GAO Reports on DOE Nuclear Waste and Clean-up Activities

While the ups and downs of the Superconducting Super Collider make headlines, the Department of Energy carries on with other projects, including attempts to deal with the legacy of the Cold War and the challenges of the more environmentally-conscious 1990s. Two new General Accounting Office (GAO) reports examine DOE’s efforts in these areas. One discusses the difficulties DOE confronts in cleaning up old facilities; the second looks at the problems with efforts to prepare a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel.

The first report, from June, is entitled, “Department of Energy: Cleaning Up Inactive Facilities Will Be Difficult” (GAO/RCED-93-149.) Due to changing missions, shifting defense needs, and squeezed budgets, DOE has numerous inactive facilities that need cleaning up, a process which involves removing hazardous materials, characterizing any contamination, decontaminating, and decommissioning. GAO claims, and the department itself recognizes, that it does not have a good estimate of the scope or cost of the task. The latest estimates, made in 1992, indicated that between 1,700 and 7,000 facilities ultimately might need cleaning up. A new estimate is due this summer, with a cost estimate to follow in December of 1994.

Complicating the task is the fact that many of the facilities have not been adequately maintained and pose a danger to workers. The GAO report catalogs many problems, including deteriorating physical structures and potentially numerous contaminants, such as asbestos, PCBs, and radioactive waste. Many of the maintenance problems arise from the DOE program offices’ reluctance to spend more program funds than necessary on inactive facilities. According to GAO, DOE has an unwieldy, two-tiered system for transferring facilities to the Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management for clean-up, and the various DOE offices involved have had difficulties reaching agreement on the necessary criteria for transfer. GAO recommends that DOE reduce their two-tiered system to a single office responsible for all clean-up activities, and urges Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary to “resolve disagreements” over the transfer criteria.

An earlier GAO report from May, entitled, “Nuclear Waste: Yucca Mountain Project Behind Schedule and Facing Major Scientific Uncertainties” (GAO/RCED-93-124), looks at DOE’s investigation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the site for a permanent underground repository for nuclear waste. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 required that generators of nuclear waste-- mainly operators of nuclear power plants-- pay fees into a Nuclear Waste Fund. In return, DOE was required to begin accepting the waste for disposal in 1998.

>From the originally legislated target date for a permanent repository, DOE’s schedule has slipped to 2010, and GAO warns that at the present rate of funding, site characterization could take at least 5 to 13 years longer than presently anticipated. To try to meet its goals, DOE plans to build a Monitored Retrieval Storage (MRS) facility to store the waste until the permanent site is ready. In addition, the department has shortened the time available for certain site characterization studies at Yucca Mountain, and is considering some reductions in the project’s scope. GAO warns that “this initiative could increase the risk that the site investigation will be inadequate” and less likely to meet licensing requirements. The report also cautions that “DOE may not be allowing enough time to resolve emerging technical issues,” such as the effect of heat generated by the waste.

The GAO report points out that, in addition to requesting lower budgets than needed for the work, DOE has the conflicting budgetary priorities of beginning to accept spent waste by 1998 (which GAO finds it unlikely to meet), and having an operating permanent repository by 2010. GAO recommends a review of the project’s objectives and funding priorities to resolve some of the conflicts.

One copy of each report may be obtained, free of charge, from the U.S. General Accounting Office, P.O. Box 6015, Gaithersburg, MD 20884-6015, 202-512-6000. Additional copies are $2.00 each.