The U.S. Government Accountability Office wants the Department of Energy to fulfill a 2007 pledge to manage three former uranium enrichment plants in an integrated manner.
The DOE Office of Environmental Management is supervising cleanup of retired facilities in Piketon, Ohio, Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., as three independent sites, which is costly and inefficient, the GAO said in a report Wednesday.
The congressional auditor recommended DOE use leading management practices at the plants, provide lawmakers with more accurate cost estimates on cleanup, and regularly report on the status of the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning (UED&D) Fund.
The fund had a balance of $2.7 billion as of this year, according to the Energy Department’s latest triennial report on the UED&D Fund. However, the report estimates the total cost of cleanup at the three sites at up to $28 billion to $30 billion, with remediation potentially concluding in 2070.
“Congress established a single, shared D&D fund to pay for the cleanup,” but DOE is still not managing remediation of the sites as an integrated program, the GAO said. This would include a establishing a master schedule for cleanup and life-cycle costs for all three properties.
The report also says the federal agency has often had “strained relations” with state authorities in Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over cleanup priorities and remedies. The Office of Environmental Management should use an independent third party to overcome disagreements with the site regulators, according to the GAO.
The three former plants, which started enriching uranium for nuclear weapons in the 1940s, are contaminated with radioactive and hazardous materials.
In written comments appended to the report, DOE Senior Adviser for Environmental Management William (Ike) White committed the agency to managing the three properties in a more integrated fashion, including developing the master schedule for remediation and life-cycle costs for the three sites.
