The U.S. Government Accountability Office wants the Department of Energy to fulfill a 2007 pledge to manage three former uranium enrichment plants in an integrated manner.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management is supervising cleanup of retired facilities in Piketon, Ohio, Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., as three independent sites, which is costly and inefficient, the GAO said in a report Wednesday.
The congressional auditor recommended DOE use leading management practices at the plants, provide lawmakers with more accurate cost estimates on cleanup, and regularly report on the status of the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund.
The fund, set up by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, had a balance of $2.7 billion as of this year, according to the Energy Department’s latest triennial UED&D report. However, the report estimates the total cost of cleanup at the three sites at up to $28 billion to $30 billion, with remediation potentially concluding in 2070.
“Congress established a single, shared D&D fund to pay for the cleanup,” but DOE is still not managing remediation of the sites as an integrated program, the GAO said. This would include a establishing a master schedule for cleanup and life-cycle costs for all three properties.
The report also says the federal agency has often had “strained relations” with state authorities in Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over cleanup priorities and remedies. The Office of Environmental Management should use an independent third party to overcome disagreements with the site regulators, according to the GAO.
The document did not specify what sort of third-party might be useful.
Kentucky and EPA officials interviewed by the GAO said the Office of Environmental Management “reprioritizes the cleanup effort every few years, which has led to delays in approving the DOE site management plan” at Paducah.
The three former plants, which started enriching uranium for nuclear weapons in the 1940s, are contaminated with radioactive and hazardous materials. All three plants eventually ceased uranium enrichment activities, with Paducah being the last to stop enriching by 2013.
In written comments appended to the report, DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White committed the agency to managing the properties in a more integrated fashion, including developing the master schedule for remediation and life-cycle costs for the three sites.
The Oak Ridge facility is the oldest, dating to the Manhattan Project. It formerly held five uranium enrichment processing facilities and about 500 additional structures. The facility, which closed in 1987, is now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park.
Oak Ridge is also the further along on its remediation, as all five processing buildings and most supporting facilities have been demolished, according to the GAO. The Energy Department has said major remediation at ETTP should be finished in 2020.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management should implement the changes sought by the GAO by the end of 2020, White said.
Portsmouth remediation is projected to be finished by 2041, and Paducah will be completed between 2065 and 2070, according to the report.
