| Text of
Printed Hearing The Committee on Energy and Commerce W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, Chairman A Review of DOE's Radioactive High-Level Waste Cleanup Program. <DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:88432.wais]
A REVIEW OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S RADIOACTIVE HIGH-LEVEL WASTE CLEANUP
PROGRAMS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 17, 2003
__________
Serial No. 108-42
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/
house
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
88-432 wASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
W.J. ``BILLY'' TAUZIN, Louisiana, Chairman
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan
JOE BARTON, Texas Ranking Member
FRED UPTON, Michigan HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts
PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio RALPH M. HALL, Texas
JAMES C. GREENWOOD, Pennsylvania RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
CHRISTOPHER COX, California EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
Vice Chairman BART GORDON, Tennessee
ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky PETER DEUTSCH, Florida
CHARLIE NORWOOD, Georgia BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming ANNA G. ESHOO, California
JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois BART STUPAK, Michigan
HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona ALBERT R. WYNN, Maryland
CHARLES W. ``CHIP'' PICKERING, GENE GREEN, Texas
Mississippi KAREN McCARTHY, Missouri
VITO FOSSELLA, New York TED STRICKLAND, Ohio
ROY BLUNT, Missouri DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
STEVE BUYER, Indiana LOIS CAPPS, California
GEORGE RADANOVICH, California MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire CHRISTOPHER JOHN, Louisiana
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania TOM ALLEN, Maine
MARY BONO, California JIM DAVIS, Florida
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
LEE TERRY, Nebraska HILDA L. SOLIS, California
ERNIE FLETCHER, Kentucky
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
DARRELL E. ISSA, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho
Dan R. Brouillette, Staff Director
James D. Barnette, General Counsel
Reid P.F. Stuntz, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
______
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
JAMES C. GREENWOOD, Pennsylvania, Chairman
MICHAEL BILIRAKIS, Florida PETER DEUTSCH, Florida
CLIFF STEARNS, Florida Ranking Member
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
CHARLES F. BASS, New Hampshire JIM DAVIS, Florida
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
Vice Chairman HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
MIKE ROGERS, Michigan JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan,
W.J. ``BILLY'' TAUZIN, Louisiana (Ex Officio)
(Ex Officio)
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
Page
Testimony of:
Nazzaro, Robin M., Director for Natural Resources and
Environment, General Accounting Office..................... 11
Roberson, Jessie H., Assistant Secretary for Environmental
Management, Department of Energy........................... 5
Wilson, David E., Jr., Assistant Chief, Bureau of Land and
Waste Management, South Carolina State Department of Health
and Environmental Control.................................. 42
Wilson, Michael A., Program Director, Nuclear and Mixed Waste
Program, Washington State Department of Ecology............ 39
Additional material submitted for the record:
Natural Resources Defense Council, prepared statement of..... 52
(iii)
A REVIEW OF DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S RADIOACTIVE HIGH-LEVEL WASTE CLEANUP
PROGRAMS
----------
THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2003
House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in
room 223, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. James C.
Greenwood (chairman) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Greenwood, Walden,
Deutsch, DeGette, and Rush.
Staff present: Dwight Cates, majority professional staff
member; Peter Kielty, legislative clerk; Sue Sheridan, minority
counsel; and Bruce Harris, minority professional staff member.
Mr. Greenwood. The committee will come to order. Welcome
everyone. Good morning. The Chair recognizes himself for the
purpose of making an opening statement.
Today the subcommittee will continue its ongoing oversight
of the Department of Energy's environmental management program.
Last year the subcommittee held a hearing on the EM program's
accelerating cleanup initiative. Today we are following up with
a hearing to review DOE's progress on accelerating the cleanup
of high-level radioactive waste.
The Department currently estimates that $230 billion, that
is billion with a B, will be spent over the next 70 years to
clean up the contamination that remains from nuclear weapons
production during the cold war.
By far, the disposal of high level radioactive wastes
represent the most expensive cleanup responsibilities for the
Department, accounting for $105 billion of the estimated $230
billion in cleanup costs.
Although the cleanup program will span 70 years, near-term
decisions made by the EM program as to which technologies to
deploy and what facilities to design and construct will
effectively commit tens of billions in taxpayer funds for high-
level waste activities at the Hanford Site, the Savannah River
Site, and the Idaho site.
These decisions will impact the programs for decades to
come, and it is important for this subcommittee to actively
review some of these decisions at the front end before the
billions are committed.
Unfortunately, the subcommittee's hearing record over the
last 9 years reflects a questionable track record with respect
to DOE's management of large scale cleanup projects. In 1997
this subcommittee exposed the problems at the Pit 9 cleanup
project at the Idaho site, where hundreds of millions of
dollars were spent to construct facilities that were later
determined to be useless for cleaning up the wastes.
Similarly, in 1998, the subcommittee held a hearing that
was critical of DOE's far flung plan to privatize the cleanup
of high level waste at the Hanford Site, using a complicated
and unworkable financial arrangement with a contractor that
couldn't do the job.
DOE wisely abandoned that effort, but not before several
years and hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on the
project. Although DOE's track record leads me to be skeptical,
it is not my intention today to embarrass the Department for
mistakes it has made in the past. I believe the EM program has
worked hard over the past 2 years to rein in the pattern of
mismanagement we have come to know during the past decade.
Under the leadership of Secretary Abraham and Assistant
Secretary Jesse Roberson, there is a new sense of a commitment
to achieve real progress with site cleanup. DOE's high-level
waste problem is complicated, challenging and expensive. It is
critical that Congress is confident that the decisions made by
the EM program will not set us on another path of cost
overruns, failed technologies and billions in taxpayer funds
wasted on facilities that are constructed and then later
determined to be useless.
I look forward to the testimony of Assistant Secretary
Roberson, as well as that of Robin Nazzaro, of the General
Accounting Office. GAO has written a report on DOE's high level
waste program at my request. And I also look forward to the
testimony from Representatives from the State of Washington
where Hanford is located, and from the State of South Carolina
where Savannah River is located, to get their views on DOE's
high-level waste program.
I thank all of these witnesses for appearing before us
today, and with that I will recognize the ranking member for an
opening statement.
Mr. Deutsch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to
submit a statement for the record.
Mr. Greenwood. Without objection that will be the order.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Peter Deutsch follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Peter Deutsch, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Florida
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and also for
requesting the General Accounting Office to look at the Department of
Energy's latest efforts to reduce the cost of treating and disposing of
the nuclear waste that resulted from this nation's nuclear weapons
program--a $100 billion-plus program for just the high-level waste
alone.
This Committee have been investigating attempts by the Department
to reduce costs and streamline these clean-ups for more than a decade.
Each time, the Department has promised--but failed to achieve--quicker,
cheaper clean-ups. Three of them come to mind. The first is Pit 9, a
fixed-price contract to clean up low-level waste in Idaho that was
eventually abandoned. At the Subcommittee's hearings in 1997, the
project was described as being ``littered with broken promises, massive
schedule delays, fines, adversarial relationships, technical and
management failures.'' It was a project in which the contractor was
designing and building the project simultaneously without determining
if the design would work. The unfinished treatment building still
litters the site.
The second is the In-Tank Precipitator that was supposed to clean
up high-level waste at the Savannah River Plant. After $1 billion in
expenditures over a decade, it was determined that it didn't work. GAO
looked at that project for this Committee also and found that one of
the key reasons for this tremendous waste of money was that the
contractor began building the project before the design was complete--
and before anyone knew it was going to work. This contractor tried to
drain more money from the Department, but its efforts finally failed.
The third project involved a ``privatization'' effort at Hanford to
clean up the same underground tanks that we are talking about today.
BNFL was going to take this technically challenging effort on with the
backing of private investors, even though no one knew exactly how to
clean up the waste. Not surprisingly, the private investors wanted
quite a premium to take on that risk. Preliminary demonstration
projects were eliminated with the result that no one knew if the
technology would work. Once again, the project failed, and BNFL walked
away.
The Department's latest approach may be the most creative because
it relies on separating out 90 percent of the high-level waste,
redefining it as low-activity waste and treating it on site. Aside from
the potential legal problems, I have immediate concerns that the
technology will not be fully tested until the separation facility is
built. And, again, the estimated cost savings are highly questionable.
GAO recommends that DOE address ``management weaknesses,'' but the
Department, like most others, is cutting managers, not adding them.
Mr. Chairman, this entire scenario reminds me of line from the
Peter, Paul and Mary song, ``When will they ever learn? When will they
ever learn?'' It appears that not a single lesson about how to do
effective and efficient clean-ups has yet to be learned by the DOE.
I am pleased to have our witnesses here today before us, so that
this committee can explore how the Department of Energy intends to
interpret a new US District Court ruling on reclassification, as well
as its efforts to address responsible management of nuclear waste clean
up.
[Additional statements submitted for the record follow:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. W.J. ``Billy'' Tauzin, Chairman, Committee
on Energy and Commerce
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this important hearing.
Over the past few years, the Energy and Commerce Committee has
focused its attention on the nuclear waste disposal problems at
commercial nuclear power plants. In the 107th Congress, I was pleased
to lead the House effort to pass the Yucca Mountain siting resolution.
As you know, we passed that resolution overwhelmingly in both the House
and the Senate.
This hearing is important because we also need to focus our
attention on nuclear waste disposal problems at the Department of
Energy. The Department's weapons production activities helped us win
the Cold War. Now, the radioactive high-level wastes stored at Hanford,
Savannah River, and Idaho must be dealt with.
The States and local communities where DOE's nuclear waste sites
are located should expect Congress and the Department to do everything
we can to reduce the risks of environmental contamination, and dispose
of these wastes in a manner that fully protects human health and the
environment.
However, DOE's effort to clean-up high-level wastes is not just a
matter for the benefit of States and local communities surrounding
these sites. It is a matter of national significance when we commit
tens of billions of dollars in Federal taxpayer funds to construct and
operate facilities to clean up these wastes. I expect DOE and the
States will utilize a balanced approach that maximizes risk reduction
while fully considering the cost of different disposal options.
This Subcommittee has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to
ensuring that the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds spent by DOE's
Office of Environmental Management are spent on actual cleanup.
However, too often this Subcommittee has been in the position of
investigating major cleanup projects after they have failed, and after
hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been wasted.
