The Department of Energy’s $8-billion nuclear cleanup office needs better oversight of contractors doing big, expensive infrastructure projects, according to a federal audit released Wednesday.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) wants DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) to better monitor performance “and hold contractors accountable,” according to the new report.
“GAO reviewed five selected EM capital asset projects and found that for three projects with cost overruns and schedule delays, officials did not use certain quality assurance oversight processes as intended,” GAO said. The report was requested by the House Armed Services Committee.
In July 24 comments, included in the full GAO report, Candice Robertson, DOE’s senior adviser for Environmental Management, said EM agrees with the GAO recommendations and will incorporate the added measures into its “toolbox for providing effective oversight.”
In particular, GAO looked at the $18.5-billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Site in Washington state; the $1.4-billion Integrated Waste Treatment Unit at the Idaho National Laboratory; the $494-million Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico; the $160-million demolition of the X-326 Process Building at the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and the canceled Sludge Processing Facility Build Outs at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, which was estimated to cost up to $171-million before it was canceled.
GAO found EM did not use existing oversight tools as intended for the big projects at Hanford, WIPP and Idaho. The three projects are taking far more time and have overrun initial cost estimates by 70% or more, GAO said.
A one-page summary of the GAO report and the full 63-page version are available online.
The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant started construction in 2000 and was originally expected to be done in 2011 for a cost of $5.8 billion, GAO said. DOE now hopes to start turning some of Hanford’s less-radioactive waste into a stable glass-form in 2025.
The IWTU was first built in 2012 at a cost of $571 million but it never worked as intended, to solidify sodium-bearing liquid waste into a granular form, until April 2023, GAO said.
Likewise, the ventilation project at WIPP was initially expected to cost $288 million and be complete around 2023. It is now being commissioned and full operation is expected in 2026.
By contrast, proper use of oversight tools helped managers of the X-326 demolition at Portsmouth avoid erosion problems and other issues encountered by some other EM tear-down projects, GAO said in the report. Managers at Oak Ridge hit the brakes on the Sludge Processing Facility after the contractor determined the design would not work as planned – even though the conceptual design and cost range was already approved. The sludge processing was initially going to be an extension of an existing facility.
