Collecting more reliable information on the condition of decades-old facilities around the nuclear weapons complex and sharing the data with Congress could improve the Department of Energy’s management of its aging infrastructure, a federal panel heard Wednesday.
Government auditors and executives from the American Nuclear Society, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers testified on aging infrastructure needs during a public hearing in Washington with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and DOE’s Office of Environmental Management both have old facilities, some of which have been around for 50 years or more. DNFSB scheduled the hearing to receive input from outside the weapons complex.
Environmental Management could do a better job of the “information quality” surrounding upkeep and repair costs for old structures well beyond the next fiscal year, said Nathan Anderson, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) director for natural resources and environment.
DOE’s cleanup office should work with its contractors to take a long-range view, Anderson added.
Meanwhile, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico is now expected to keep taking defense-related transuranic waste beyond 2070, Anderson said. So it is important for infrastructure planning to look beyond a 10-year contract, he added.
The good news is that “sites look much better now than they did 20 years ago,” said Allison Bawden, a GAO director who focuses on NNSA. Unfortunately big problems remain, she said. For example, the Uranium Processing Facility project at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee “is facing a raft of problems,” Bawden said. The facility has higher-than-expected costs and schedule delays, she said.
Delays in the Uranium Processing Facility will postpone the eventual disposal of Building 9212, The chemical processing facility completed in the 1940s is considered to have a high nuclear safety risk, Bawden said.
DNFSB’s technical director Timothy Dwyer pointed to the March failure of Baltimore’s Key Bridge as an example of the perils of old infrastructure.
Facility managers cannot always predict when age-related problems will arise, Dwyer said. Decisions on “what work must be done and what work can be deferred [is often] based on incomplete information,” Dwyer said.
