Nuclear waste cleanup agency undermined by staff shortages, report says

The federal agency responsible for cleaning up nuclear waste is critically understaffed and doesn’t have a viable strategy to fix long-standing workforce shortages, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Thursday. 

At the end of fiscal 2023, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management had 263 unfilled positions, creating a 17% vacancy rate. Its attrition rate for that fiscal year was 10.6%, and that number is expected to increase because 44% of the agency’s staff will be retirement eligible by the start of fiscal 2030. 

Additionally, nearly 80% of the vacancies were in positions that the agency has deemed as mission critical. 

“[Environmental Management] staffing shortages have negatively affected its ability to meet its mission. Specifically, agency documentation has reported that staffing shortages have contributed to missed safety inspections, cost overruns, schedule delays and accidents such as fires and radiation leaks,” investigators wrote. 

For example, insufficient management and staffing at a plant in New Mexico partly caused a fire, radiation leakage and a ventilation project failure, according to DOE investigations. And the cost for a delayed project at a national laboratory in Tennessee that lacked staff with necessary technical expertise increased by more than $100 million. 

Investigators wrote that high leadership turnover at the agency (there have been five Senate-confirmed assistant secretaries and 10 acting assistant secretaries or senior advisors over the past two decades), collaboration issues with DOE’s workforce management program as well as inconsistent use of and confusion about certain hiring tools and incentives all have perpetuated the office’s employee shortages. 

DOE acquisition and program management has been on GAO’s high-risk list since its creation in 1990, so this is not the first governmental report on the Environmental Management Office’s workforce problems. 

In fact, GAO analyzed 19 assessments — from DOE, GAO, the Office of Personnel Management and others, published between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 — with 77 recommendations related to the agency’s workforce. However the office has only addressed or partially addressed 35 of them. 

The report noted that the agency made some progress in filling vacancies in fiscal 2023 (hiring more than 320 federal staff) by utilizing additional human resource service contractors, has developed a strategic human capital plan and creates annual staffing plans.  

But GAO found major shortcomings with those plans, including that they don’t address future workforce needs or contain performance targets and measures. 

The report made 10 recommendations, including that the head of the agency improve its workforce planning and create a strategy for a multigenerational staffing pipeline. It also recommended that the leader clarify eligibility for telework, as the office has successfully used it to retain employees. 

DOE concurred with all of the recommendations.