The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending Congress consider clarifying the roles of the Department of Energy and its regulators when remediated lands from Cold War and Manhattan Project sites are transferred to local communities.

In a report released this month, GAO also urged DOE to “direct cleanup sites to evaluate cleanup costs and schedule based on multiple potential future land uses as part of its cleanup decisions,” according to the congressional watchdog.

Such an approach could help DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in its work on future land issues, GAO went on to say.

“Assumptions about anticipated future land uses allow DOE and federal and state regulators to assess the possible risks to people who may use the land in the future to inform the selection of a cleanup approach,” GAO said.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 1997 “required DOE to develop future land use plans for the Hanford, Idaho, and Savannah River sites and authorized DOE to develop such plans for its other cleanup sites,” according to the report. The latest GAO report was called for by the Senate Armed Services Committee in documents accompanying the nuclear policy bill for fiscal 2025. 

From the 1990s through August 2026, DOE has transferred or leased thousands of acres of land to non-federal control at six installations: the Hanford Site in Washington state, Idaho National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, the Paducah Site in Kentucky, Portsmouth Site in Ohio and Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The identified uses include everything from an existing nuclear power plant, operated by Energy Northwest at Hanford, to conservation and future nuclear or renewable energy projects, GAO said.

Current trends seem to indicate land transfers to local control could accelerate, according to GAO. “DOE has expressed interest in repurposing land for economic and energy development purposes, such as data centers and solar or nuclear energy sources.”

Under the Joe Biden administration, DOE identified several thousand acres that might be suitable for various types of power generation including renewable energy and advanced nuclear. During the second Donald Trump administration, more land was identified as potential sites for nuclear uses including fuel fabrication and advanced uranium enrichment, the report adds.

DOE has said transferring land to local control is already paying off handsomely for the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee. “DOE announced that transferred Oak Ridge land was home to more than 25 nuclear businesses that had announced capital investments of about $10 billion, and they expected to generate 2,500 private sector jobs.”

“DOE is responsible for cleaning up sites contaminated from decades of nuclear weapons production and research,” DOE said in the latest report. “DOE estimates cleaning up 15 remaining sites will cost between $641 billion and $840 billion and be completed in 2100. When making cleanup decisions, DOE and its regulators assess risk to people who may use the land in the future— such as for industrial or residential purposes—to inform its approach and set cleanup standards.”