A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has found that the Department of Energy (DOE) is unable to outline the precise costs and schedules for waste clean-ups at a dozen federal sites that produced nuclear weapons materials.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for the cleanup of legacy waste – hazardous and radioactive waste generated by the development and production of nuclear weapons and government-sponsored nuclear energy research dating back to World War II and the Cold War. This cleanup scope makes EM the largest environmental cleanup programme in the world, according to EM documents. As of fiscal year 2024, DOE reported environmental liabilities of $544bn, of which more than $417bn was for EM’s cleanup.
EM headquarters oversees 15 active cleanup sites located around the country, 12 of which have remaining soil or legacy landfill cleanup. These sites contain about 40m cubic metres of contaminated soil and debris. GAO examined the soil and legacy landfill cleanup at eight selected sites.
The 42-page report, Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Should Collect Information Specific to Soil and Legacy Landfills to Inform Overall Remediation Efforts said EM cannot “readily identify the scope, schedule, and cost of soil and legacy landfill cleanup”. The report said, “having information available that is specific to soil and legacy landfill cleanup at EM sites would improve headquarters’ ability to track resources needed to implement remedy decisions”.
GAO said decades of nuclear weapons production and nuclear energy research have left hazardous and radioactive waste at DOE sites and facilities. “These include 12 sites with contaminated soils and legacy landfills that are the result of Manhattan Project-era and Cold War-era waste disposal.” Contamination in soil and legacy landfills may pose risks to human health and the environment, making cleanup of this contamination critical to EM’s mission.
Eight of the 12 sites were investigated by GAO: Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC) in California; Hanford Site in Washington State; Idaho Cleanup Project in Idaho; EM-Livermore in California; EM-Los Alamos in New Mexico; EM-Nevada in Nevada; Oak Ridge-EM in Tennessee; and Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The selected sites were chosen to ensure GAO had examples representing a range of the following: regulatory frameworks; remaining scope and regulatory decisions, including sites closer to completing soil and legacy landfill cleanup and sites that still have long-term cleanup actions; end uses, including sites cleaning up to industrial use or recreational use standards; and locations, including sites in seven states to provide a variety of viewpoints from state and EPA regulatory partners.
GAO also conducted site visits at three of the selected sites – EM-Los Alamos, ETEC, and Hanford Site – to tour soil and legacy landfill cleanups and hold in-depth discussions with EM officials. The report examines the regulatory framework for soil and legacy landfill cleanup at selected EM sites and how site-specific factors inform remedy decisions and available data on the scope, schedule, and cost for soil and legacy landfill cleanup.
Gao concluded that cleaning up soil and legacy landfill contamination is critical to EM’s mission and is expected to take decades and cost billions. “Yet, EM headquarters cannot readily identify information on the scope, schedule, and cost of soil and legacy landfill cleanup. Being able to identify soil cleanup activities – distinct from broader cleanup efforts – would allow EM headquarters to more adequately prioritise cleanup across sites to achieve the most efficient risk reduction.”
With looming decisions at numerous sites, including ETEC, Hanford, and EM-Los Alamos, “EM has the opportunity to enhance its technical and policy support to EM sites and potentially improve management and prioritization decisions by collecting and using scope, schedule, and cost information on soil and legacy landfill cleanup”. Such information “would enable EM headquarters, DOE, regulators, and Congress to better weigh the risks and prioritise the resources needed to meet soil and legacy landfill cleanup requirements across EM sites”.
GAO recommends that the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management should ensure that EM headquarters collects and uses information specific to the scope, schedule, and cost of soil and legacy landfill cleanup to enhance technical and policy support provided to sites and inform prioritisation decisions to reduce risk. EM neither agreed nor disagreed with the recommendation and deferred its response regarding implementation to a later date.
