The National Nuclear Security Administration said it would update its strategy for disposing of defense nuclear waste in 2026, according to its response to a report by the Government Accountability Office.
On Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on what it called “shortfalls” in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) waste disposal strategy for its defense activities.
According to the report, NNSA’s current strategy, which it developed in February, does not factor waste from plutonium pit production. The agency also used “inconsistent and unclear”’ information to develop a $2.5 billion cost estimate for waste management over the next five years, GAO wrote.
The NNSA concurred with GAO’s recommendation that the agency include “key components of a comprehensive strategic plan” in its upcoming update to its waste treatment strategy. The NNSA said it would submit the update to Congress to coincide with the release of the President’s budget for fiscal year 2027, which would be around February 2026, according to the NNSA’s comments on the report.
“NNSA’s nuclear modernization and maintenance activities continue to generate hazardous and radioactive waste, but the agency’s strategy for treating, storing, and disposing of this waste isn’t comprehensive and doesn’t fully address statutory requirements,” GAO said in a press release about the report.
The “statutory requirements” GAO refers to is Section 3137 of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which required the NNSA to develop a strategy and led to NNSA creating an office specifically for managing waste operations in July of that year.
“The initial strategy issued under the newly created Office of Environment, Safety, and Health represents a snapshot in time, early in the program’s development,” Jill Hruby, administrator of the NNSA, said in the agency’s comments to the GAO. “As the program continues to mature, the scope and fidelity of the information in the plans will also be enhanced.”