I hope the Subcommittee will closely follow DOE's efforts to clean
up its high-level wastes to ensure they are disposed of safely, and to
hold the Department accountable if it begins to head down the path of
more cost increases and schedule delays. High-level waste disposal is
expensive, and if DOE makes the same management mistakes it has made on
other cleanup projects in the past, the cost in terms of time, money,
and safety will be enormous.
I thank the Chairman, and I yield back.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in
Congress from the State of Michigan
Mr. Chairman, I commend you for holding this hearing today.
Unfortunately, we are here once again on the all-too-familiar topic of
the Department of Energy's (DOE) management of its high-level nuclear
waste cleanup efforts.
The question of how to properly dispose of the Nation's nuclear
waste, both commercial- and defense-related, is a political thicket
that has ensnared this country since the dawn of the nuclear age. On
the commercial front, we have made progress, but it has been hard
fought over several years. We finally have a repository site at Yucca
Mountain and there seems to be a firm commitment this year from the
House appropriators to allocate the necessary funding for its
construction. While we must remain vigilant on this front to ensure
that America's ratepayers get the service for which they have already
paid, I am encouraged by our progress thus far.
Disposal of our defense-related waste is another matter indeed.
Storage of such waste is primarily concentrated at three facilities in
Hanford, Washington; Savannah River, South Carolina; and Idaho Falls,
Idaho. DOE's record at these facilities is less than impressive. Much
of this waste is stored in tanks that have well exceeded their design
life and have leaked unknown amounts of highly radioactive and toxic
waste into the ground and potentially the groundwater.
Today the Subcommittee is presented with yet another report from
the General Accounting Office (GAO) outlining concerns with the
planning and management of DOE's high-level nuclear waste program.
We learn from the GAO that the Department's latest scheme to save
money and speed cleanup of this waste is bedeviled on two crucial
fronts: legal and technical.
On the legal front, DOE's formula for magically transforming high-
level waste into low-level or ``incidental'' waste was determined to be
a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and thus deemed invalid by
the Federal District Court in Idaho. How will DOE respond? Will the
decision be appealed? Will the Department request a legislative change
in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and what would the implications be if
the Act were re-opened?
On the technical front, the GAO finds that the Department is
engaged in its familiar cart-before-the-horse approach on cleanup where
DOE plans to employ technology without first doing the necessary
testing to ensure that it will work. I note that we have been down this
road before at the Savannah River site to the tune of $500 million in
wasted taxpayer money and additional delays.
With that background I cast a skeptical eye towards the
Department's competence in dealing with this issue and hope that
today's hearing will find some recommendations to improve this badly
mismanaged program.
Mr. Greenwood. And we welcome our first panel, Ms. Robin M.
Nazzaro, director for natural resources and environment at the
General Accounting Office and Ms. Jessie Roberson, assistant
secretary for environmental management, Department of Energy.
And, I am told that Ms. Roberson will go first.
Ms. Roberson. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Greenwood. I think you are both aware that this is an
oversight hearing, and we take testimony under oath. Do either
of you have any problems giving your testimony under oath? It
is also my duty to inform you that pursuant to the rules of the
Committee and the House, that you have the right to be
presented by counsel. Do you wish to be represented by counsel?
I didn't think so. Okay. If you would both stand and raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Greenwood. Okay. You are under oath. And, Ms. Roberson,
you are recognized for your opening statement. Welcome. Thank
you.
TESTIMONY OF JESSIE H. ROBERSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; AND ROBIN M.
NAZZARO, DIRECTOR FOR NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT,
GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE
Ms. Roberson. Good morning, Chairman Greenwood and members
of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here
today to discuss the Department's efforts to address high-level
waste cleanup, and our reaction to the GAO's report on this
subject. We are making progress with our high-level waste
program. We have produced over 1,300 canisters of solidified
glass waste at the Savannah River Site, over 25 percent of the
total projected.
We have poured 275 canisters of solidified glass waste at
the West Valley Demonstration Project, and are in the
construction phase of the Waste Treatment Plant at our Hanford
Site. However, as DOE made clear in the EM Top to Bottom
Review, the cleanup of high-level waste is the single largest
component in the cleanup program.
Since initiating implementation of the Top to Bottom
Review, we have taken very specific and focused actions. And I
believe we are moving the environmental management program in
the right direction. We have taken strong and direct actions,
including developing performance management plans which
identified the strategies and initiatives to accelerate risk
reduction in accordance with end States.
We have developed resource-loaded baselines to provide the
specificity needed to implement those strategies laid out in
the performance management plans. We are producing life cycle
cost estimates of implementing those plans to provide the
certainty needed to support the budgets that we request to
carry out our work, and most importantly, we are accelerating
actions on the ground even today.
Some specific accomplishments since issuing the Top to
Bottom Review at Savannah River. We have reduced the high-level
waste volume by over 1 million gallons, and have poured over
250 canisters since the Top to Bottom was issued.
We have replaced the melter unit at the Defense Waste
Processing Facility. We did that in record time and under
budget. We have developed and are using an improved glass frit,
as well as increasing the amount of waste poured in each
container, reducing the number of containers by about 20
percent at Savannah River.
At the Office of River Protection, we have reduced the
overall tank farm volume by 3 million gallons. We have reduced
the amount of pumpable liquid in single-shell tanks by over 1
million gallons, and currently at that site, we have less than
100,000 gallons in single-shell tanks and are on schedule to
complete that removal from single-shell tanks by April 2004. We
have removed all liquids from Tank C-106, and are in the
process of removing all sludges from that tank a year ahead of
schedule.
At Idaho, we have reduced overall tank farm volume to under
1 million gallons total, the lowest volume since the 1950's. We
have emptied five pillar and panel tanks, cleaned and flushed
two of those tanks, which are now ready for closure, and we
have emptied three spent fuel pools at Idaho.
On the topic of potential savings, while there are
different approaches to reporting costs, as stated in the GAO
report, the cost savings we project under the most conservative
approach of constant year dollars are significant; an estimated
$20 billion for the high-level waste program alone. These
savings are derived using the same methodology used in the
independent financial audit of the Department's environmental
liabilities cost estimate.
I do not take lightly my responsibility to participate in
making important decisions or providing important input to the
Departmental decisions regarding public health and safety, and
committing Federal funds. For example, I do not agree with the
GAO finding that we did not adequately reevaluate low-activity
waste treatment and disposal options at Hanford. In March 2003,
I commissioned a study to evaluate various technologies for
optimal treatment and disposal of low-activity waste. The study
considered both the baseline approach as well as over 10
variations to that approach. It pointed us to some specific
supplemental technologies to focus further development on,
which we are pursuing.
Last, the GAO recommended that the Department explore
alternative strategies for dealing with an adverse legal
decision regarding one of the Department's orders for
implementing its Atomic Energy Act responsibilities. We do
agree with the GAO's recommendation on that point.
Accelerating the high-level waste program is the single
most significant component of the environmental cleanup
program. It makes the greatest impact on the safety and
environmental profile of this program. It carries the greatest
financial risk and is a preeminent step to fulfilling our soil
and groundwater remediation at the sites where we have high-
level waste stored in tanks.
Dating back to the early 1980's, DOE's approach in this
program has been premised on the assumption that DOE has the
authority to manage and dispose of the tank waste in a manner
consistent with the risks they present. We would take the
appropriate steps to reduce the radioactivity of these wastes,
including residual waste, treating them so they can be safely
disposed of without requiring the isolation of a deep geologic
repository.
This approach is consistent with a risk-based strategy in
that only wastes requiring geologic isolation based upon risk
to the public and environment, are disposed of in a high-level
waste geologic repository.
Much of the Department's tank waste resulted from spent
nuclear fuel reprocessing activities that were performed to
produce nuclear materials primarily for defense purposes. While
the untreated wastes remained in our storage tanks, DOE
conservatively managed them as high-level waste. Once the waste
is retrieved from the tanks, DOE intended to separate the waste
into a low-activity fraction for treatment and disposal as low-
level waste in some cases transuranic waste, and a high-
radioactivity fraction for treatment and disposal in a high-
level waste geologic repository.
With this approach, DOE would employ treatment methods and
dispose of low-activity tank waste as low-level waste. In fact,
this approach has a long-standing technical and regulatory
basis with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from which our
process was derived. Additionally there is international
support for such an approach. The International Atomic Energy
Agency has proposed a waste classification system in which the
degree of geologic isolation of radioactive waste is based on
risk rather than exclusively on the source of the waste.
Similarly, a recent publication by the National Council on
Radiation Protection and Measurement proposed a unified waste
classification system for both radioactive and hazardous wastes
based on the risks they pose. As the GAO report states, our
authority to make these determinations was challenged by
several organizations in the District Court of Idaho in early
2002.
The recent court decision in the Idaho District Court could
significantly hinder our ability to implement the accelerated
cleanup program. I support the GAO recommendation in this
regard, that Congress clarify its intent concerning the
Department's authority under the Atomic Energy Act to manage
the waste from its reprocessing activities.
The Department would seek from Congress the reaffirmation
that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not mandate that the
Department dispose of defense high-level waste in a geologic
repository constructed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and
that the Department has the authority to determine which wastes
from reprocessing do not require permanent disposal in a
repository designed for spent nuclear file and high-level
waste.
Accelerating cleanup by almost 20 years and saving over $20
billion in the high-level waste program will protect public
health and is a wise investment for our children's future.
Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Jessie H. Roberson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jessie H. Roberson , Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to be
here today to discuss the Department of Energy's actions in response to
the General Accounting Office Report, Challenges to Achieving Potential
Savings in DOE's High-Level Waste Cleanup Program (GAO-03-593). I
appreciate the opportunity to describe our efforts to address the
largest-cost component of the Environmental Management program and the
challenges and opportunities that lie before us.
In 1996, the Department achieved two very important milestones in
its high-level waste program. It began immobilizing high-level waste
into a safer, stable waste form at its West Valley Demonstration
Project in western New York and at the Defense Waste Processing
Facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, for
ultimate disposal in a geologic repository. I am pleased to report that
we have produced over 1,300 canisters of a solidified glass-waste
product at the SRS (over 25 percent of the projected total number of
canisters to be produced there), and we completed high-level waste
treatment at the West Valley Demonstration Project site in New York,
having poured 275 canisters of a solidified glass-waste product. We are
also making good progress on construction of an extensive Waste
Treatment Plant at our Hanford site, which will produce almost twice
the number of solidified high-level waste canisters as the Savannah
River plant. The foundations of the major facilities of the Hanford
plant have been emplaced, and the building structures are visible.
