Fluor Idaho has received a five-year, cost-plus Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) Core contract worth up to $1.4 billion for legacy waste cleanup work at the Idaho National Laboratory, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said Thursday.
Work will take place at DOE EM’s Idaho Site some 50 miles west of Idaho Falls. The new ICP Core deal combines cleanup work previously handled under a pair of contracts. One of these is held by CH2M-WG Idaho, a partnership between CH2M and AECOM, and covers most cleanup work at the site. The other, held by Idaho Treatment Group — which includes B&W, AECOM, and EnergySolutions — manages the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project.
Those contracts will expire June 1, when the base period on Fluor Idaho’s new deal begins. Liquid and transuranic waste piled up at the nearly 70-year-old site now known as the Idaho National Laboratory during decades of reactor testing and development, along with efforts to recycle and recover spent nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy and commercial nuclear power generation.
Fluor Idaho was one of two bidders for the deal, the final solicitation for which went out in May 2015. EM did not disclose the name of the other bidder. Industry officials last year speculated Fluor’s competitor was AECOM.
The competitor now will have 10 days to protest DOE EM’s award with the Government Accountability Office.
According to DOE’s press release, work covered under the base period of Fluor Idaho’s ICP Core contract includes:
- Stabilizing and storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.
- Disposition of transuranic waste.
- Retrieving targeted buried waste.
- Closing the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center tank farm.
- Maintaining Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act remedial actions.
- Operating and maintaining facility infrastructure for the site’s tank farm, Radioactive Waste Management Complex, and Radioactive Scrap and Waste Facility.
DOE also expects to pull the trigger on the contract’s option as soon as the deal is officially awarded. Under the option, Fluor Idaho will operate the site’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit, a facility designed to treat 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste stored in steel tanks at the site.
At the conclusion of ICP Core contract, DOE said in its press release, all transuranic waste covered by the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement between DOE, the Navy, and the state “will be dispositioned out of Idaho.” Under the terms of the settlement, DOE is to have all high-level waste at the Idaho Site ready to be shipped elsewhere and disposed of by 2035.
With the ICP Core contract off the board — barring a protest — the next big DOE EM cleanup project up for bid in the near term is likely to be for whatever contract follows the $310 million legacy cleanup bridge contract at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, which is currently held by facility manager Los Alamos National Security. If DOE exercises all its options, that deal will run through September 2017.
