The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has exercised its second two-year option period with the Huntington Ingalls Industries-led legacy cleanup contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a DOE spokesperson confirmed Monday.
As a result, Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) will stay on the job through April 29, 2028, the spokesperson said in response to an earlier inquiry from Exchange Monitor. Without the extension the contract could have expired April 28.
The option period was recently finalized and the Environmental Management office will soon be updating the N3B contract listing on its online summary of major contracts, the spokesperson said.
The $2.1-billion legacy cleanup contract started April 30, 2018. N3B is a joint venture that was created to take over legacy cleanup at Los Alamos from the laboratory’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) prime contractor. Back then the prime was Los Alamos National Security, a partnership including the University of California, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, and URS.
“We look forward to our continued partnership with N3B on this next phase of the LANL legacy cleanup mission and building on the progress achieved,” Stanley Pyram, who is acting manager of EM’s Los Alamos field office, said in a Tuesday press release.
N3B goals for the next two years include completing the drilling of two groundwater monitoring wells and permitting one additional well; making progress on implementing the expert technical review recommendations to augment hexavalent chromium plume cleanup and reducing the above-ground inventory of legacy transuranic waste.
DOE’s Environmental Management office earlier this year issued a draft request for proposals for a successor legacy cleanup contractor at Los Alamos. Responses to the draft solicitation were due in February and the final version has not been issued yet.