Despite these successes, significant challenges remain in this
program. In August 2001, Secretary Abraham directed the Department to
complete a Top-to-Bottom Review of its cleanup program. The review,
released in February 2002, concluded that significant change in how the
Department approached risk reduction and cleanup for its sites was
required. Two years ago, as costs for the cleanup program continued to
increase, including those at our high-level waste sites, we estimated
that it could take over $300 billion and nearly 70 more years to
complete cleanup 20 years longer than the actual operations of our
oldest facilities and 25 times longer than the actual construction of
our most complex facilities. We concluded that a fundamental change to
how we approached, managed, and performed the entire cleanup program
was required. Last year EM started the effort to reform this massive
program with an accelerated cleanup program.
Since the completion of the Review, the estimated cost to complete
the cleanup program has decreased by approximately $20 billion in the
high-level waste program alone, with an attendant reduction in
schedules of approximately 20 years.
In early July 2003, a significant challenge to safe and effective
remediation of the Department's spent nuclear fuel reprocessing wastes
became reality when the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho
invalidated certain provisions of the Department's Order for safely
managing radioactive waste. These provisions are consistent with the
approach DOE and NRC, and their predecessor agencies, have followed for
more than 20 years in meeting their Atomic Energy Act responsibilities
for safely managing the radioactive wastes resulting from spent fuel
reprocessing. The Department's provisions were consistent with managing
wastes according to the health and environmental risks they pose. This
ruling jeopardizes the Department's ability to provide safe and cost-
efficient, risk-based treatment and disposal of certain of our wastes.
The GAO Report correctly identified the vulnerability caused by this
litigation, which I will address in some detail later. I will begin by
discussing the key GAO conclusions and recommendations from the GAO
report.
key gao report conclusions/recommendations
In June 2002, the GAO notified the Secretary of their intent to
conduct a review of the Department's high-level waste program, at the
request of the Chairman of this Subcommittee. The GAO issued a draft
report in early May 2003, and an exit briefing was conducted shortly
thereafter. In early June 2003, the Department submitted its formal
response to the draft report. I will address the Department's responses
and corrective actions for each of the major conclusions and
recommendations of the report.
Predictions of Projected Savings in Site Performance Management
Plans. As noted in the GAO report, the four sites that manage high-
level waste have each developed a Performance Management Plan,
identifying key strategies, end states, program end dates, key
milestones, and commitments to facilitate accelerated high-level waste
cleanup and site closure. Each site developed its plan in collaboration
with appropriate state and federal regulators. The GAO has expressed
some concerns regarding projected savings estimates associated with the
Performance Management Plans. I would like to address these concerns.
First, the GAO noted that DOE baseline costs are not fully
reliable. In this regard, some of the key reforms EM has implemented
are work practices requiring development of baselines and adherence to
a strict configuration control process for approval of any changes to
these baselines. This approach has resulted in establishing baselines
for a number of key, critical program elements, including costs and
schedules. I have launched a Contract Management Advisory Council to
review our contracts from a more corporate perspective. Our goal is to
ensure that the lessons learned, both good and bad, from all our
endeavors are institutionalized into our contracts and business
practices, and that we suspend those contract philosophies that do not
support accelerated risk reduction and cleanup of our sites. To
complement this Council, I have initiated baseline validation reviews
to assess the validity of baselines for all of our major projects.
These validation reviews are ongoing, and validated baselines of
cleanup activities at all of our closure sites, for example, are
expected to be in place by October 2003.
The GAO also criticized the Department's lack of a standard
methodology for calculating potential savings. As the GAO notes in
their report, DOE has recognized that it lacks standard methodologies
for developing life-cycle cost baselines. One approach is to account
for costs in constant-year dollars. As part of the EM environmental
liability estimate used in the Department's Performance and
Accountability Report and audited Financial Statement, constant-year
dollars are used, and are based upon a roll-up of our Project Baseline
Summaries accounts.
The GAO also noted that our current savings estimates do not
appropriately account for uncertainties. As part of the Department's
Financial Audit process, we do calculate uncertainty. Additionally, I
have initiated strict change control and monitoring of key elements to
facilitate a high confidence level that the goals and direction of the
accelerated cleanup initiative are being met. We are aggressively
identifying all government-furnished services and items, and tracking
them to ensure key programmatic risks are resolved.
Full Testing of Waste Separations Technologies. The GAO criticized
the lack of full testing for high-level waste separations technologies,
including the absence of pre-construction integrated testing of
separation steps at Hanford, in support of the design of the Waste
Treatment Plant (WTP). The WTP contractor considered construction and
operation of an integrated pilot plant using simulated waste. However,
the information the pilot plant would provide would not be available in
time to be incorporated into the plant design, unless plant design and
construction were delayed several years. An alternate course was chosen
with development and testing being conducted at one of our national
laboratories, in which each unit operation is pilot-tested and the
product and recycle streams produced are collected and process-tested
in the receiving unit. This simulates the plant design in that the
product from each unit operation will be collected in tanks and staged
before being fed to the next unit operation. This testing will provide
confidence that the process will function in an integrated manner.
Further, when plant construction is completed, full-scale integrated
tests will be conducted. Also, DOE and the commercial sector possess
extensive experience with the planned unit operations that we believe
offset some of the apparent need for full testing of waste separations
technologies.
Rigorous Analysis in Support of Key Decisions. The GAO noted a
concern with the Department's lack of commitment to re-evaluate low-
activity waste treatment and disposal options at Hanford. We recently
prepared a new internal study to evaluate various technologies for
optimum treatment and disposal of low-activity waste. That study
developed life-cycle analyses using the best available information and
provided costs for each option. We analyzed and compared over a dozen
combinations of low-activity waste treatment technologies. Many of the
cases evaluated did not include the present vitrification system as a
treatment component while others used it in combination with other
approaches. The study concluded that the planned approach, which
includes two low-activity waste vitrification melters, in combination
with other supplemental technologies, would provide acceptable
performance at the lowest life-cycle costs, if those supplemental
technologies prove successful during ongoing testing with Hanford tank
wastes.
Corporate Projects and Improvements to EM Program. The GAO
reiterated its concern that there were fundamental weaknesses in DOE's
project management systems, and that no management team was focused on
resolving these issues. I disagree. The Top-to-Bottom Review identified
unfocused and inconsistent work planning processes as the principal
contributors to EM's uncontrolled cost and schedule growth. To address
this failing, I formed ten special corporate projects; each assigned a
specific strategic objective. One of these is focused on high-level
waste and is formulating corporate level initiatives to accelerate risk
reduction in a much improved, more cost-effective manner. These project
teams, using project management principles, are key to improving our
work planning processes and instilling rigor into our internal
management decisions. They are imbuing EM with a cadre of management
and staff personnel with the discipline to perform the planning,
analyses, and evaluations necessary to implement actions to accelerate
risk reduction and completion of the EM program.
Meaningful, lasting reform must be the result of leadership and
commitment, but it must find its way into the very core of the
organization to be sustained. Building a high-performing culture
requires attracting and retaining talented people who deliver
excellence in performance. Improving management efficiencies requires
that organizations challenge, hold accountable, and reward top-
performing employees. This corporate initiative does just that. These
ten teams will herald a new standard of performance, innovation, and
greater results for the EM program. Our goal is not just to establish
performance-based contracts but to solidify a performance-based program
for all who choose to have a role. I am also restructuring the EM
organization to further this effort.
Fast-Track Construction of Hanford Waste Treatment Plant. The GAO
expressed concern that the Department's design-build approach does not
address risk. The WTP costs changed, in part, because of the
Department's initiative to accelerate risk reduction and mission
completion and to reduce overall costs. Rather than initially build a
low-capacity plant followed by a second higher-capacity plant a decade
later, which would not complete treatment until 2048, DOE has plans to
build the first plant to be more capable. This would enable the first
plant, along with supplemental low-activity waste treatment, to
complete treatment of all the low-activity waste by 2028. To
accommodate risk in the design-build approach the Department identified
contingency for both costs and schedule. The Department estimated a
budget for an 80 percent probability that the cost and schedule
baseline will be attained (an approximate $500 million increase in
total project cost). Other risk planning and mitigation actions had
already reduced program and technical risks by 25 percent. The WTP
contractor did review its close-coupled approach and lengthened design/
engineering schedules to allow more review cycle time and to mitigate
the close coupling between design, procurement, and construction
schedules. The result was that the Department incorporated a 6-month
schedule contingency in a (WTP) schedule.
Full Assessment of Potential Benefits of Initiatives to Reduce
Cost. The GAO observed that there was no formal documentation of
potential cost-reduction benefits of increasing waste loading in
solidified glass waste canisters. The corporate High-Level Waste
Project team, as well as both our Savannah River Site and the Office of
River Protection at Hanford, have identified potential savings
opportunities and have preliminarily quantified these savings. We
continue to explore potential options at these sites to continue to
overcome technical and operational barriers concerning increased
canister waste loading, while not interfering with the process for
submitting a License Application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
for construction of the geologic repository at Yucca Mountain.
Impact of Key Legal Challenge to Accelerated Cleanup Plans. A
significant portion of the savings to be realized from accelerating the
high-level waste program is premised on the assumption that DOE has the
authority to manage and dispose of the tank wastes in a manner
consistent with the risks they present. In particular, the Atomic
Energy Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission have all been of the view that not all waste from
reprocessing need be managed or disposed of as high level waste. It has
further been both our view and that of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission that nothing in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA),
including the definition of ``high level waste,'' changed that state of
affairs. Rather, we believe, and we feel the NRC believes, that if we
take appropriate steps to reduce the radioactivity of the tank wastes,
including residual wastes, and solidify and treat them so that they can
safely be disposed of without requiring the degree of isolation that a
deep geologic repository for commercial spent fuel would provide, that
course is fully consistent with the NWPA. This approach is consistent
with a risk-based strategy, so that those wastes requiring the greatest
degree of isolation, based upon risk to the public and the environment,
are disposed of in a high-level waste geologic repository. Much of the
Department's tank wastes resulted from spent nuclear fuel reprocessing
activities that were performed to produce nuclear materials, primarily
for defense purposes. While the untreated wastes remained in our
storage tanks, DOE conservatively managed them as high-level waste.
