$13 billion Hanford contract canceled. Feds to restart bidding process

The Department of Energy has permanently canceled its award of a $13 billion contract for management of the Hanford tank farms over 10 years.

Tri-Cities workers were told in a memo Wednesday afternoon that the contract proposal as released for bids was “no longer beneficial to the Hanford mission.”

DOE plans to start over in 2021 with a new solicitation for proposals, or bids, that will expand the proposed contract to also include the initial operation of the $17 billion Hanford vitrification plant.

No estimate was immediately available on when a new contract might be awarded.

DOE has had a federal court-enforce deadline of the end of 2023 to start vitrifying some of the least radioactive of the 56 million gallons of waste held in underground tanks at the Hanford site, but will be given some extra time due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The waste is left from the past production at the Eastern Washington nuclear reservation of two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

Until the planned new contract is in place Washington River Protection Solutions will continue managing and operating tank farms and doing some work to prepare and transfer some waste for treatment at the vit plant.

It was awarded the Hanford contract for tank farms in 2008 for up to 10 years, but its contract has been extended multiple times as DOE has worked to award a new contract.

DOE issued a request for bids on a 10-year Hanford Tank Closure Contract in early 2019 and awarded the contract in May 2020 to Hanford Works Restoration, a team that included BWXT of Lynchburg, Va., with Fluor Federal Services of Greenville, S.C. The primary subcontractors on the team were INTERA of Austin, Texas, and DBD of Richland.

But the transition of work to Hanford Works Restoration was delayed as the contract award was appealed to the Government Accountability Office by losing bidders.

The GAO in July dismissed appeals protesting the contract award after DOE said it would voluntarily take corrective actions over issues that DOE has declined to discuss.

‘Government’s best interest’

On Wednesday, DOE’s Consolidated Business Center for Environmental Management informed contracting officers for Hanford that it had decided to cancel the request for bids issued nearly two years ago.

Changing the original request for bids to include the magnitude of revisions needed to also cover initial operation of the vitrification plant “is not appropriate nor in the government’s best interest,” the Consolidated Business Center said in a letter to a Hanford contracting official.

The letter said that the new request for bids would follow DOE’s new end state contracting model.

The contract will be periodically updated after it is awarded to assign the winning company individual tasks to be completed. DOE says end state contracts will provide more realistic, reliable pricing and incentives to help reduce DOE’s financial liability for cleanup.

DOE took the first step toward finding a contractor to operate the vitrification plant in April with the apparent plan then of issuing a separate contract for operating the plant as it begins to turn low activity radioactive waste into a stable glass form for disposal.

In April DOE asked for information from companies interested in operating the plant to help it develop its request for bids.

Bechtel National began building the plant in 2002, with current plans for facilities to treat low activity tank waste to be ready to operate initially. Work on parts of the plant to treat the high-level radioactive portion of the waste in Hanford’s underground tanks was delayed to address technical issues.

Two other large contracts awarded at Hanford will take full effect Jan. 24, ending a transition period from expiring contracts.

Central Plateau Cleanup Co. — a team of Amentum, formerly Aecom, with Fluor Federal Services and Atkins Nuclear Secured — has been awarded a 10-year contract valued at up to $10 billion for central Hanford environmental cleanup work, including treatment sitewide of contaminated groundwater.

Hanford Mission Integration Solutions — owned by Leidos, Centerra Group and Parsons Government Services — will take over Hanford sitewide services, including utility and road services, security and emergency services, land management, information technology and management of the HAMMER training center.

The new site services contract is valued at up to $6 billion over four years.