Bechtel $3B Contract Award at DOE Site Faces Delay From Bid Protests

Abstract

Of Energy's award last month of a multi-year management contract worth up to $3 billion to a Bechtel-led team to manage construction and operation of the country's key underground nuclear waste disposal site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, sources tell ENR.DOE awarded the cost-plus-award-fee contract July 11 to Tularosa Basin Range Services, a Bechtel single-purpose subsidiary, for a four-year term with six one-year extension options. WIPP, the world's first underground repository for permanent disposal of transuranic radioactive waste, has operated since 1999 at a site 26 miles east of Carlsbad, N.M.DOE said there were five bidders for the contract but has declined to disclose their names or the identities of team members. An HII subsidiary and BWXT are teamed as the contractor managing cleanup at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory site, also in New Mexico, about 350 miles from WIPP.An HII spokesperson for the firm's nuclear work did not respond to ENR queries on its contract bid or reasons for the protest. Work on the system began in 2018 after two radiological leaks at the site in 2014 halted site operations for about three years and keeps them currently limited. The releases were linked to a mispackaged waste container sent from the Los Alamos site that ruptured, causing site contamination and elevated radiation levels in the nearby environment. GAO also noted the pressing need for site disposal expansion, citing "a large amount of transuranic waste at sites around the country" and concern "Whether the new space will be ready in time to prevent an interruption of disposal operations." About 22 DOE nuclear sites ship waste to WIPP.Bechtel noted its 44 years of experience in work at DOE sites in New Mexico, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina. The firm remains site management contractor at the DOE Pantex site near Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., following the agency's June decision to extend its contract after bid protests resulted in cancellation of an award to a Fluor Corp.-led team and rebid of a revised contract.