Bids for Long-term Management and Storage of elemental mercury are due to the Department of Energy by 4 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday, while questions on the last week’s solicitations for new contracts at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the Paducah Site in Kentucky are due a week later, the agency said.
Since DOE’s Office of Environmental Management published its final request for proposals (RFP) for long-term mercury storage in March, the agency has extended the due date for bid proposals twice, most recently to Wednesday. The winner must own or lease a site suitable for long-term storage of 1,280 metric tons of elemental mercury under the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2008.
The current mercury RFP is an outgrowth of a 2020 legal settlement with some U.S. gold mining companies that sued DOE over the agency’s earlier selection of Waste Control Specialists in Texas as the storage site. The mining interests challenged both the fee and the public process surrounding the selection.
Meanwhile, DOE’s Environmental Management office is accepting questions until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the Portsmouth Paducah Project Office Operations and Site Mission Support RFP, issued last week that could be worth $2.89 billion over 10 years. Questions should be emailed to [email protected].
Proposal due dates are July 25 for the contract, which includes both depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) conversion work now performed by incumbent Mid-America Conversion Services, as well as certain operation and support tasks for the two gaseous diffusion plant sites now performed under separate cleanup contracts.
The proposal submission date for the Portsmouth cleanup contract, the follow-up to the agreement held since March 2011 by Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, is two weeks earlier than the DUF6 deadline. Bids are due on July 11, according to the cover letter that is part of the RFP package. The Portsmouth Decontamination and Decommissioning Contract is potentially worth $5.87-billion, including options.
