WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Government Accountability Office (GAO) plans to publish three reports during January and February that will detail challenges facing the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM).
That was a major takeaway from a Tuesday presentation to a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine by GAO Director of Natural Resources and Environment David Trimble.
The first report will address the Energy Department’s environmental liabilities, the second Environmental Management operations, and the third EM cleanup milestones, Trimble told the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board (NRSB). Two of the three reports have been submitted to DOE for comments, while the third has not reached that stage.
Among other things, the first report will consider how the cleanup office balances risk and costs, and whether budget materials submitted to Congress provide an accurate picture of its funding needs. A key aspect of the second report will be “How does EM measure the overall performance of its operations,” Trimble said.
The milestones report will center on the extent to which the Energy Department meets, misses, or postpones environmental remediation milestones, and the repercussions, Trimble said. “If you are missing them, why are you missing them?”
The GAO official said he could discuss objectives but not the findings of the reports. Broadly speaking, the congressional watchdog wants to understand how Environmental Management manages its money and its work. The office oversees remediation of 16 DOE sites contaminated by nuclear operations dating to the Manhattan Project and Cold War. It receiving $7.2 billion in funding in the current budget year.
In the spring, probably around April, the GAO will issue a fourth report that will consider to what extent the Energy Department has a system for making “risk-informed” decisions. The risk-informed concept can mean different things to different people, Trimble said.
Later in the spring, the GAO anticipates issuing a report on disposal of high-level waste from the Idaho National Laboratory. That will cover topics including the agency’s oversight of repairs of the long-awaited Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU).
That would be followed by a report next summer on the use of the federal Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund to remediate three former gaseous diffusion plants in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
The GAO has increased its scrutiny of the Energy Department in recent years because its high-dollar environmental liability could make it a high risk for waste, fraud, or abuse, Trimble explained. The liability is large and growing significantly despite the billions being spent on nuclear cleanup, he added.
In fiscal 2107, DOE owned $373 billion of the federal government’s roughly $450 million total environmental liability, or about 85 percent.
To make matters worse, the federal government’s environmental liability has grown from just $212 billion in 1997. The GAO has cited various reasons for this spike: inflation; more accurate estimates for the cost of certain work; delays for significant construction projects at the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, two of the larger jobs under EM.
The GAO will update the U.S. government’s environmental liability in February, Trimble said. “We have got to get an idea of how to get a handle on this,” he added.
In the DOE reports, the GAO will consider at whether the Office of Environmental Management has a strategic approach to addressing environmental issues, Trimble said.
Looking across the DOE weapons complex, “Hanford is the big fish,” Trimble said. About half of the Office of Environmental Management’s liability is at the former plutonium production complex and it gets the largest share of the funding, he noted.
The Office of River Protection at Hanford, responsible for 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste, is funded at $1.57 billion in the current fiscal year, slightly above the $1.56 billion in fiscal 2018. Hanford’s Richland Operations Office, which oversees contractors and site infrastructure, is funded at $865 million, $2 million more than its 2018 level.
While it might seem the GAO is a “nagging neighbor,” Trimble said he has tremendous respect for the people who work at DOE’s cleanup office and the difficult tasks they face.
The NRSB requested the GAO briefing as it prepares groundwork for its own congressionally-mandated studies on science and technology for nuclear cleanup; supplemental treatment of low-activity waste at Hanford; and plutonium solutions at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
