A massive cleanup contract that would begin Oct. 1, 2017 at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) includes five years, plus a pair of options that would stretch the deal out through 2027, according to a draft solicitation DOE released late Thursday.
The final value of the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract will be determined in an open competition that will kick off later this year, but DOE estimated the pact, which has a three-year option followed by a two-year option, will be worth about $1.7 billion.
Legacy waste-cleanup at LANL was once part of a management and operations contract with DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) that is held by the Los Alamos National Security conglomerate led by San Francisco-based Bechtel and the University of California.
After an accidental underground radiation release in 2014 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. was traced to an improperly sealed waste container from LANL, DOE announced it would not renew the conglomerate’s contract, and that the agency’s Office of Environmental Management would take over waste cleanup work from NNSA. The Environmental Management office subsequently sole-sourced a roughly $310 million bridge cleanup contract to the incumbent.
The winner of the new contract will be tightly under the thumb of the New Mexico Environment Department, which in March unveiled a draft of the new framework that will govern cleanup of LANL legacy waste. A cornerstone of the draft consent agreement is the so-called campaign approach to cleanup, in which DOE and its contractors focus narrowly on one area or task at a time.
In its draft soliciation, DOE wrote “campaigns are to be a reasonably short duration (3- 4 years) and have measureable and definable end-states or summary-level milestones.”
DOE cautioned prospective bidders they could face financial penalties if they blow any of the milestones the state set out in the order.
Among other tasks, DOE said work covered under the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract includes:
- Protecting, characterizing, and monitoring the regional aquifer.
- Cleaning up contaminated media and contaminated legacy waste sites at LANL and surrounding private- and Government-owned lands (formerly LANL), including groundwater and surface water, to levels appropriate for the intended land use.
- Decontamination and decommissioning and demolishing inactive, process-contaminated, and non-contaminated facilities that impede the timely execution of environmental restoration activities;
- Retrieving, characterizing, and preparing legacy mixed-low level radioactive waste and transuranic waste for shipment off-site. The Environmental Management office is responsible for disposing of legacy waste generated between 1970 and 1998, while NNSA is responsible for waste generated after 1998
- Transferring sites to the landlord organization (NNSA) for long-term surveillance and monitoring as needed.
