The Energy Department is refusing to say when two outstanding cleanup contracts might be awarded at the Idaho National Laboratory site, or why the contract procurements were delayed in the first place.
DOE early last year awarded its primary five-year Idaho cleanup contract — worth about $1.4 billion — to the contractor team Fluor Idaho. It also awarded a smaller five-year contract, worth $32 million, to Spectra Tech Inc. in late 2015. The contractor manages Nuclear Regulatory Commission facilities in Idaho and Colorado.
But it has yet to start the procurement process for a 10-year contract — worth up to $1 billion — to design a facility to treat 4,400 cubic meters of highly radioactive calcine material at the Idaho site, material created following spent fuel reprocessing between 1963 and 2000. The treatment facility would turn the powder-like material into a more stable ceramic waste.
The Calcine Disposition Project and Spent Fuel Repackaging contract was initially scheduled to run from Oct. 1, 2015, to Sept. 30, 2024. The contract also would include designing a facility to receive, package, and ship spent nuclear fuel at the site.
Meanwhile, DOE also has not awarded the five-year decontamination and decommissioning and construction contract it described in a 2014 master acquisition plan for the Idaho site. That contract’s period of performance was scheduled as Oct. 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2021. According to the acquisition plan, the work includes capping the site’s waste storage tank farm, and stripping out the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit when the facility’s current mission is finished, among other responsibilities. A contract value is unknown.
DOE spokeswoman Danielle Miller has declined to answer questions about the status of the contracts, or when they might be awarded. She also did not answer questions regarding the value of the deals, or additional details about the work scope to be included in each.
A DOE Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center webpage for the calcine and spent fuel work said the contract remains on a “programmatic hold, and no further updates are available at this time.”
