The National Nuclear Security Administration is scheduled this spring to release a physical security infrastructure plan as it wrestles with outdated alarms, sensors, and other protective measures at its sites, the Government Accountability Office said in a report Tuesday.
The semiautonomous Department of Energy agency charged with sustaining the U.S. deterrent oversees four facilities that hold Category I and II special nuclear materials that represent the highest security threat if lost or misused, congressional auditors said. DOE itself manages another four such sites.
The GAO report identified issues both in site security and in meeting a 2013 congressional mandate for annual NNSA and DOE reporting regarding the state of security at facilities that store Category I and II special materials.
For example: While the NNSA physical security plan should be released within months, and the agency just month said it might need more than $1 billion over a decade for security infrastructure improvements, “DOE has not fully developed plans or estimated costs to address its needs.”
The department also has not yet completely implemented across its nuclear complex the agency’s own June 2011 order regarding nuclear materials control and accounting. While the order said implementation plans were to be in place within six months of publication, one facility would not have such a plan until next year.
The GAO said DOE and NNSA reporting on site nuclear security failed to meet federal internal control standards for “quality information”; specifically, the reports reports were not always provided to Congress on time, and they did not always provide information regarding the evaluations that supported findings that the facilities were secure.
In a March 17 response to the draft version of the GAO report, the Department of Energy urged that this finding be removed from the final version: “DOE and NNSA have made process improvement a fundamental aspect of our overall annual report process. Each reporting cycle has included a robust internal after action review process, and, as a result, each successive report has improved upon its predecessor and has been delivered in a more timely manner – the 2016 report significantly so.”
