The U.S. Department of Energy has announced it is canceling a years-in-the-making Savannah River Site liquid waste contract solicitation.

The termination is the result of changes to the liquid waste mission, "opportunities to integrate" nuclear material management missions into it, and a new contracting model, according to a succinct DOE statement pushed out Tuesday afternoon.

More specifically, the DOE has "determined" combining H-Canyon and L-Basin nuclear material work with liquid waste work, forming a singular contract, is the best move forward, a DOE spokesperson said Tuesday evening.

The combination – the government's "best interest" – would reduce liabilities and enable "maximum advancement" of SRS cleanup, the DOE spokesperson said.

Gov. Henry McMaster presents Order of the Palmetto to former national lab director Todd Wright, a former Savannah River National Laboratory director and AECOM nuclear executive, has been awarded the Order of the Palmetto.

The major amendments, though, render the 2016 liquid waste solicitation obsolete.

Savannah River Remediation, the current SRS liquid waste team, will remain on the job until a new contractor is "selected," according to the DOE statement. The department is actively working on a contract extension request for SRR, the DOE spokesperson explained.

SRR's contract was otherwise set to expire at the end of March.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the SRS management and operations contractor, will continue to operate H-Canyon and L-Basin until a new contractor is selected, as well. SRNS secured a one-year, $1 billion contract extension last summer.

H-Canyon is the nation's only up-and-running hardened nuclear chemical separations plant; L-Basin deals with spent nuclear fuel.

H-Canyon is the sole source of new waste coming into the SRS liquid waste system, the DOE spokesperson noted.

The SRS liquid waste mission has most recently involved handling and processing millions of gallons of nuclear waste; closing senescent, underground waste storage tanks; and operating a massive waste glassification plant, among other things.

SRR, an AECOM-led team with partners Bechtel National, BWXT and CH2M, has handled the SRS liquid waste mission for about a decade now.

Tuesday's big announcement – which could be likened to a holding pattern – is just the latest entry in a turbulent procurement saga.

Recently, the SRS liquid waste contracting timeline disappeared from a DOE Office of Environmental Management "major procurement" spreadsheet. Environmental Management is the current SRS landlord. That could change, though.

The publicly available spreadsheet was updated Feb. 22 to list the liquid waste contract award window as "to be determined." A range of months, updated often, was provided prior to the indecisive descriptor.

Near the end of 2018, SRS Manager Michael Budney said a liquid waste award would be made soon.

In October 2017, the DOE tried to award a 10-year, multibillion-dollar SRS liquid waste contract to Savannah River EcoManagement, a BWXT, Bechtel National and Honeywell International consortium.

But that award was quickly protested by two other interested teams: Savannah River Technology and Remediation as well as Fluor Westinghouse Liquid Waste Services.

A federal watchdog upheld SRTR's protest, claiming the DOE failed to properly evaluate SREM's technical approach – how exactly the team would accomplish the liquid waste mission.

The successful protest forced the DOE to nix the award and re-evaluate renewed bids from all three players.