The Department of Energy on Thursday awarded incumbent CAST Specialty Transportation a new five-year contract with a maximum $100-million value for haulage of defense-related transuranic waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
CAST won the new Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Transportation Services small business set-aside contract over three other proposals, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in a press release.
The new deal is a single-award indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract that includes reimbursement for items such as fuel, New Mexico gross receipts taxes as well as a safe driving bonus.
The haulage contract requires the winner among other things to support the DOE transuranic waste program and operate a transportation terminal within 10 miles of Carlsbad.
Before Thursday’s announcement DOE incrementally extended CAST’s contract tenure, which started in June 2017 through July 30, according to the Office of Environmental Management’s major contracts chart updated Tuesday.
As recently as last month, the CAST contract, which has a maximum value of $112 million, was slated to expire at the end of May.
“CAST Transportation has transported thousands of truckloads of hazardous and radioactive material,” according to the trucking company’s website. In recent years CAST has moved “thousands of low level radioactive waste shipments” to the Nevada National Security Site, Envirocare in Utah, and US Ecology in Idaho. CAST is also certified to transport in and out of Canada, according to the website.
A final request for proposals for a new $100-million contract was released by DOE in June 2021. Representatives from CAST were among 16 organizations that showed up for a pre-solicitation conference.
Coincidentally or not, it has also been just over a year since the DOE Environmental Management procurement office issued a request for proposals for the big prize at WIPP, the management and operations contract. There the incumbent Nuclear Waste Partnership, an Amentum-BWXT partnership, is currently in place until Sept. 30. The current value of the prime contract that started in October 2012 is $2.7 billion.
