GAO: DOE Made Little Progress Consolidating Disposal of Special Nuclear Material

November 23, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

Although the committee spent nearly two years planning to consolidate and dispose of special nuclear material, it drafted only two of the eight implementation plans it planned to develop and complex-wide consolidation and disposition activities have not begun, according to the report.

The DOE stores special nuclear material at 10 sites in eight states. To reduce security costs, the DOE plans to consolidate the material at fewer sites and dispose of material that it no longer needs, according to the report.

In 2005, the DOE created the Nuclear Material Disposition and Consolidation Coordination Committee to plan for consolidation and disposition of the DOE's special nuclear material.

The committee's plans for consolidating and disposing of plutonium-239 and for disposing of uranium-233 include:

• Plutonium-239:
  Under the committee's plutonium-239 plan, surplus plutonium stored at the Hanford site, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory will be consolidated at the Savannah River site.

  Much of the plutonium-239 would then be prepared for permanent disposition through vitrification - a process that mixes nuclear material with molten glass, which is then poured into metal canisters where it hardens. The vitrified plutonium-239 would be stored on site inside large canisters filled with vitrified high-level radioactive waste and, if the DOE's plans are realized, later be permanently disposed of at a geologic repository to be built at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

• Uranium-233:
  Under the committee's draft uranium-233 plan, most of the DOE's uranium-233 will be disposed of by mixing it with other uranium isotopes to convert it into a more stable form that requires less security and that is suitable for long-term storage or disposition as radioactive waste.

  The DOE began activities to modify an existing facility that can perform this process at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where most of the DOE's uranium-233 is stored. Other sites that store uranium-233 would either ship it to Oak Ridge for processing or send it to the DOE radioactive waste disposal facilities in New Mexico or Nevada.

The remaining six plans are still in early stages of development, according to the report.

Factors that contributed to the DOE's limited progress in finalizing plans include leadership changes on the committee and uncertainty over whom in the department has final approval authority for the committee's plans, according to the report.

Because of such factors, the DOE is unlikely to meet its goal of completing all eight implementation plans by December 2008, according to the report.

The DOE cannot ensure that its plans are carried out on schedule and within cost because the plans drafted to date have only limited descriptions of organizational roles and responsibilities and lack performance measures to monitor the department's progress toward meeting its consolidation and disposition goals, according to the report.

DOE officials said that the plans do not need to include this information because a forthcoming revision of a DOE order on nuclear material management will define organizational roles and responsibilities and the department uses performance measures, according to the report.

However, the revision to the DOE order is not scheduled to be completed until late 2007 and the performance measures that the DOE uses are not specifically intended to monitor activities required to implement consolidation and disposition plans, according to the report.

The GAO recommends that the DOE:

1. Specify who in the department is responsible for final approval of the committee's plans.
2. Require that the plans include descriptions of organizational roles and responsibilities.

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).