Purdue loses bid to run Los Alamos National Laboratory
Purdue confirmed in April it had bid to run one of the premier nuclear labs in the U.S. On Friday, the bid went to a team including the University of California and Texas A&M.
Dave Bangert
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University will not be managing the Los Alamos National Laboratory, after the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday awarded the contract to run the research facility in New Mexico to a team that included the University of California and Texas A&M.
Purdue had teamed with Bechtel, a San Francisco-based contractor, on a 10-year contract that would have been worth roughly $25 billion – not including the potential for tens of millions of dollars more in annual bonuses and millions more in possible research money – to run one of the nation’s top research and nuclear weapons facilities.
“While we are disappointed to have not been selected, it was a tremendous privilege to be among the strong group of finalists competing to manage Los Alamos National Laboratory,” Purdue President Mitch Daniels said Friday morning. “The management of Los Alamos is a solemn responsibility for U.S. national security and the protection of our citizens, and we wish the very best to those involved in that essential mission.”
BACKGROUND:Is Purdue ready to run Los Alamos?
Daniels, through a spokeswoman on campus, said he did not plan on Friday to elaborate further on Purdue’s bid. Beyond confirming the bid in April, Daniels and Purdue trustees have been mum about going after the contract, saying they were trying to respect the bidding process. Though he did say in April: “I do believe this is the sort of level Purdue should be playing at, let me put it that way.”
The Department of Energy did not publicly release the names of bidders, other than on Friday when it announced the winning team.
Bechtel, Purdue’s partner on the bid, had been part of the Los Alamos management team, along with the University of California, since 2006 as Los Alamos National Security, LLC.
“We’re disappointed at the government’s decision and believe our team proposed the transformative change the (National Nuclear Security Administration) requested,” said Fred deSouza, a Bechtel spokesman. “We will await results of our debrief with the government and evaluate our options. In the meantime, we remain focused on the continued safe and efficient operations of the lab as part of the (Los Alamos National Security) team.”
The contract went to Triad National Security LLC, a team the consists of Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of California and Texas A&M. (Secretary of Energy Rick Perry's alma mater is Texas A&M.) The University of California has been involved with running the labs at Los Alamos since World War II, when the labs were the site of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons.
The University of Texas also had confirmed that it had bid on the contract, after a contentious split vote by the school's board of regents and the misgivings of the system's flagship campus in Austin.
A fourth bid, reported by Exchange Monitor, a trade publication, included BWXT, Jacobs and Southern University Research Associates, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
According the National Nuclear Security Administration, the laboratory’s primary mission “is its national security responsibilities, which include the design, qualification, certification and assessment of nuclear weapons.” Los Alamos is one of three national laboratories charged by Congress to report on the state of the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
The 35-square-mile nuclear facility has close to 12,000 employees.
The University of California and Bechtel were forced to rebid on the contract after a number of safety issues and fines and a series of poor federal performance reviews in recent years. Bechtel kept a low profile during the bidding process, even after surfacing as Purdue’s partner. But University of California officials, in an interview in late 2017 with the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper, made the case that experience mattered, even as the National Nuclear Security Administration specifically called for a culture change at Los Alamos.
“We are committed to working with the new management team to ensure a transition that is as seamless as possible,” said Terry Wallace, director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. “While the contract change will bring in a new team of parent companies, the laboratory’s mission remains the same: to serve the nation in the tradition of excellence that has defined Los Alamos for the last 75 years.”
Triad National Security, LLC, which will be given four months before taking over, had this to say in a statement released Friday: "We are committed to building on the legacy of world-class research, unparalleled innovation, and service to public good that have been the hallmark of the laboratory since it was founded in 1943.”
This wasn’t the first time Purdue had made a bid on this scale.
In 2016 Purdue joined with Lockheed, New Mexico State and New Mexico Tech on a bid to run Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. Sandia is one of three National Nuclear Security Administration research and development labs. The $2.6 billion-a-year contract went to Honeywell. (For context: Purdue’s annual budget, systemwide, is $2.3 billion for fiscal year 2019.)
“We competed a year or two ago for Sandia and were not selected,” Daniels said in April, when confirming to the J&C that Purdue was bidding to run Los Alamos. “We have phenomenal partners – and have had in each case. I think we had a credible bid. But there can only be one winner.”
Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.