Once the waste is retrieved from the tanks, we intended to follow a
basic strategy developed during the early 1980's to separate the wastes
into a low-radioactivity fraction for treatment and disposal as low-
level waste, and a high-radioactivity fraction for treatment and
disposal in a high-level waste geologic repository. With this approach
DOE could use safe and effective treatment methods and dispose of low
activity tank waste as low-level waste. A number of our accelerated
cleanup initiatives relied upon further refinements in the strategy for
separating wastes into low-activity and high-activity fractions,
particularly at Hanford and SRS.
As the GAO report states, our authority to make these
determinations was challenged by several organizations in the U.S.
District Court of Idaho in early 2002. In early July, the Court granted
the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and declared invalid
certain provisions of DOE Order 435.1 that we used to make such
determinations. Counsel from the Department are consulting with counsel
from the Department of Justice regarding whether to appeal the
decision. In the near-term, I am working with our Counsel and our sites
to determine immediate impacts to our operations.
The GAO recommended that the Department explore alternative
strategies for dealing with an adverse legal decision. I support the
GAO recommendation in this regard, that Congress clarify its intent
concerning the Department's authority, under the Atomic Energy Act, to
manage the waste from its reprocessing activities including
implementation of an incidental waste policy.
In particular, the Department believes it would be useful for
Congress to reaffirm that the NWPA does not mandate that the Department
dispose of defense high-level wastes in a geologic repository
constructed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Such an affirmation
would not affect the Department's current plans for disposing of HLW at
Yucca Mountain consistent with the NWPA's requirements for cost
allocation and capacity limits. The Department also seeks explicit
legislative reaffirmation that the Department has the authority to
determine which wastes from reprocessing do not require permanent
disposal in a repository designed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level
waste.
conclusion
As I have stated in previous testimony, we are realizing that for
the first time, the goal of completing EM's mission is within our
grasp. We have set into motion a reformed cleanup program--one designed
and managed to achieve risk reduction not just risk management; to
shift focus from process to product; and to instill the kind of urgency
necessary to clean up and close down the nuclear legacy of the Cold War
to protect human health and the environment.
We are at a turning point for this program. We must not lessen our
resolve. The recommendations provided by the GAO are important. We will
be vigilant in ensuring we are taking the appropriate corrective
actions.
I ask for your support to continue this important work. The recent
Court decision in the Idaho District Court will significantly hinder
our ability to implement the accelerated program we have developed.
Accelerating cleanup by almost 20 years and saving approximately $20
billion in the high-level waste program will protect public health and
safety and the environment and is a wise investment for our children's
future.
I look forward to working with Congress and others to achieve this
goal. I will be happy to answer questions.
Mr. Greenwood. Thank you very much for your testimony. It
was very helpful.
Ms. Nazzaro.
TESTIMONY OF ROBIN M. NAZZARO
Ms. Nazzaro. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to discuss the
Department of Energy's high-level waste cleanup program. DOE
has about 94 million gallons of highly radioactive waste from
the Nation's nuclear weapons program. This waste is currently
in tanks at the Hanford and Savannah River Sites, and at the
Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls.
In February of 2002, DOE began an initiative to reduce the
program's nearly $105 billion estimated cost and 70-year
timeframe to finish the disposal of this waste.
Based on work included in our report being released by the
subcommittee today, my testimony today focuses on the
components of DOE's high-level waste and the process involved
in preparing the waste for disposal, the status of DOE's
initiative, the legal and technical challenges that DOE faces
in implementing the initiative, and any further opportunities
to reduce costs beyond those identified in DOE's current cost
savings proposal or to improve program management.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, DOE's high-level waste is a
complex mixture of radioactive and hazardous components. A
small portion of the radioactive components will remain
dangerously radioactive for millions of years. However, the
vast majority will lose much of their radioactivity more
quickly. To prepare the waste for permanent disposal, DOE plans
to separate much of the radioactive material from the other
waste components.
The initiative to accelerate the cleanup is still evolving.
And while its savings estimates are changing accordingly, we
have concerns about the reliability of the estimates. As of
April 2003, DOE estimated it could shorten the waste cleanup
schedule by 25 to 30 years and save up to $29 billion. To help
achieve these schedule and cost reductions, DOE has identified
alternative treatment and disposal strategies, such as
disposing of the radioactive waste onsite, rather than moving
it to an underground repository.
However, DOE's savings estimates for these approaches may
not be reliable or complete. For example, the savings analysis
does not take into account all costs associated with
alternative treatment strategies. Also, the estimate of savings
does not compare costs on the basis of present value. At the
DOE Savannah River Site, such an adjustment could lower the
potential savings for accelerated waste processing by $2.5
billion. Further, DOE faces significant legal and technical
challenges that could limit the schedule and cost reductions.
On the legal side, DOE's proposal depended heavily on the
Agency's authority to apply a designation other than high-level
waste to the low activity portion of the waste.
As you know, the recent court ruling invalidated this
process, putting the accelerated schedule and potential savings
in jeopardy. On the technical side, DOE's proposals rely
heavily on the successful application of waste separation
methods that are still under development and will not be fully
tested before being put into place.
For example, at the Hanford Site, DOE intends to build the
facility for separating the waste before fully testing the
technologies on an integrated basis. Previously this approach
at the Savannah River Site failed, resulting in significant
cost increases and schedule delays. DOE is exploring additional
cost savings beyond those identified in its current cost
savings proposal. At the Hanford and Savannah River Sites, DOE
is exploring options to increase the amount of waste that can
be concentrated in the canisters destined for the permanent
underground repository.
DOE's data indicates that these proposals, if successful,
could save billions of dollars. However, considerable
evaluation of these proposals remains to be done and cost
savings estimates have not yet been fully developed. DOE also
has opportunities to improve the management of its cleanup
program by addressing management weakness that we and others
have identified in the past.
Those weaknesses include, making key decisions without
rigorous supporting analysis, incorporating technology into
projects before being sufficiently tested, and pursuing a fast-
track approach whereby facility construction begins before
completing sufficient design work. Although DOE has taken steps
to improve program management, it does not appear that DOE's
current management efforts will fully address these weaknesses.
Our report makes several recommendations to DOE that we
believe will help to manage or reduce the legal and technical
risks to the program, avoid costly delays, and strengthen
overall management. Before the court ruling, we recommended
that DOE seek clarification from the Congress regarding the
authority to determine that some waste can be treated and
disposed of onsite. Since the court invalidated this process,
one option DOE may want to consider is to ask the Congress to
provide legislative authority for DOE to implement an
incidental waste policy.
Regarding our recommendations to reassess the approach for
incorporating new waste separation technologies at the Hanford
Site, and to ensure that high-level waste projects include
rigorous analysis and follow best practices, DOE believes that
its current practices are adequate. We disagree and continue to
believe that the recommendations are warranted.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee.
That concludes my statement. I would be pleased to respond to
any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Robin M. Nazzaro follows:]
Prepared Statement of Robin M. Nazzaro, Director, Natural Resources and
Environment, U.S. General Accounting Office
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: We are pleased to be
here today to discuss the Department of Energy's (DOE) high-level waste
cleanup program. DOE has about 94 million gallons of highly radioactive
nuclear waste from the nation's nuclear weapons program. This waste is
currently in temporary storage at DOE sites in Washington, South
Carolina, and Idaho. After investing more than 20 years and about $18
billion, DOE acknowledged in February 2002 that the program to clean up
its high-level waste was far behind schedule, far over budget, and in
need of major change. In 2002, DOE began an initiative to reduce the
program's nearly $105-billion estimated cost and 70-year time frame to
finish permanent disposal of this waste. Our testimony, based on work
included in the report being released by the Subcommittee
today,<SUP>1</SUP> discusses (1) the components of DOE's high-level
waste and the process involved in preparing the waste for disposal, (2)
the status of DOE's accelerated cleanup initiative for high-level
waste, (3) legal and technical challenges DOE faces in implementing the
initiative, and (4) further opportunities to reduce costs beyond those
identified in DOE's current cost-savings proposal or to improve program
management.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: Challenges to
Achieving Potential Savings in DOE's High-Level Waste Cleanup Program,
GAO-03-593 (Washington, D.C.: June 17, 2003).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In summary, we found the following:
DOE's high-level waste has many components, ranging from radioactive
isotopes and corrosive chemicals to the water in which much of
this material was initially discharged. The radioactive
components vary greatly; a small portion will remain
dangerously radioactive for millions of years, while the vast
majority will lose much of their radioactivity more quickly, so
that more than 90 percent of the current radioactivity will be
gone within 100 years. To prepare the waste for permanent
disposal, DOE plans to separate the waste into two waste
streams: one with high levels of radioactivity and the other
with lower concentrations of radioactivity. DOE expects that
this process will concentrate at least 90 percent of the
radioactivity into a volume that is significantly smaller than
the current total volume of waste. DOE plans to immobilize and
bury the highly radioactive portion in a permanent underground
repository. The remaining waste will be immobilized and
disposed of at the location where it is currently stored or at
some other location.
DOE's initiative to accelerate the cleanup is evolving, and while its
savings estimates are changing accordingly, we have ongoing
concerns about the reliability of those estimates. As of April
2003, DOE estimated it could shorten the waste cleanup schedule
by 20-35 years and save up to $29 billion. To help achieve
these schedule and cost reductions, DOE has identified
alternative treatment and disposal strategies, such as
developing ways to permanently dispose of more of the
radioactive waste at current sites rather than moving it to the
planned underground repository. However, our assessment of
DOE's savings estimate indicates that it may not be reliable.
For example, the savings analysis does not take into account
all costs associated with alternative treatment strategies.
Also, the estimate of savings does not compare costs on the
basis of ``present value,'' where dollars to be saved in future
years are discounted to a common year to reflect the time value
of money. At DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, such
an adjustment would lower the savings estimate for accelerated
waste processing by $2.6 billion--from $5.4 billion to $2.8
billion (in 2003 dollars).
DOE faces significant legal and technical challenges to realize the
estimated savings. A key legal challenge involves DOE's
authority to apply a designation other than high-level waste to
some waste with relatively low concentrations of radioactivity,
so that this portion can be treated less expensively than
highly radioactive waste. A recent court ruling invalidated
this redesignation process, thus precluding DOE from proceeding
with this element of its accelerated initiative. If DOE cannot
meet its accelerated schedules, then potential savings are in
jeopardy. A key technical challenge is that DOE's approach
relies primarily on laboratory testing to confirm that
separating waste into high-level and low-activity portions will
be successful. At the Hanford Site in Washington State, DOE is
planning to construct full-scale facilities before fully
testing the technologies on an integrated basis--an approach
that has failed on another project in the past, resulting in
significant cost increases and schedule delays.
