Cleaning up the contamination left by Cold War nuclear weapons work from could cost the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management another $377 billion, or $109 billion more than last year’s estimate, the Government Accountability Office said in a report issued Tuesday.
The DOE office has spent about $170 billion since its creation in 1989, but the remaining remediation tasks are extremely costly and complicated, the GAO said, citing fiscal 2018 figures from the Energy Department.
In addition to contract oversight concerns, and the rising cost of treating radioactive waste, the projected expense is rising because some work was not included previously. For example, more than $2.3 billion in costs is associated with 45 contaminated facilities that will likely be transferred to EM from other DOE programs.
A complicating factor is that each of EM’s 16 sites ranks its own priorities.
“Without a strategy that sets national priorities and describes how DOE will address its greatest risks, EM lacks assurance that it is making the most cost-effective cleanup decisions,” congressional auditors wrote. The office has made several unsuccessful efforts over the years to develop a more uniform strategy, the report noted. The initiatives “were either short-lived or never fully implemented.”
The just-released Government Accountability Office report looks not only at EM’s environmental liability, but how the office balances risks and costs, and the adequacy of its budget materials in providing accurate information on needed funding.
The Energy Department “agrees with the premise of the recommendations outlined in the report,” Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Anne Marie White said in a Jan. 19 letter attached to the GAO document.
White said her office is seeking ways to reduce risks and life-cycle costs. This includes the end-state contracting approach to accelerate cleanup.
The new government watchdog report is one of several expected this year to study issues surrounding the DOE cleanup office, GAO Director of Natural Resources and Environment David Trimble has said.
