GAO criticizes Energy's plutonium disposal effort

The Energy Department should develop a plan to consolidate storage of plutonium stocks that are currently located across the country, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

The report (GAO-05-665) called for moving the stocks to the department's Savannah River Site in South Carolina and also recommended improving monitoring systems for storage containers at Savannah to prevent plutonium leaks once the material is shipped to the site.

About 50 metric tons of plutonium no longer needed by the U.S. nuclear weapons program is now in storage at the department's Hanford facility in Washington state, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site in Colorado, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Savannah River Site. The 2002 Defense Authorization Act requires the department to develop a plan to store the material at the Savannah site until it can be shipped to the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository for permanent disposition.

Auditors found that the department has fallen far behind in this effort since it was called for in the 2002 defense authorization bill. The department lacks a plan to convert plutonium into a form that can be stored at the Savannah facility. Also, Savannah is not equipped to store the Hanford plutonium, which is still in the form of 12-foot nuclear rods. Savannah is only equipped for standard storage containers, which cannot hold the rods.

"Until DOE develops a permanent disposition plan, additional plutonium cannot be shipped to SRS [Savannah] and DOE will not achieve the cost savings and security improvements that consolidation could offer. Continued storage at Hanford will cost an additional approximately $85 million annually and will threaten that site's achievement of the milestones in its accelerated cleanup plan," the report says.

The GAO also found that Savannah's safety systems cannot properly monitor storage containers. "Without a monitoring capability, DOE faces increased risks of an accidental plutonium release that could harm workers, the public, and/or the environment," the report states.

The report points out that the department has twice scrapped plans to build facilities at Savannah that would have been capable of storing and monitoring excess plutonium as well as processing the material for eventual shipment to Yucca Mountain. Due to these cancellations, "DOE has no means for processing its most heavily contaminated plutonium into a form suitable for permanent disposition," the report says.

It urges the department to develop a strategy that assesses "the storage, monitoring, and security capabilities of all of DOE's sites currently storing plutonium. Furthermore, the strategy should analyze the environmental impact, national security implications, costs, and schedules to safely consolidate, store, and eventually dispose of DOE's plutonium at existing facilities and/or at a new storage facility constructed at one of its sites."

"When this comprehensive strategy is completed," the report continues, "we further recommend that the secretary of energy ensure that each of DOE's facilities' cleanup plans are reviewed to ensure that each site's cleanup goals time frames are consistent with the department's comprehensive strategy for plutonium consolidation, storage, and disposition."

Independent nuclear expert Tom Clements, former senior adviser to Greenpeace International, blasted the department for its failure to develop a plan. Clements also criticized Congress for lax oversight of the department's disposal efforts.

"The report affirm[s] what many in the public have long pointed out - that DOE has no comprehensive plan to manage, consolidate or dispose of plutonium," Clements said in a press release. "But Congress is very late in beginning serious oversight of this program. It has already been a decade since the program to dispose of surplus weapons plutonium began and DOE still hasn't developed a workable plan to handle this deadly material. Lack of such a plan, which should have been developed years ago, means a tremendous waste of taxpayer money and a continued threat to public health and safety."

Clements told Global Security Newswire that it is difficult to gauge how much money has been spent on plutonium disposition because the funding has been scattered throughout various spending bills over the last few years. "It's got to be in the billions of dollars," he said.

Clements said all plans to ship plutonium to Savannah must be stopped while the department develops a plan for storing the material. Congress should not allocate more money for construction of a Savannah facility to convert weapon-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power reactors until comprehensive safety plans are in place, he said.

"DOE has tried for many years to fool the Congress and the public that a plan existed to dispose of plutonium. While many in the public have not been fooled, Congress is to share the blame with DOE for this programmatic failure as it has not conducted adequate oversight of the troubled and costly plutonium program," Clements said. "Congress has thrown money at the program without first demanding of DOE a comprehensive plan. Such abuse of the taxpayer must stop and Congress must now hold DOE's feet to the fire."