Two final Department of Energy small business solicitations, one for technical support at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee and another for a landlord contract at the Paducah Site in Kentucky, could be released as early as July, the agency said Thursday.
In a June 20 online notice, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said final requests for proposals could be published soon for Technical Management and Administration Services at Oak Ridge as well as Infrastructure Support Services at the Paducah Site.
The current Oak Ridge technical support deal is worth about $34-million and held by Maryland-based Link Technologies. The current landlord support services contract at Paducah is worth $396 million and has been held by Kentucky-based Swift & Staley since October 2015. Although incumbent Swift & Staley won a new contract in December 2020 it was thrown out after federal courts ruled the company was too large to qualify for the set-aside contract at the time of the award.
The Department of Energy nuclear cleanup office placed orders for 219 zero-emissions vehicles in fiscal 2024, which accounts for 89% of the total throughout the department, the Office of Environmental Management at the agency said last week.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has to date also installed a total of 120 charging ports, the department said in a June 11 press release.
In the release, Environmental Management said four nuclear properties — the Hanford Site in Washington state, the Idaho National Laboratory, the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina — received DOE’s so-called green fleet award in fiscal year 2024. As a result, the four sites will share $1.05 million in grants from DOE to buy more electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.
Jessica Kunkle, a longtime hand around the Department of Energy’s weapons complex, started her new assignment overseeing the Los Alamos National Laboratory field office in New Mexico for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
Kunkle, a 15-year-veteran of DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), officially started as Environmental Management field boss in Los Alamos on Monday, a DOE spokesperson confirmed via email to Exchange Monitor. Kunkle, a Los Alamos native who most recently was deputy administrator with NNSA’s Office of Infrastructure Lifecycle Management in Washington, takes over from acting field office manager Ellie Gilbertson. Gilbertson is the full-time deputy manager.
Environmental Management turned to Kunkle, who moved over from NNSA, after the cleanup office’s most recent permanent Los Alamos manager, Michael Mikolanis, left to become NNSA field office manager for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
