$389 million Hanford contract awarded to small business team

The Department of Energy has awarded a $389 million contract for work at the Hanford nuclear reservation’s 222-S Laboratory for up to seven years.

The winning bidder is Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration with offices in Richland. It is owned by Navarro Research and Engineering of Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Advanced Technologies and Laboratories International of Gaithersburg, Md.

Advanced Technologies and Laboratories was the 222-S Laboratory contractor from 2005 to 2015.

Navarro is the environmental characterization and remediation contractor for work in cleanup work in Nevada where nuclear weapons were tested between 1951 and 1992.

The expiring contract is held by Wastren Advantage, also known as VNS Federal Services, a subsidiary of Veolia Nuclear Solutions. It employs about 65 workers, many of whom are expected to transfer to the new contractor.

In addition Washington River Protection Solutions now does some of the work at the lab and that will be turned over to the new contractor.

Both the Wastren and tank farm contracts expire in September 2021, but DOE maintains the right to end or partially end the contracts early to transition to the new contractor.

DOE has not said when the transition will start.

The new contract, with a five-year base period and two one-year option periods, will cover operating, managing and maintaining the 222-S Laboratory. Bidding was restricted to small businesses.

The new contractor’s expenses will be reimbursed by the federal government and it will be awarded additional money based on its performance and meeting goals set by DOE.

The new contractor will be responsible for maintenance and upgrades of the lab facilities and for analyses done there.

It is a change from the current contracting system with the tank farm contractor acting as the landlord of the facilities and performing maintenance.

222-S Laboratory work

The 222-S Laboratory in the center of the site handles highly radioactive samples to conduct 15,000 to 25,000 radiochemistry and other analyses annually.

It has 11 hot cells, where workers operate handling equipment from outside the cells and look through thick, leaded glass to work with radioactive waste samples within the hot cell.

Information now is used to determine what wastes can be combined in Hanford’s underground storage tanks and to help plan how workers can best be protected while working at specific tanks.

In the future it will be used to support the Hanford vitrification plant, which could begin treating tank waste for disposal at the end of 2023.

The Hanford nuclear reservation has radioactive and hazardous chemical waste and contamination from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

The waste includes 56 million gallons of radioactive liquid, sludge and salt cake held in underground tanks until it can be treated, including at the vitrification plant, and then disposed of underground.

The contract award on Tuesday completed a string of awards at Hanford by DOE since December 2019, including new contracts for site-wide services, central Hanford cleanup and tank farm operations.

The site-wide services contract is in the transition period, the central Hanford cleanup contract transition will start Oct. 5 and DOE is taking actions related to the new tank farm operations contract to address issues raised in a protest of that contract award.