DOE is exploring additional cost savings beyond those identified in
its current cost-saving proposals. The proposals that offer
significant potential are being developed by the Hanford and
Savannah River sites. These proposals call for increasing the
amount of waste that can be concentrated into the canisters
destined for the permanent underground repository. DOE's data
indicates that these proposals, if successful, could save
several billion dollars. Considerable evaluation of these
proposals remains to be done and cost-saving estimates have not
yet been fully developed, according to DOE officials. DOE also
has opportunities to improve its management of the cleanup
program by addressing management weaknesses that we and others
have identified in the past. Although DOE has--taken steps to
improve program management, we have continuing concerns about
management weaknesses in several areas. These include making
key decisions without rigorous supporting analysis,
incorporating technology into projects before it is
sufficiently tested, and pursuing a ``fast-track'' approach of
launching into facility construction before completing
sufficient design work. It does not appear that DOE's current
management efforts will fully address these weaknesses.
Our report makes several recommendations to DOE that, if
implemented, will help to manage or reduce legal and technical risks to
the program, avoid costly delays, and strengthen overall program
management. DOE agreed to consider our recommendation to seek
clarification from the Congress regarding its authority to determine
that some waste can be treated and disposed of as other than high-level
waste. However, regarding our recommendations that the department
conduct integrated pilot testing of its waste separation processes at
Hanford, and take steps to improve the management of high-level waste
projects, such as by conducting more rigorous analyses to support key
project decisions, DOE believes that its current approach is adequate.
We do not agree with DOE's views and continue to believe that all of
our recommendations are warranted.
background
DOE has a vast complex of sites across the nation dedicated to the
nuclear weapons program. DOE largely ceased production of plutonium and
enriched uranium by 1992, but the waste remains at the sites. Most of
the tanks in which the waste is stored have already exceeded their
design life. For example, many of Hanford's and Savannah River's tanks
were built in the 1940s to 1960s and were designed to last 1040 years.
Leaks from some of these tanks were first detected at Hanford in 1956
and at Savannah River in 1959. Given the age and deteriorating
condition of some of the tanks, there is concern that some of them will
leak additional waste into the soil, where it may migrate to the water
table and, in the case of the Hanford Site, to the Columbia River.
Responsibility for the highlevel waste produced at DOE facilities
is governed primarily by federal laws, including the Atomic Energy Act
of 1954. These laws established responsibility for the regulatory
control of radioactive materials including DOE's high-level waste and
assigned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) the function of
licensing facilities that are expressly authorized for long-term
storage of highlevel radioactive waste generated by DOE. In addition,
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 defined highlevel radioactive
waste. Various other federal laws, including the Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act of 1976, guide how DOE must carry out its cleanup
program. The high-level waste cleanup program is under the leadership
of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management. It involves
consultation with a variety of stakeholders, including the
Environmental Protection Agency, state environmental agencies where DOE
sites are located, county and local governmental agencies, citizen
groups, advisory groups, and Native American tribes.
doe's high-level waste is a complex mixture that requires a multi-step
process to prepare for disposal
The waste in the tanks at the Hanford and Savannah River sites and
the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls is a complex mixture of
radioactive and hazardous components. DOE's process for preparing it
for disposal is designed to separate much of the radioactive material
from other waste components.
Much of the Radioactivity Declines Relatively Quickly
Nearly all the radioactivity in the waste originates from
radionuclides with half-lives <SUP>2</SUP> of about 30 years or less.
The relatively short half-lives of most of the radionuclides in the
waste means that within 30 years, about 50 percent of the current
radioactivity will have decayed away, and within 100 years this figure
will rise to more than 90 percent. Figure 1 shows the pattern of decay,
using 2002 to 2102 as the 100-year period. Extending the analysis
beyond the 100-year period shown in the figure, in 300 years, 99.8
percent of the radioactivity will have decayed, leaving 0.2 percent of
the current radioactivity remaining.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Each radioactive component, or radionuclide, in high-level
waste loses its radioactivity at a rate that differs for each
component. This rate of decay, which cannot be changed, is measured in
``half-lives''--that is, the length of time required for half of the
unstable atoms to decay and release their radiation.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Despite the relatively rapid decay of most of the current
radioactivity, some radionuclides have half-lives in the hundreds of
thousands of years and will remain dangerously radioactive for millions
of years. Some of these long-lived radionuclides are potentially very
mobile in the environment and therefore must remain permanently
isolated. If these highly mobile radionuclides leak out or are released
into the environment, they can contaminate the soil and water.
processing can concentrate the radioactivity into a much smaller volume
of waste
DOE plans to isolate the radioactive components and prepare the
waste for disposal through a multi-step treatment process. DOE expects
this process to concentrate at least 90 percent of the radioactivity
into a much smaller volume that can be permanently isolated for at
least 10,000 years in a geologic repository. The portion of the waste
not sent to the geologic repository will have relatively small amounts
of radioactivity and longlived radionuclides. Based on current disposal
standards used by the NRC, if the radioactivity of this remaining waste
is sufficiently low, it can be disposed of on site near the surface of
the ground, using less complex and expensive techniques than those
required for the highly radioactive portion. DOE plans to dispose of
this waste on site in vaults or canisters, or at other designated
disposal facilities.
DOE has successfully applied this process in a demonstration
project at the West Valley site in New York State. At West Valley,
separation of the low-activity portion from the highlevel portion of
the waste reduced by 90 percent the quantity of waste requiring
permanent isolation and disposal at a geologic repository. The
highlevel portion was stabilized in a glass material (vitrified) and
remains stored at the site pending completion of the highlevel waste
geologic repository and resolution of other issues associated with
disposal costs.<SUP>3</SUP> The remaining low-activity portion was
mixed with cement-forming materials, poured into drums where it
solidified into grout (a cement-like material), and remains stored on
site, awaiting shipment to an off-site disposal facility.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ At Savannah River, highlevel sludge from the tanks has also
been stabilized in glass material and is currently stored on site
pending completion of the geologic repository. As of August 30, 2002,
Savannah River had produced 1,331 canisters of this stabilized waste.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
s initiative for accelerating cleanup is still evolving, with the
extent of savings uncertain
DOE's new initiative, implemented in 2002, attempts to address the
schedule delays and increasing costs DOE has encountered in its efforts
to treat and dispose of highlevel waste. This initiative is still
evolving. As of April 2003, DOE had identified several strategies to
help reduce the time needed to treat and dispose of the waste. Based on
these strategies, DOE estimated that it could reduce the waste cleanup
schedule by about 20 to 35 years at its high-level waste sites and save
about $29 billion compared to the existing program
baseline.<SUP>4</SUP> While some degree of savings is likely if the
strategies are successfully implemented, the extent of the savings is
still uncertain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Unless otherwise noted, all dollar estimates are as reported by
DOE and are in current--dollars.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Initiative Centers on Ways to Speed Disposal and Save Money
Many of DOE's proposals to speed cleanup and reduce environmental
risk involve ways to do one or more of the following:
Deal with some tank waste as low-level or transuranic <SUP>5</SUP>
waste, rather than as highlevel waste. Doing so would eliminate
the need to vitrify the waste for off-site disposal in the
geologic repository for highlevel waste.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Low-level radioactive waste is defined as radioactive material
that is not highlevel radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel,
transuranic waste, or certain by-product material (the tailings or
wastes produced by the extraction or concentration or uranium or
thorium from any ore processed primarily for its source material
content). 42 U.S.C. 10101(16). Transuranic wastes come primarily from
reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and from fabrication of nuclear
weapons. Transuranic waste is defined as waste with radionuclides with
atomic numbers greater than 92 (that is, uranium) and having half-lives
greater than 20 years in concentrations greater than 100 nanocuries per
gram.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complete the waste treatment more quickly by using additional or
supplemental technologies. For example, DOE's Hanford Site is
considering using up to four supplemental technologies, in
addition to vitrification, to process its low-activity waste.
DOE believes these technologies are needed to help it meet a
schedule milestone date of 2028 agreed to with regulators to
complete waste processing. Without these technologies, DOE
believes waste treatment would not be completed before 2048.
Segregate the waste more fully than initially planned and tailor
waste treatment to each of the waste types. By doing so, DOE
plans to apply less costly treatment methods to waste with
lower concentrations of radioactivity.
Close waste storage tanks earlier than expected, thereby avoiding the
operating costs involved in maintaining the tanks and
monitoring the wastes.
Table 1 summarizes the estimated cost savings for each DOE site if
accelerated proposals for cleaning up high-level waste are successfully
implemented.
Table 1: DOE's Estimated Cost Savings from Proposals to Accelerate Cleanup of High-Level Waste
Amounts are in billions of current dollars, fiscal year 2003 to the end of cleanup
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current Estimated
baseline Accelerated savings from
Site lifecycle cost lifecycle cost accelerated
estimate estimate initiatives
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Idaho National Laboratory....................................... $10.07 $3.10 $6.97
Hanford......................................................... 56.19 41.67 14.52
Savannah River.................................................. 18.82 11.49 7.33
Totals.......................................................... $85.08 $56.26 $28.82
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: DOE.
Note: West Valley is not included in this table because high-level waste cleanup at the site was essentially
completed in September 2002.
savings estimate may not be reliable
Our review indicates that DOE's current estimate of $29 billion may
not yet be reliable and that the actual amount to be saved if DOE
successfully implements the alternative waste treatment and disposal
strategies may be substantially different from what DOE is projecting.
We have several concerns about the reliability and completeness of the
estimate. These concerns include the accuracy of baseline cost
estimates from which savings are calculated, whether all appropriate
costs are included in the analysis, and whether the savings estimates
properly reflect the timing of the savings or uncertainties.
Baseline Costs Are Not Fully Reliable
DOE's current lifecycle cost baseline is used as the base cost from
which potential savings associated with any improvements are measured.
