The Government Accountability Office is tracking DOE’s progress on returning the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico to a pre-accident operations clip and plans a full report this year, an official with Congress’ investigative arm said recently.
The report will be among the first comprehensive external looks at DOE’s efforts to transition its unique, deep-underground transuranic waste-disposal site back to normal after the February 2014 radiation leak that forced the facility offline for about three years.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) expects to publish its findings this fall, Allison Bawden, director of GAO’s natural resources and environment division, said last week at the ExchangeMonitor’s RadWaste Summit.
Bawden did not provide specific dates.
Among other things, the report will examine DOE plans to add more underground panels for future waste disposal, and future transuranic waste inventories, Bawden said at the all-online summit.
Also this fall, GAO plans a report on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), and how the federal government’s nuclear health-and-safety watchdog could be affected by DOE’s revised Order 140.1. The order, issued in 2018 and revised since, governs the board’s access to DOE personnel and documents at defense-nuclear facilities.
Under pressure from Congress, DOE this year relaxed some of the order’s restrictions about how and when Energy Department employees and contractors may interact with the board. In August, responding to a board request for a memorandum of understanding or agreement that further clarifies relations between DOE and DNFSB, Deputy Secretary Mark Menezes told then-board chair Bruce Hamilton that the DOE is open to creating “a foundation for mutual communication, transparency, and information sharing” between the agencies.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board does not regulate DOE, but it can make safety recommendations with which the secretary of energy must publicly agree or disagree.
Meanwhile, this winter, the GAO plans to issue a report on the status of environmental remediation of the West Valley Demonstration Project in New York. Certain waste at the state-owned site that was once home to a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant currently lacks a disposal pathway, Bawden said.
West Valley was a private, rather than government-owned, nuclear facility, so DOE says the transuranic-like waste there is not “defense-related,” and not necessarily eligible for disposal at WIPP.
Also, during the past year, GAO has released several reports on improving project management and cost reporting, said Amanda Kolling, the GAO unit’s assistant director.
