The Department of Energy Inspector General’s Office yesterday released the final version of an audit report looking into quality assurance issues with certain components at the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. The audit found that DOE had procured and installed vessels for the WTP’s “black cells” and other difficult-to-reach areas of the plant that did not always meet quality assurance and/or contract requirements. “For the vessels that we reviewed, we identified multiple instances where quality assurance records were either missing or were not traceable to the specific area or part of the vessel,” the IG report states. The audit determined that the weaknesses in quality assurance records occurred because of “deficiencies” in WTP project contractor Bechtel National’s implementation of its quality assurance program and “a lack” of DOE oversight. “The importance of the black cells and hard-to-reach components cannot be overstated. Premature failure of these components could potentially impact safety, contaminate large portions of a multi-billion dollar facility and interrupt waste processing for an unknown period of time,” the IG report states.
The IG’s audit also found that DOE may have overpaid Bechtel National millions of dollars in incentive fee. “We also found that the Department paid the WTP contractor a $15 million incentive fee for production of a vessel that was later determined to be defective. Although the Department demanded return of the fee, it did not follow up on the matter and the fee was never reimbursed,” the report says. The final version of the IG’s report is largely similar to a “coordination draft” made public earlier this year, though the tone of language concerning the potential impacts of the identified quality assurance issues on the operations of the WTP is more subdued in some instances in the final version. To read the final version of the IG’s report, please go
here.