However, in recent years, we and others have raised concerns about the
reliability of DOE's baseline cost estimates. In a 1999 report, we
noted that DOE lacked a standard methodology for sites to use in
developing their lifecycle cost baseline, raising a concern about the
reliability of data used to develop these cost estimates.<SUP>6</SUP>
DOE's Office of Inspector General also raised a concern in a 1999
review of DOE project estimates, noting that several project cost
estimates examined were not supported or complete. DOE acknowledged in
its February 2002 review of the cleanup program that baseline cost
estimates do not provide a reliable picture of project
costs.<SUP>7</SUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: DOE's
Accelerated Cleanup Strategy Has Benefits but Faces Uncertainties, GAO/
RCED99129 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 30, 1999).
\7\ U.S. Department of Energy, A Review of the Environmental
Management Program (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 4, 2002).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estimates of Project Costs May Be Incomplete
Some of DOE's savings may be based on incomplete estimates of the
costs for the accelerated proposals. According to Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) guidance on developing cost estimates, agencies should
ensure that all appropriate costs are addressed in the estimate.
However, DOE has not always done so. For example, the Idaho National
Laboratory's estimated savings of up to $7 billion is based, in large
part, on eliminating the need to build a vitrification facility to
treat its waste. However, the waste may have to undergo an alternative
treatment method before it can be accepted at a geological repository,
and the Idaho National Laboratory is considering four different
technologies for doing so. Nevertheless, DOE's current savings estimate
reflects the potential cost of only one of those technologies. DOE has
not yet developed the costs of using any of the other waste treatment
approaches. DOE noted that the accelerated lifecycle estimate could
likely change depending on which one of the technologies is selected
and the associated costs of treating the waste are developed.
Savings Estimates Do Not Reflect Timing, Uncertainty, or Nonbudgetary
Impacts
According to OMB guidance, agencies should ensure that the timing
of when the savings will occur is accounted for, that uncertainties are
recognized and quantified where possible, and that nonbudgetary
impacts, such as a change in the level of risk to workers, are
quantified, or at least described. We found problems in all three
areas.
Regarding the time value of money, applying OMB guidance would mean
that estimates of savings in DOE's accelerated plans should
reflect a comparison of its baseline cost estimate with the
alternative, expressed in a ``present value,'' where the
dollars are discounted to a common year to reflect the time
value of money. Instead, DOE's savings estimates generally
measure savings by comparing dollars in different years. For
example, the Savannah River Site estimates a savings of nearly
$5.4 billion by reducing by 8 years (from 2027 to 2019) the
time required to process its highlevel waste. Adjusting the
savings estimate to present value in 2003 results in a savings
of $2.8 billion in 2003 dollars.
Regarding uncertainties, in contrast to OMB guidance, the DOE savings
estimates generally do not consider uncertainties. For example,
the savings projected in the Idaho National Laboratory's
accelerated plan reflect the proposal to no longer build the
vitrification facility and an associated reduction in
operations costs. However, the savings do not account for
uncertainties such as whether alternatives to vitrification
will succeed and at what cost. Rather than reflecting
uncertainties by providing a range of savings, DOE's savings
estimate is a single point estimate of $7 billion.
Regarding nonbudgetary impacts, DOE's savings estimates generally do
not fully assess the value of potential nonbudgetary impacts,
such as a change in the level of risk to workers or potential
effects on the environment. OMB guidelines recommend
identification and, where possible, quantification of other
expected benefits and costs to society when evaluating
alternative plans. For example, the Idaho National Laboratory's
accelerated plan does not assess potential increases in
environmental risk, if any, from disposing of the waste without
stabilizing it into a vitrified form. By not assessing these
benefits and risks to workers and the environment, DOE leaves
unclear how important these risks and trade-offs are to
choosing an alternative treatment approach.
key legal and technical challenges could limit potential savings from
doe's accelerated cleanup initiative
DOE faces significant legal and technical challenges in achieving
the cost and schedule reductions proposed in its new initiative. On the
legal side, DOE's proposals depend heavily on the agency's authority to
apply a designation other than ``highlevel waste'' to the low-activity
portion of the waste stream, so that this low-activity portion does not
have to be disposed of more expensively as highlevel waste. The portion
of DOE's order setting out criteria for making such determinations has
been invalidated in a recent court ruling. On the technical side, DOE's
proposals rest heavily on the successful application of waste
separation methods that are still under development and will not be
fully tested before being put in place. DOE's track record in this
regard has not been strong; it has had to abandon past projects that
were also based on promising--but not fully tested--technologies.
Either or both of these challenges could limit the potential savings
from DOE's accelerated cleanup initiative.
DOE's Accelerated Initiative Relies on a Process for Reclassifying
Waste That the Court Has Ruled Invalid
DOE has traditionally managed all of the wastes in its tanks as
highlevel waste because the waste resulted primarily from the
reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and contains significant amounts of
radioactivity. However, by separating the waste into high-level and
low-activity portions and managing the low-activity portion as
something other than high-level waste, DOE could use less costly and
less complicated treatment approaches. DOE has developed guidelines for
deciding when waste in the tanks should not be considered highlevel
waste. In 1999, under Order 435.1, DOE formalized its process for
determining which waste is incidental to reprocessing (``incidental
waste''), not high level waste, and therefore will not be sent to a
geological repository for highlevel waste disposal. This process
provides a basis for DOE to treat and dispose of some portion of its
wastes less expensively as low-level or transuranic wastes.
DOE's ability to define some waste as incidental to reprocessing,
and to then follow a different set of treatment and disposal
requirements for that waste, is central to its overall strategy for
addressing its tank waste. For example, DOE planned to use its
incidental waste process to manage about 90 percent of its 54 million
gallons of tank waste at the Hanford Site as low-level waste, rather
than process it through a highlevel waste vitrification facility. Using
that approach, most of the waste would be eligible for treatment and
disposal on site. Such an approach would save billions compared to
treating all of the waste as highlevel waste and sending it for
disposal in a highlevel waste geologic repository.
A recent court ruling precludes DOE from reclassifying some of its
waste as other than high-level waste. In March 2002, the Natural
Resources Defense Council and others filed a lawsuit challenging DOE's
authority to manage its wastes through its incidental waste
process.<SUP>8</SUP> The plaintiffs alleged that DOE arbitrarily
established the incidental waste determination process without proper
regard for the law or properly establishing a justification for this
process. A primary concern of the plaintiffs was that DOE would use its
incidental waste process to permanently leave intensely radioactive
waste sediments in the tanks with only minimal treatment. The lawsuit
alleged that DOE's incidental waste process improperly allows DOE to
reclassify high-level waste as incidental waste that does not need to
be treated in the same way as high-level waste. According to the
plaintiffs, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act defines all waste originating
from a given source--that is, from reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel--
as highlevel waste and requires that such waste be managed as highlevel
waste, yet DOE has chosen to differentiate its wastes according to the
level of radioactivity and manage them accordingly. In a July 3, 2003
ruling on the lawsuit, the court agreed with the plaintiffs, stating
that the portion of DOE's Order 435.1 setting out its incidental waste
determination process violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and thus is
invalid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Abraham, No. 01-CV-
413 (D. Idaho, filed Mar. 5, 2002). The lawsuit was originally filed in
January 2000 in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and was subsequently
transferred to the federal district court in Idaho. The other parties
to the lawsuit are the Snake River Alliance, the Confederated Tribes
and Bands of the Yakama Nation, and the Shoshone Bannock Tribes. In
addition, the states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and South Carolina
are participating as amicus curiae.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The court's ruling could seriously hinder DOE's efforts to
implement its accelerated treatment and disposal strategies. Under the
ruling, DOE's incidental waste determinations cannot be implemented.
Since the start of the lawsuit, DOE had not implemented any of its
approved incidental waste determinations and had not yet decided
whether to defer or proceed with its pending incidental waste
determinations--such as those for closing tanks at the Savannah River
Site and Idaho National Laboratory.
If DOE appeals the court ruling, a lengthy legal process could
follow. A lengthy legal process will also likely delay treatment plans
for this waste and delay closing tanks on an accelerated schedule. For
example, the Idaho National Laboratory planned to begin closing tanks
in the spring of 2003, pending approval of an incidental waste
determination that would allow DOE to close the tanks by managing tank
waste residuals as low-level waste.<SUP>9</SUP> A DOE official at the
Idaho National Laboratory told us that while a delay of several months
would not immediately threaten schedule dates, a delay beyond 24 months
would seriously affect the site's ability to meet its accelerated 2012
date to close all of the tanks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Tank closure at the Idaho National Laboratory is also pending
completion of its National Environmental Policy Act--process.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the court's ruling invalidating DOE's incidental waste
determination process is upheld, DOE may need to find an alternative
that would allow it to treat waste with lower concentrations of
radioactivity less expensively. Searching for such an alternative could
delay progress at all three of DOE's highlevel waste sites that rely on
incidental waste determinations. If DOE cannot meet its accelerated
schedules, then potential savings are in jeopardy. At this point, the
department does not appear to have a strategy to avoid the potential
effects of challenges to its incidental waste determination authority,
either from the current court ruling or future challenges. At the time
of our report, DOE officials told us that they believed the department
would prevail in the legal challenge. DOE believed it would be
premature to explore alternative strategies to overcome potentially
significant delays to the program that could result from a protracted
legal conflict or from an adverse decision. Such strategies could range
from exploring alternative approaches for establishing an incidental
waste regulation to asking that the Congress provide legislative
authority for DOE to implement an incidental waste policy.
Accelerated Initiative Also Relies on Waste Separation Approaches That
Will Not Be Fully Tested
Like the ability to determine that some waste is incidental to
reprocessing, the ability to separate the waste components is important
to meet waste cleanup schedule and cost goals. If the waste is not
separated, all of it--about 94 million gallons--may have to be treated
as highlevel waste and disposed of in the geological repository. Doing
so would require a much larger repository than currently planned, and
drive up disposal costs by billions of dollars. Successful separation
will substantially reduce the volume of waste needing disposal at the
planned repository, as well as the time and cost required to prepare it
for disposal, and allow less expensive methods to be used in treating
and disposing of the remaining low-activity waste. The waste separation
process is complicated, difficult, and unique in scope at each site.
The waste differs among sites not only in volume but also in the way it
has been generated, managed, and stored over the years.
The challenge to successfully separate the waste is significant at
the Hanford Site, where DOE intends to build a facility for separating
the waste before fully testing the separation processes that will be
used. The planned laboratory testing includes a combination of pilot-
scale testing of major individual processes and use of operational data
for certain of those processes for which DOE officials said they had
extensive experience. However, integrated testing will not be performed
until full-scale facilities are constructed. DOE plans to fully test
the processes for the first time during the operational tests of the
newly constructed facilities.
