The Department of Energy and New Mexico should work with a third-party mediator “to build trust” on legacy cleanup at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a Congressional watchdog reported Wednesday.
Without “clearer communication that leads to smoother relationships with the regulators and the public,” DOE and the New Mexico Environment Department could risk, “further delaying the schedule for completing the remaining cleanup work,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in the report.
The “strained relationship” is reflected in ongoing debate on the best tactics to control a hexavalent chromium plume as well as the lawsuit the state filed against DOE seeking to force changes to the 2016 Compliance Order on Consent, GAO said in the report.
Third party facilitation is one of a half-dozen recommendations issued by GAO that also include prioritizing remediation goals and controlling costs. As of March, the nuclear cleanup office expected Los Alamos to finish remediation around 2043 at an estimated cost of $7 billion.
So far, the Office of Environmental Management at Los Alamos “has not taken a comprehensive approach to prioritizing cleanup activities in a risk-informed manner,” GAO said in its highlights.
Federal managers and contractor Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos (N3B) need to produce a baseline document to monitor cost, scope, and schedule progress, GAO said. N3B’s initial five-year base period ended on April 30 and DOE exercised the three-year option.
The federal staffing shortage at the Environmental Management field office at Los Alamos does not help matters, GAO said. As of February 2023, there were a total of 12 vacancies at the nuclear cleanup office, or about a quarter of its workforce.
Finding previously unknown problems, such as Los Alamos County’s discovery of contaminated soil along Middle DP Road in 2020 can drive up costs, GAO said. As of September 2022, DOE expected to complete DP Road cleanup this year at a cost of about $19 million, according to GAO.
The transition of the legacy cleanup work to Environmental Management from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was designed to bring more focus and accountability to cleanup and allow NNSA to concentrate on national security work, GAO said.
By the end of the decade, Environmental Management’s Los Alamos workload could grow as NNSA starts turning over old non-operating buildings to the cleanup office under the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, according to GAO.
