Lockheed may bid for INEEL contract

ARCO – The Lockheed Martin Corporation has filed paperwork with the Department of Energy declaring an interest in bidding for a new contract at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, a contract it once held, preliminary findings in a Freedom of Information Act request indicate.

By Steven Friederich – Pocatello Idaho State Journal Writer

Lockheed sent a written confirmation expressing interest in DOE’s contracts and then later sent a representative to meet with officials and get more information about DOE’s two available contracts, a DOE report said. The meeting occurred sometime between July 29 and Aug. 12, the report said.

Twenty-two companies, including current contract-holder Bechtel, have met with DOE officials and sent letters of interest in the past four months, the report said. Other notable interested parties include the University of Chicago and British Nuclear Fuels Limited Inc., which currently helps run INEEL’s Waste Management Complex. More than 7,000 persons are employed at the INEEL site.

The DOE is expected to release a draft request for proposal – basically the steps a company would need to get a contract – as early as December, said DOE spokesman Tim Jackson.

In April, Jackson said DOE decided to split the contract in two – one contract to manage research and the other to clean up the site’s radioactive waste, including the Pit 9 contract. That site holds a two-year collection of radioactive waste imported from Colorado’s Rocky Flats center, which Lockheed failed to remove following conflict from 1994 to 1997 with DOE over proper practices to begin the cleanup.

The decision to split the contract also came with an announcement to combine the present INEEL with Argonne National Laboratory-West to create the Idaho National Laboratory, with the research work done under the auspices of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology and waste management overseen by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.

The research portion of the contract is expected to cost more than $300 million a year for about the next five years to build a fourth-generation nuclear reactor. Initial funding is contained, but not passed, in a conference committee energy bill, courtesy of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who sits on the committee, said Craig spokesman Mike Tracy.

Lockheed’s declaration comes amid a heated federal court battle between two of the corporation’s subsidiary companies that ran the site from 1994 to 1999 before Bechtel BWXT beat out Lockheed for a new contract.

Two buildings, including one the size of a two-bedroom house set on rails so it could slide from one end of the 1-acre Pit 9 to the other, remain at the site, a reminder to Bechtel employees about Lockheed’s failure, Bechtel spokesmen said during a recent tour of the site.

The buildings, boarded up and still owned by Lockheed, will remain until after a decision is made in a U.S. District Court case in Pocatello about whether DOE is entitled to more than $54 million in a refund because of Lockheed’s inability to manage the waste in Pit 9.

Bechtel had to cut through one of Lockheed’s railings in order to construct its own building to clean up part of Pit 9, expected to begin this November, said Bechtel spokesman John Walsh.

Appearing in Pocatello’s U.S. District Court on Monday, Dr. Vance Coffman, Lockheed president and CEO, refused to answer a reporter’s questions about Lockheed’s letter of interest in DOE’s new contract.

Later, a corporate spokeswoman verified Lockheed had met with DOE after seeing the report with Lockheed’s name in it.

"We do successfully manage Sandia," which is another DOE site, spokeswoman Gail Rymer said. "But the company will not determine if it is interested in the contract until we see DOE’s request for proposal."

The report listing Lockheed’s name among others is entitled "expression of Interest and One-on-One Meetings Summaries." Within it, there are clues as to what the next contract might contain. For example, the DOE-drafted document said "The contract term should be 10 years, or at least long enough to allow the contractor to be able to accomplish initial aspects on such technology."

The report also encourages the contract winner to collaborate with industry partners, small business, other national labs, and academia.

Some parties who met with DOE expressed an interest in an increased contract term, the rights to intellectual property, and peer recognition for academic institutions and scientific effort, the report said.

And if the company does well in either the research or waste components of the contract, the report said, "most parties felt contractor performance incentives should be performance-based and outcome focused."

Additionally, those interested in either contract must take responsibility for the "lab’s role as a catalyst for revitalizing (the) nuclear industry."

"The future of nuclear energy in the world will be at INEEL," Tracy said. "Any young engineer looking to advance in nuclear physics and nuclear engineering will be heading to southeast Idaho."

Companies interested in DOE contracts

The following companies sent representatives to meet one-on-one with Department of Energy officials between July 29 and Aug. 12 to talk about the new contracts for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Listed in the order DOE provided them are:

– Battelle Memorial Institute

– Science Applications International Corporation

– Bechtel National, Inc.

– BNFL, Inc.

– Kellogg Brown and Root Services, Inc.

– Honeywell International, Inc.

– University of Chicago

– General Atomics

– Fluor Government Group

– Dyncorp

– Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure

– Inland Northwest Research Alliance, Inc.

– BWX Technologies

– Washington Group International

– U.S. AREVA Group

– Lockheed Martin

– Burns & Roe Enterprises, Inc.

– Parsons

– Qal-Tek Associates/Proxtronics, Inc.

– Robbins-Gioia LLC Science & Engineering Associates, Inc

– Entergy Nuclear Inc.

Source: Department of Energy

Steven Friederich is a county, state and federal political reporter for the Journal. He can be reached at (208) 239-6001 or by e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2003/09/24/news/local/news01.txt