The University of New Mexico is the third institution to express interest in the next management and operations contract for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a university official confirmed to Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor this week.
“The University of New Mexico is very interested in the LANL Management and Operations contract competition,” Joseph Cecchi, senior adviser to the university’s president for national laboratory relations, wrote in an email Thursday. “We are actively engaged in discussions with potential partners for the bid.”
The University of New Mexico joins the University of California and the University of Texas in the hunt for the 10-year Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) management pact the Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) expects to award early next year.
The NNSA issued a draft solicitation in July and expects to put out a final solicitation either this month or next. The draft solicitation called for a five-year base period with a five-year option period.
Though asked, Cecchi did not say whether the University of New Mexico planned to lead its own bid team or attach itself to another. Last year, the University of New Mexico finished a runner-up in the competition to manage the NNSA’s Sandia National Laboratories, joining a Boeing-Battelle-led team that lost out to Honeywell’s wholly owned National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is now run by Los Alamos National Security: a partnership led by University of California with senior industry partner Bechtel National. AECOM and BWX Technologies are also part of the incumbent team, which holds a $2-billion-per-year management contract that was awarded in 2006 and expires Sept. 30, 2018.
DOE decided not to pick up additional options on the incumbent’s contract after a 2014 underground radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant transuranic waste disposal facility near Carlsbad, N.M. The leak was blamed on a container of waste from LANL.
