility at L-Basin and excess plutonium storage at K-Area, among other things. It won’t include the operations of the Savannah River National Laboratory, which DOE now operates under a separate contract.

For DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which will pass money through the contract, the agreement will cover tritium processing for nuclear weapons, dilution and disposal of excess weapons plutonium, and construction of the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility: a factory for nuclear-weapon primary stages slated to come online in 2030 and be built from the partially completed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in the site’s F-Area. 

Fluor is the lead partner on the current Savannah River Site prime, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. The team, which includes Huntington Ingalls Industries and Honeywell, has been on the job since 2008 under a contract that runs at least through September and is now worth nearly $16 billion.