The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has plenty of facilities that are more than a half-century old and, since fiscal 2020, the cost of upkeep has more than doubled to $950 million yearly, according to a government watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said Tuesday it is recommending several improvements to the way EM collects data on its maintenance needs at these old facilities and prioritizes repair plans.
GAO also said DOE’s nuclear cleanup branch should better communicate potential cost-saving ideas to Congress.
The report titled “Better Data and Project Prioritization Vital to Managing Aging Infrastructure and Communicating Needs” was mandated by the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.
The Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management Tim Walsh “should better incorporate more reliable information from EM sites in the Master Asset Plan, such as site project prioritization decisions for infrastructure maintenance projects, to better reflect site maintenance needs,” GAO said in the report.
The Environmental Management office agreed or at least partially agreed with all GAO’s recommendations.
As of June 2025, Environmental Management reported more than $1.5 billion in repair needs across its about 4,300 operating facilities. Many of these facilities are between 50 and 70 years old, and well beyond their initial design life, GAO said.
The EM Master Asset Plan “contains 19 projects identified in a cost savings model that could use surplus funds to produce about $120 million in savings for EM,” GAO said. “However, EM has not communicated the benefits of completing these unfunded maintenance projects to Congress. “