Five-Year Contract Extension for ORNL Finalized

UT-Battelle, which has managed Oak Ridge National Laboratory since 2000, has signed a new five-year contract with the Department of Energy. ORNL Director Thom Mason confirmed yesterday that the extension had been signed. The existing contract was due to expire April 1. The Department of Energy announced in late 2013 its intent to extend UT-Battelle’s contract, praising the contractor’s performance and ongoing role in modernizing the department’s largest Office of Science lab.

Mason said the new contract is essentially the same as the old one, but he said it took a while to make sure all the necessary details were in place. “It actually turns out there’s a fairly lengthy document, so there’s a lot of details that have to be sort of checked and cross-checked,” he said. In a message to lab staff, Mason said under UT-Battelle’s leadership the lab had “maintained its preeminence in high-performance computing and materials sciences, continued to build on its strengths in neutron science, bioenergy and global security, and watched an amazing growth of both capability and public interest in advanced manufacturing.”