JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION FOR PROCUREMENT TO STORE DOE TRANSURANIC (TRU) WASTE AT WASTE CONTROL SPECIALISTS LLC (WCS)

The services to be provided include technical and administrative services for the continued storage of the 74 DOE LANL TRU waste containers at WCS and support loading so that the waste can be transported to an offsite facility at the end of the storage period.

The waste has been in storage at WCS since 2014. DOE sent TRU mixed waste from DOE Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to the WCS Site in Andrews County, Texas for temporary storage in April 2014. This action was intended to be a short-term step that would allow the waste to be shipped to WIPP when WIPP recovered from a radiological event and began accepting waste for disposal.

However, the cause of the WIPP radiological event was later determined to be an exothermic reaction between organic materials and nitrate salts inside a LANL waste drum. Subsequent to the shipment of the LANL waste to the WCS Site, DOE determined that some of the waste at WCS was from the same population that produced the reactive event at WIPP, which prevented transfer of the LANL waste at the WCS Site to WIPP as originally planned.

Over the past nine years, DOE has completed a number of studies and evaluations to confirm that the waste can be removed from WCS storage and transferred to WIPP. In June 2023, DOE informed the Texas Attorney General’s office that it plans to move its 74 containers of TRU waste out of the WCS site by the end of 2026. In the meantime, this procurement is necessary because it will provide for required storage support prior to the transfer from the WCS site.

This procurement is applicable only to the TRU waste containers in storage since 2014 and does not involve any onsite treatment or disposal of the waste at the WCS site. The estimated value of the resulting order is not expected to exceed $17M.