The Department of Justice and a pair of contractor teams are still waiting for the Department of Energy to take definitive action on a potential $45-billion deal for Hanford Site radioactive waste management in Washington state, according to a new court filing.
That’s the gist of a three-page status report filed Thursday by the Department of Justice with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims about an ongoing lawsuit there over the Hanford Integrated Tank contract.
The filing dropped weeks after DOE said in court documents that it gave a contract officer the authority to fix issues with bidder registration in an online procurement tracking system: an issue that has loomed large in the current bid protest litigation.
DOE in April awarded the mega-dollar business to Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure, a team led by BWXT with Amentum and Fluor. The federal claims court subsequently blocked the contract after a successful challenge by the loser, Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance. The team, made up of Atkins Nuclear, Jacobs and Westinghouse, pointed out that the winner had not kept its corporate registration with the federal government current.
The claims court sent the matter back to DOE and “granted DOE wide discretion on how to proceed, directing only that the agency ‘reassess the procurement, including consideration” of both proposals, Justice said Thursday.
On Sept. 1, the Justice Department said DOE would seek updated proposals from the teams. DOE also issued a new “notice of corrective action re-opening of discussions” of the contract award.
This notice seemingly gives the DOE contracting officer much latitude to fix problems with the applicants’ online procurement registration, including the lapse in the winning team’s registration with the System for Award Management that led the claims court to find the award to the BWXT team “was improper.”
The BWXT-led group has also questioned the Atkins group’s online registration because Atkins at one point failed to identify Montreal, Canada-based SNC-Lavalin as its parent company. SNC-Lavalin recently announced it is changing its name to AtkinsRéalis.
The BWXT-led team filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, although not much has happened in that forum to date.
With the new contract in limbo, DOE has extended the tank management contract of Amentum-led incumbent Washington River Protection Solutions, for up to two more years. The existing business concerns management and eventual closure of underground tanks holding about 56 million gallons of liquid waste left over from decades of plutonium production for the U.S. military.
The new integrated contract would marry that chore with operation of the Bechtel-built Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. The plant is meant to convert or vitrify all the high-level radioactive waste and much of the low-level waste into solid glass form. DOE is currently targeting early low-level glass making for 2025.