This approach does not fully reflect DOE guidance, which calls for
ensuring that new or complex technology is mature before integrating it
into a project. Specifically, DOE's Project Management Order 413.3
requires DOE to assess the risks associated with technology at various
phases of a project's development. For projects with significant
technical uncertainties that could affect cost and schedule, corrective
action plans to address these uncertainties are required before the
projects can proceed. In addition, DOE's supplementary project
management guidance suggests that technologies be developed to a
reasonable level of maturity before a project progresses to full
implementation to reduce risks and avoid cost increases and schedule
delays. The guidance suggests that DOE avoid the risk of designing
facilities concurrently with technology development.
The laboratories working to develop Hanford's waste separation
process have identified several technical uncertainties, which they are
working to address. These uncertainties or critical technology risks
include problems with separating waste solids through an elaborate
filtration system, problems associated with mixing the waste during
separation processes, and various problems associated with the low-
activity waste evaporator.
Given these and other uncertainties, Hanford's construction
contractor and outside experts have seen Hanford's approach as having
high technical risk and have proposed integrated testing during project
development. However, DOE and the construction contractor eventually
decided not to construct an integrated pilot facility and instead to
accept a higherrisk approach. DOE officials said they wanted to avoid
increasing project costs and schedule delays, which they believe will
result from building a testing facility. Instead, Hanford officials
said that they will continue to conduct pilot-scale tests of major
separation processes. DOE officials said they believe this testing will
provide assurance that the separation processes will function in an
integrated manner. After the full-scale treatment facilities are
constructed, DOE plans to fully test and demonstrate the separation
process during facility startup operations.
The consequences of not adhering to sound technology development
guidelines can be severe. At the Savannah River Site, for example, DOE
invested nearly $500 million over nearly 15 years to develop a waste
separation process, called in-tank precipitation, to treat Savannah
River's highlevel waste. While laboratory tests of this process were
viewed as successful, DOE did not adequately test the components until
it started full-scale operations. DOE followed this approach, in part,
because the technology was commercially available and considered
``mature.'' However, when DOE started full-scale operations, major
problems occurred. Benzene, a dangerously flammable byproduct, was
produced in large quantities. Operations were stopped after DOE spent
about $500 million because experts could not explain how or why benzene
was being produced and could not determine how to economically
reconfigure the facility to minimize it. Consequences of this
technology failure included significant cost increases, schedule
delays, a full-scale waste separation process that did not work, and a
less-than-optimum waste treatment operation. Savannah River is now
developing and implementing a new separation technology at an
additional cost of about $1.8 billion and a delay of about 7
years.<SUP>10</SUP>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: Process to
Remove Radioactive Waste From Savannah River Tanks Fails to Work, GAO/
RCED-99-69 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 30, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subsequent assessments of the problems that developed at Savannah
River found that DOE (1) relied on laboratory-scale tests to
demonstrate separation processes, (2) believed that technical problems
could be resolved later during facility construction and startup, and
(3) decided to scale up the technology from lab tests to full-scale
without the benefit of using additional testing facilities to confirm
that processes would work at a larger scale. Officials at Hanford are
following a similar approach. Several experts with whom we talked
cautioned that if separation processes at Hanford do not work as
planned, facilities will have to be retrofitted, and potential cost
increases and schedule delays would be much greater than any associated
with integrated process testing in a pilot facility.
opportunities exist to explore additional cost savings and to
strengthen program management
In addition to the potential cost savings identified in the
accelerated site cleanup plans, DOE continues to develop and evaluate
other proposals to reduce costs but is still assessing them. Although
the potential cost savings have not been fully developed, they could be
in the range of several billion dollars, if the proposals are
successfully implemented. At the Savannah River and Hanford sites, for
example, DOE is identifying ways to increase the amount of waste that
can be placed in its highlevel waste canisters to reduce treatment and
disposal costs. DOE also has a number of initiatives under way to
improve overall program management. However, we are concerned that the
initiatives may not be adequate. In our examinations of problems that
have plagued DOE's project management over the years, three
contributing factors often emerged making key project decisions without
rigorous analysis, incorporating new technology before it has received
sufficient testing, and using a ``fast-track'' approach (concurrent
design and construction) on complex projects. Ensuring that these
weaknesses are addressed as part of its program management initiatives
would further improve the management of the program and increase the
chances for success.
DOE Is Considering Additional Potential Opportunities to Reduce Costs
DOE is continuing to identify other proposals for reducing costs
under its accelerated cleanup initiative. Among the proposals that DOE
is considering, the ones that appear to offer significant cost savings
opportunities would increase the amount of waste placed in each
disposal canister. The amount of waste that can be placed into a
canister depends on a complex set of factors, including the specific
mix of radioactive material combined with other chemicals in the waste,
such as chromium and sulfate, that affect the processing and quality of
the immobilized product. These factors affect the percentage of waste
than can be placed in each canister because they indicate the
likelihood that radioactive constituents could move out of the
immobilizing glass medium and into the environment. The greater the
potential for the waste to become mobile, the lower the allowable
percentage of waste and the higher the percentage of glass material
that must be used.
Savannah River officials believe they can increase the amount of
waste loaded in each canister from 28 percent to about 35 percent, and
for at least one waste batch, to nearly 50 percent. In June 2003,
Savannah River began to implement this new process to increase the
amount of waste in each canister. If successful, Savannah River's
improved approach could reduce the number of canisters needed by about
1,000 canisters and save about $2.7 billion, based on preliminary
estimates. Other efforts to increase waste loading of the canisters are
also under way that, if successful, may permit further cost savings of
about $1.7 billion. The Hanford Site is also exploring ways to decrease
the numbers of waste canisters that will be needed by using waste forms
other than the standard borosilicate glass. This effort is in a very
early stage of development and cost-savings estimates have not been
fully developed.
doe has opportunities to improve management of the program by
addressing previously identified weaknesses
In addition to site-specific proposals for saving time and money,
DOE is also undertaking management improvements using teams to study
individual issues. Nine teams are currently in place, while other teams
to address issues such as improving the environmental review process to
better support decision making have not yet been formed. Each team has
a disciplined management process to follow,<SUP>11</SUP> and even after
the teams' work is completed, any implementation will take time. These
efforts are in the early stages, and therefore it is unclear if they
will correct the performance problems DOE and others have identified.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Under DOE's project management principles, for example, teams
must define project requirements, conduct preliminary risk assessments,
and prepare a risk mitigation plan prior to developing a baseline cost
estimate of proposed alternatives.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are concerned that these management reforms may not go far
enough in addressing performance problems with the highlevel waste
program. Our concerns stem from our review of initiatives under way in
the management teams, our discussions with DOE officials, and our past
and current work, as well as work by others inside and outside DOE. We
have identified three recurring weaknesses in DOE's management of
cleanup projects that we believe need to be addressed as part of DOE's
overall review. These weaknesses cut across the various issues that the
teams are working on and are often at the center of problems that have
been identified. Two of these weaknesses have been raised earlier in
this testimony--lack of rigor in the analysis supporting key decisions,
and incorporating technology into projects before it is sufficiently
mature. The final area of weakness involves using ``fast-track''
methods to begin construction of complex facilities before sufficient
planning and design have taken place.
Key Decisions Not Always Supported by Rigorous Current Analysis
DOE's project management guidance emphasizes the importance of
rigorous and current analysis to support decision making during the
development of DOE projects. Similarly, OMB guidance states that
agencies should validate earlier planning decisions with updated
information before finalizing decisions to construct facilities. This
validation is particularly important where early cost comparisons are
susceptible to uncertainties and change.
DOE does not always follow this guidance, yet no DOE management
team appears to be addressing this weakness. Proceeding without
rigorous review has been a recurring cause of many of the problems we
have identified in past DOE projects. For example, the decision at
Hanford to construct a vitrification plant to treat Hanford's low-
activity waste has not been validated with updated information.
Hanford's primary analysis justifying the cost of this approach was
prepared in 1999 and was based on technical performance data, disposal
assumptions, and cost data developed in the early to mid-1990s
conditions that are no longer applicable. Subsequent analyses have
continued to rely on this data. However, since that time conditions
have changed, including the performance capabilities of alternative
technologies such as grout, the relative cost of different
technologies, and the amount of waste DOE intends to process through a
vitrification facility.
DOE officials disagree with our assessment of their analysis,
stating that a comprehensive analysis was conducted in the spring of
2003. However, DOE's highlevel waste project team agreed that the DOE
officials at Hanford had not performed a current, rigorous analysis of
low-activity waste treatment options including the use of grout as an
alternative to vitrification, and the team encouraged the Hanford site
to update its analysis based on current waste treatment and disposal
assumptions. DOE officials at Hanford told us they do not plan to
reassess the decision to construct a low-activity vitrification
facility because their compliance agreement with the state of
Washington calls for vitrification of this waste. They also stated that
vitrification is a technology needed for destroying hazardous
constituents in a portion of the waste.
New Technology Is Incorporated before It Is Sufficiently Mature
Our work on Department of Defense acquisitions has documented a set
of ``best practices'' used by industry for integrating new technology
into major projects. We reported in July 1999 that the maturity of a
technology at the start of a project is an important determinant of
success.<SUP>12</SUP> As technology develops from preconceptual design
through preliminary design and testing, the maturity of the technology
increases and the risks associated with incorporating that technology
into a project decrease. Waiting until technology is well-developed and
tested before integrating it into a project will greatly increase the
chances of meeting cost, schedule, and technical baselines. On the
other hand, integrating technology that is not fully mature into a
project greatly increases the risk of cost increases and schedule
delays. According to industry experts, correcting problems after a
project has begun can cost 10 times as much as resolving technology
problems beforehand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ U.S. General Accounting Office, Best Practices: Better
Management of Technology Development Can Improve Weapon System
Outcomes, GAO/NSIAD-99-162 (Washington, D.C.: July 30, 1999).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOE's project management guidance issued in October 2000 is
consistent with these best practices. The guidance discusses technology
development and sets out suggested steps to ensure that new technology
is brought to a sufficient level of maturity at each decision point in
a project. For example, during the conceptual design phase of a
project, ``proof of concept'' testing should be performed before
approval to proceed to the preliminary design phase. Furthermore, the
guidance states that attempting to concurrently develop the technology
and design the facility for a project poses ill-defined risks to the
project.
