KENNEWICK — The award of a $45 billion contract at the Hanford nuclear reservation site in Eastern Washington is invalid, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. Judge Marian Blank Horn ordered the contract to be set aside and no work on the contract to be done, according to a document filed Tuesday in U.S. Court of Federal Claims.
On Monday, the judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the award of the contract at the Hanford nuclear reservation site in Eastern Washington.
However, that order was sealed, at least for now, and no further information on the decision was released.
The contract was awarded in April to Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure, called H2C for short, a joint venture of BWXT Technical Services Group, Amentum Environment & Energy and Fluor Federal Service.
The award was challenged in federal court by the losing bidder, Hanford Tank Disposition Alliance, or HTDA, formed by Atkins Nuclear Secured, Jacobs Technology and Westinghouse Government Services.
Both bidders accused the other of not being properly registered as required in a federal database, the System for Award Management, to file a bid on the Hanford work.
The Department of Justice said “significant issues have been raised and asked the judge to let the Department of Energy sort out the issue of registration.
If DOE is not permitted to consider options for bringing the proposals into compliance, it may face a scenario in which neither bid can be accepted, the Department of Justice said in court documents.
In addition to HTDA’s complaint about H2C’s registration to bid, it also said that DOE had not properly considered the safety record of the companies that make up H2C and whether the proposed management team is as strong as DOE determined.
No further information on the next step for the contract was available Tuesday.
The 10-year contract award, with some work possibly extending up to 15 years, covers operations of the tank farms holding 56 million gallons of radioactive waste from past production of nearly two-thirds of the plutonium produced for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War in Eastern Washington.
It also would be the first operating contractor for the Hanford vitrification plant that’s been under construction for 21 years at the site near Richland.
The vit plant is preparing to start turning some of the least radioactive tank waste into a stable glass form for permanent disposal.
