Don’t expect the Department of Energy to roll out its final solicitation for the potential $26.5-billion Integrated Tank Disposition Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington state before August, officials said Tuesday during a virtual briefing for potential bidders.
Hanford’s site manager, Brian Vance and many of his lieutenants at the DOE Office of Environmental Management complex spoke at the virtual briefing on the draft RFP. The final request for proposals (RFP) is expected to draw the biggest players in the weapons complex. The bid deadline will likely be within 45 days of the final RFP.
The online meetings began Tuesday and were set to end Thursday. The contract will notionally have a 10-year ordering period and 90 days of transition. Questions are due to DOE by April 12 at [email protected].
Ensuring the health of small firms serving Hanford has been a sore spot between DOE and some subcontractors lately. The draft RFP specifies bidders must ensure at least 15% of the total value of the contract will be performed by small business.
The winner of the Integrated Tank Disposition Contract will manage and close Hanford’s 177 underground tanks, which contain liquid radioactive waste left over from decades of plutonium production, and operate the new Waste Treatment Plant being built by Bechtel National to solidify much of the waste within the tanks.
DOE has announced plans to keep current tank contractor, the Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions, on the job for up to two years, from Oct. 1, 2021 through Sept. 30, 2023, while the integrated contract procurement goes forward. But the actual extension has yet to be executed, an EM spokesperson at Hanford said Thursday.
Bechtel plans to start converting low-activity waste into glass at the vitrification plant by the end of December 2023, although the state has approved letting the work spill into 2024 due to a force majeure exception from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, it looked like the next big Hanford liquid waste contract would go to a team led by BWX Technologies, but DOE reversed course amid complaints that the team created a conflict of interest when it hired an ex-agency employee to help with the bid.
In December DOE yanked the $13 billion tank closure contract awarded to the BWX Technologies team in May and announced the government had decided to combine tank closure with operation of the waste treatment plant. Two losing teams protested DOE’s initial award.
There are 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste in the tanks at Hanford, including 23 million gallons of salt cake, 21 million gallons of supernate and 12 million gallons of sludge, according to the presentation.
