The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General has a busy fiscal 2022 schedule of audits and inspections planned for projects affecting the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
Last Thursday the DOE Office of Inspector General (OIG) published its work plan for the fiscal year that began Friday.
Among the issues targeted for scrutiny by the OIG’s office of audits and inspections include the work Bechtel self-performs at the Waste Treatment Plant it is building at the Hanford Site in Washington state as well as canister integrity in double-stacking in glass waste storage at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Bechtel and DOE plan to start vitrifying low-activity radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Site into a glass form by the end of 2023. At Savannah River, where waste is already vitrified into glass form, an Amentum-led joint venture has been double-stacking glass containers with high-level radioactive waste from the Defense Waste Processing Facility in order to postpone the need for a third storage area.The DOE said in a Sept. 21 press release this is will keep the waste safe and stable until there is a federal repository for high-level radioactive waste — something the government so far has no plans to build.
In addition, the OIG will examine and end state contracting at the Office of Environmental Management, stockpile surveillance by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and plutonium pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico where the agency hopes to make 30 pits annually by 2026.
The OIG office of audits and inspections seeks to “provide reliable, credible financial and performance information” on DOE programs and spur continuous improvement as a result, according to the OIG website.
