A venture led by Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based Navarro Research and Engineering is assured of becoming the new operator of 222-S Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington state, now that the window for protesting DOE’s contract award to the team lapsed.
The period for contesting the award to the Government Accountability Office ended Monday, two sources familiar with the process said, so Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration is assured its victory will not be overturned. The new $389-million contract has a potential term of seven years, with a five-year base and two one-year options.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management announced Sept. 29 that the contract is going to the team composed of Navarro, and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Planned Systems International, Inc. Maryland-based Amentum is also a subcontractor for the winning team.
The 222-S Laboratory analyzes Hanford tank waste, including material that will be treated by the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant that Bechtel National is building to turn the liquid byproducts of Manhattan Project and Cold War-era plutonium production at Hanford into more easily disposable solids. DOE is legally required to start treating low-level tank waste in 2023.
The new lab contract will combine work now done under two contracts. Veolia Nuclear Solutions Federal, which bought Wastren Advantage, does analysis and testing at the lab under a roughly $53-million agreement that started in September 2015 and runs through Sept. 30 2021. Amentum-led Washington River Protection Solutions, the tank farms prime, oversees lab operations under its $7.8-billion tank management contract that started in October 2008 and is scheduled to run through September 2021.
DOE can exercise clauses that would conclude the incumbent lab contractors’ deals early, but there was no word of that as of deadline Friday.
The Department of Energy has slowed on contract transitions at Hanford during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The site manager at Hanford for DOE, Brian Vance, told the Oregon Hanford Cleanup Board Thursday that no transition date has been set for the new laboratory contractor.
“We look forward to working as an integral part of the Hanford team, focused on achieving the Hanford mission in partnership with our DOE clients and other site contractors,” Navarro’s founder Susana Navarro-Valenti said by email Tuesday on behalf of Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration.
The Energy Department issued the final request for proposals for the laboratory contract in February 2019.
