A House Armed Services Committee panel wants the Government Accountability Office to scrutinize quality assurance steps taken by the Depart of Energy’s $7.6-billion nuclear cleanup office, according to a House subcommittee draft of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023.
The House Armed Services’ strategic forces , subcommittee chaired by Rep. Jim Cooper, (D-Tenn.) posted its mark online Tuesday and plans to meet at noon Wednesday to vote on it. A section in the 39-page document specifically mentions oversight of the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant being built by Bechtel at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
The comptroller general, who heads the Government Accountability Office (GAO), in 2018 issued a report saying problems at the often-delayed, multi-billion-dollar plant illustrate the need to address “weaknesses in the quality assurance program” at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). “The project has faced persistent challenges, including quality assurance problems that have delayed it by decades and more than tripled its costs, to nearly $17 billion,” GAO said in the April 2018 report
“The committee recognizes that the purpose of quality assurance is to ensure that design, construction, and operations problems are identified, and that fixes are put in place to ensure they do not recur,” according to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mark.
The committee is concerned that other recent issues across the weapons cleanup complex “appear to stem, at least in part, from limited quality assurance oversight,” according to the document posted by the subcommittee.
The panel wants GAO to investigate what quality assurance procedures EM has in place for capital asset projects and what steps are being taken to prevent past problems from being repeated.
The GAO should brief the House Armed Services Committee on its findings and publicly release its report by April 1, 2023, according to the committee’s NDAA document.
