GAO 2025 high-risk update cites progress for DOE nuclear cleanup

Outlays at the Department of Energy as well as the Department of Defense are two areas that remain among the federal government’s “high-risk areas needing significant attention,” Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said last week in testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

On the other hand, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is making headway on some of its challenges, according to the latest high-risk update from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

DOE Acquisition and Program Management at EM and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “has been on the list since the list’s beginning in 1990,” according to the GAO report released publicly at the same time as Dodaro’s Feb. 25 testimony.

“We assess high risk programs on five criteria: leadership commitment, capacity, corrective action planning, monitoring, and demonstrating progress,” according to the report. “EM, in particular, has made quite a bit of progress in recent years on some persistent challenges and is close to removal from the list. The one area that remains a vulnerability is workforce capacity.”

Dodaro did say in his oral testimony that EM projects still often come in delayed and overbudget. 

GAO issued a report in July 2024 saying that with retirements, EM faced a growing shortage of professionals in “mission-critical” positions, dealing with cleanup of radioactive waste leftover from nuclear weapons work. In particular, GAO said Environmental Management faced a workforce shortage at the end of fiscal 2023, with more than 260 vacancies, though the vacancies dropped to roughly 200 by the end of fiscal 2024, a source said. 

That was prior to the Donald Trump administration’s ongoing wave of federal workforce downsizing across the government, including DOE cleanup.

A link to the testimony by Dodaro, who will retire later this year, is available later this year. The committee chair, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said GAO reports have provided vital background information to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Ranking Democrat Gerald Connally (D-Va.) said the administration and billionaire Elon Musk have taken a “wrecking ball approach” to government reductions. 

In response to questioning, Dodaro said changes are needed in the federal government but should be made in a “respectful way with the government deciding what functions it no longer wants to provide.