The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has announced intentions to award a sole-source contract to L-3 National Security Solutions a support contract for the Nuclear Test Personnel Review (NTPR) Program.
The NTPR Program serves 500,000 atomic veterans and DoD civilian employees (and/or their spouses, children, and elected representatives) who participated in U.S. atmospheric nuclear testing (1945-1962), with the occupation forces of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, or were prisoners of war in Japan at the conclusion of World War II.
The program similarly supports an analogous 50,000 DoD personnel associated with U.S. underground nuclear weapon testing (1951-1992), and 6,000 DoD personnel associated with the radiological clean-up of the Pacific Proving Ground. It interacts directly with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Labor to provide DoD’s input for veteran radiogenic disease medical assistance and financial compensation.
NTPR also serves as DoD’s subject matter expert for personnel radiation dose assessment, and provides this support at the request of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Combatant Commanders, and the military services. Recent examples include dose assessment requests for service member’s exposure to x-rays emanating from LORAN high voltage vacuum tube transmitter units, service member’s exposure to radiological releases from the McMurdo Station, Antarctica nuclear power plant, and DoD-affiliated individuals’ exposure to radiological releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.
The scope of this work requires the contractor to perform veteran participation verification, dose assessment, information management, veteran assistance/outreach, support independent scientific studies concerning the health effects of exposure to ionizing radiation, and program management tasks.
“L-3 is the only responsible source capable of providing this service without unacceptable interruption and degradation of service resulting in a significant backlog in pending cases and a significant increase in Congressional inquiries,” states the announcement. “Due to unique NTPR Program requirements, a new contractor would be required to duplicate L-3’s capabilities, knowledge and expertise, which would take at least six months and cost approximately $2.2M in labor and records transfer costs which are not expected to be recovered through competition.”
The period of performance will commence upon contract award and continue for eight years thereafter. The contract ceiling will be $32,100,000.