Old Boral Performance in Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation

UPDATE - Due to unforseen circumstances, the response date for this presolicitation notice has been extended to October 31, 2017.  The time remains the same.  Also, the NAICS code for this requirement has been changed from 541690 to 541715 to better fit the requirement.  All other aspects of thie presolicitation notice remain the same.  Thank you for your interest.

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THIS IS A PRESOLICITATION NOTICE ONLY AND NOT A SOLICITATION DOCUMENT. THE SOLICITATION PACKAGE WILL BE AVAILABLE AFTER THE CLOSING DATE OF THIS PRE-SOLICITATION NOTICE.

PROPOSALS ARE NOT BEING SOLICITED OR ACCEPTED AT THIS TIME.

CONTRACTORS SHOULD FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) intends to issue a Request for Proposal for a full and open competition for the project titled, "Old BoralTM Performance in Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation." The contract type will be Time and Materials. The anticipated period of performance for this contract is two (2) years inclusive of one year base and one 12-month option period.

The Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS), requires a contractor to provide support to obtain technical assistance with relevant data and its interpretation of potential older BoralTM degradation processes under dry storage and transportation conditions. The contractor shall perform tests to assess the potential degradation processes of those older BoralTM type, which have been deployed in some of the storage casks, under spent fuel storage and transportation conditions. The contractor will interpret the obtained data, and provide technical assistance to the NRC's establishment of regulatory safety bases associated with older BoralTM used in storage and transportation.

Specifically, the Contractor will do the following tasks:

• Submersion test - The contractor shall design and/or select optimum test equipment with water pressures and duration which best represent the operational conditions of those spent fuel storage casks which have used older BoralTM;

• Drying Test - The contractor shall design and/or select optimum test equipment for the drying techniques (i.e., vacuum drying and/or Forced Helium Dehydration) which have been used for drying the loaded spent fuel storage casks with older BoralTM;

• Hydrogen Generation Test - The contractor shall design and/or select optimum test equipment of BoralTM corrosion and hydrogen generation which best represent the operating conditions of dry storage systems and transportation packages; and

• Data Interpretation and Report Preparation - The contractor shall interpret data properly with literature data, operational experience of spent fuel storage and transportation (plus nuclear reactor pool if appropriate). The contractor shall analyze more quantitatively with numerical analyses if necessary. The contractor should perform data interpretation and analyses for each task individually before the contractor consolidates all analysis.

This requirement does not anticipate subcontracts; therefore a small business subcontracting plan is not required. All responsible sources may submit a proposal which shall be considered by the agency. Proposals for this requirement may be submitted by all concerns, i.e. large businesses, small businesses, small businesses owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, and service disabled veteran-owned small business.

The preferred method of distributing the NRC Procurement information will be through Federal Business Opportunities (www.fbo.gov). It is the responsibility of the recipient of this solicitation to ensure that it has been received in its entirety and NRC bears no responsibility for data error resulting from this transmission. The Contracting Officer has enabled the, "Interested Vendors List (IVL)" feature in fbo.gov for offerors that are interested in teaming opportunities for this requirement.

This solicitation will be posted on fbo.gov (The Government Point of Entry (GPE) on or around October 16, 2017.