Nevertheless, as we discussed earlier, DOE sites continue to
integrate immature technologies into their projects. For example, as
discussed earlier, DOE is constructing a facility at the Hanford Site
to separate highlevel waste components, although integrated testing of
the many steps in the separations process has not occurred and will not
occur until after the facility is completed. DOE, trying to keep the
project on schedule and within budget, has decided the risks associated
with this approach are acceptable. However, there are many projects for
which this approach created schedule delays and unexpected costs. The
continued reliance on this approach in the face of so many past
problems is a signal of an area that needs careful attention as DOE
proceeds with its management reform efforts. At present, no DOE
management team is addressing this issue.
Facility Construction Starts before Design Is Sufficiently Developed
Finally, we have concerns about DOE's practice of launching into
construction of complex, one-of-a-kind facilities well before their
final design is sufficiently developed, again in an effort to save time
and money. Both DOE guidance and external reviews stress the importance
of adequate upfront planning before beginning project construction.
DOE's project management guidance identifies a series of well-defined
steps before construction begins and suggests that complex projects
with treatment processes that have never before been combined into a
facility do not lend themselves to being expedited. However, DOE
guidance does not explicitly prohibit a fast-track--or concurrent
design and construction--approach to complex, one-of-a-kind projects,
and DOE often follows this approach. For example, at the Hanford Site,
DOE is concurrently designing and constructing facilities for the
largest, most complex environmental cleanup job in the United States.
Problems are already surfacing. Only 24 months after the contract was
awarded, the project was 10 months behind schedule dates, construction
activities have outpaced design work causing inefficient work
sequencing, and DOE has withheld performance fee from the design/
construction contractor because of these problems.
DOE experienced similar problems in concurrent design and
construction activities on other waste treatment facilities. Both the
spent nuclear fuel project at Hanford and the waste separations
facility at the Savannah River Site encountered schedule delays and
cost increases in part because the concurrent approach led to mistakes
and rework, and required extra time and money to address the
problems.<SUP>13</SUP> In its 2001 follow-up report on DOE project
management, the National Research Council noted that inadequate pre-
construction planning and definition of project scope led to cost and
schedule overruns on DOE's cleanup projects.<SUP>14</SUP> The Council
reported that research studies suggest that inadequate project
definition accounts for 50 percent of the cost increases for
environmental remediation projects. Again, no DOE team is specifically
examining the ``fast-track'' approach, yet it frequently contributed to
past problems and DOE continues to use this approach.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ For a discussion of the problems associated with the fast
track design/build approach on these projects, see U.S. General
Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: DOE's Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel
Storage Project Cost, Schedule, and Management Issues, GAO/RCED-99-267
(Washington, D.C.: Sept. 20, 1999) and Nuclear Waste: Process to Remove
Radioactive Waste From Savannah River Tanks Fails to Work, GAO-RCED-99-
69 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 30, 1999).
\14\ National Research Council, Progress in Improving Project
Management at the Department of Energy (Washington, D.C.: Nov. 2001).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
conclusions
DOE's efforts to improve its highlevel waste cleanup program and to
rein in the uncontrolled growth in project costs and schedules are
important and necessary. The accelerated cleanup initiative represents
at least the hope of treating and disposing of the waste in a more
economical and timely way, although the actual savings are unknown at
this time. Furthermore, specific components of this initiative face key
legal and technical challenges. Much of the potential for success
rested on DOE's ability to dispose of large quantities of waste with
relatively low concentrations of radioactivity on site by applying its
incidental waste process. Recently, a court ruled that the portion of
DOE's order setting out its incidental waste determination process
violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and is invalid. Thus, DOE is
precluded from implementing this element of its accelerated initiative.
Success in accelerating cleanup also rests on DOE's ability to obtain
successful technical performance from its as-yet unproven waste
separation processes. Any technical problems with these processes will
likely result in costly delays. At DOE's Hanford Site, we believe the
potential for such problems warrants reconsidering the need for more
thorough testing of the processes, before completing construction of
the full-scale waste separation facility.
DOE's accelerated cleanup initiative should mark the beginning, not
the end, of DOE's efforts to identify other opportunities to improve
the program by accomplishing the work more quickly, more effectively,
or at less cost. As DOE continues to pursue other management
improvements, it should reassess certain aspects of its current
management approach, including the quality of the analysis underlying
key decisions, the adequacy of its approach to incorporating new
technologies into projects, and the merits of a fast-track approach to
designing and building complex nuclear facilities. Although the
challenges are great, the opportunities for program improvements are
even greater. Therefore, DOE must continue its efforts to clean up its
highlevel waste while demonstrating tangible, measurable program
improvements.
In the report being released today, we made several recommendations
to help DOE manage or reduce the legal and technical risks faced by the
program as well as to strengthen DOE's overall program management. DOE
agreed to consider seeking clarification from Congress regarding its
authority to define some waste as incidental to reprocessing, if the
legal challenge to its authority significantly affected DOE's ability
to achieve savings under the accelerated initiative. Regarding our
recommendations to conduct integrated pilot-scale testing of the
separations facility at Hanford before construction is completed, and
to make other management improvements to address the weaknesses I just
discussed, DOE's position is that it has already taken appropriate
steps to manage the technology risks and strengthen its management
practices. We disagree and believe that implementing all of our
recommendations would help reduce the risk of costly delays and improve
overall management of DOE's entire high-level waste program.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee. That
concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to respond to any questions
that you may have.
Mr. Greenwood. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
The Chair recognizes himself for 10 minutes for
questioning. Let me start with you, Ms. Roberson.
Other DOE sites and other countries have found grout to be
the best solution for disposing of low activity waste,
including at the Savannah River Site. So why has DOE agreed to
vitrify low activity waste at Hanford?
Ms. Roberson. Mr. Chairman, we are looking at a number of
technology alternatives to stabilize material, and grout is
still one of those that we are evaluating in conjunction with
our regulators for some material.
Mr. Greenwood. Well, then, is it not the case that DOE has
agreed to vitrify low level activity waste at Hanford?
Ms. Roberson. The DOE commitment that preceded this program
was to--I think I am going to look to our site manager--to
vitrify----
Mr. Greenwood. If you would identify yourself and----
Ms. Roberson. Right.
Mr. Greenwood. Just so you know what your options are. If
you would like to do it this way, if you would like the
gentleman to identify himself, take the oath and take the
microphone, we can do it that way. So it is your call.
Ms. Roberson. I was pretty sure I knew the answer. But I
wanted to check with him. Our commitment is to vitrify all of
the high-level waste at Hanford. We are working with our
regulators to look at alternative stabilization techniques, one
of those being grout for some material. And we have a schedule
and we are working through that with our regulators at Hanford.
Mr. Greenwood. To whom did you make the commitment to
vitrify the low level waste at Hanford?
Ms. Roberson. This was a regulatory commitment that
predated our accelerated cleanup agreement.
Mr. Greenwood. So if you want to reverse directions and
look for less expensive options, such as grout and I think you
have indicated others, what would you have to do? Would you
have to issue new regulations in order to do that?
Ms. Roberson. No. What we would need to do is convince our
regulators and the public that we have technically defensible
and sound environmentally other options, and that is what we
are working with them to do.
Mr. Greenwood. Is there any reason to believe that using
grout as an alternative to vitrifying the low level waste would
not be safe and efficient.
Ms. Roberson. I have no reason today to believe that that
would not be a safe, environmentally protective option for some
of the waste.
Mr. Greenwood. Do you know what your timetable is to make
that decision?
Ms. Roberson. 2005. We are working through a testing
program to develop our technical basis. Actual results of
characterization of certain stabilized materials, using those
techniques will be sometime in 2005.
Mr. Greenwood. Okay. Under your accelerated initiative, DOE
expects to save up to $20 billion at the Hanford Site. In 1996,
DOE estimated total project costs at the Hanford vitrification
plant would be $3.2 billion. Only 2 years later, in 1998,
project costs increased to $4.2 billion just to design and
construct the facilities.
As of April 2003 costs increased another $1.6 billion to a
total of $5.8 billion, and the project is 10 months behind
schedule. How does DOE believe it can achieve savings given
this track record of increasing project costs and schedule
delays?
Ms. Roberson. A large segment, Mr. Chairman, reflected in
the cost increase is our accelerated strategy for disposition
of the contents of waste in the tank farm. Previously, the
strategy was multiple vitrification plants. We have relooked at
our design. We have worked with our contractor. We have worked
with our regulator and we believe that construction of one
vitrification plant as we have laid out will meet our needs,
and thus overall, is a cost savings to the program.
Mr. Greenwood. So would I be right in characterizing this
as a case where you are front-loading the costs, you are going
to have larger costs in the earlier years to achieve lower
costs over the life of the project?
Ms. Roberson. That is exactly right. That is one element of
the cost savings. That is not all of it, but it certainly is
one element. And we have modified our designs such that our
through-put can meet our needs and will not require
construction, we believe of additional vitrification plants.
Mr. Greenwood. Okay. In your testimony, you indicate that,
``the recent court decision in the Idaho District Court will
significantly hinder our ability to implement the accelerated
cleanup program.'' You had estimated $20 billion in potential
cost savings with the high-level waste program. Are these
savings achievable if the Idaho District Court rulings stand?
Ms. Roberson. Mr. Chairman, we are still--our legal staff
is still trying to understand the potential impact of the Idaho
District Court ruling. So I am not really prepared to explain
the extent of the impact. But, clearly it could have a
significant impact, not just at Hanford, but at our other sites
as well too.
Mr. Greenwood. Is the Department considering appealing that
Idaho District Court ruling?
Ms. Roberson. I think the Department is considering all
options available to it. It simply hasn't made a decision yet.
Mr. Greenwood. And has the Department asked Congress to
clarify the law?
Ms. Roberson. We are working with Congress in regard to
clarifying the law. And we are in agreement with the GAO's
recommendation in seeking that clarification.
Mr. Greenwood. This committee has jurisdiction over that
issue. And so with whom on this committee are you having
discussions about new legislation?
Ms. Roberson. I don't know if we have had the opportunity
to talk with Dwight. I would need to check with our legal staff
who have been in front of that.
Mr. Greenwood. Well, you are welcome in my office any time
to discuss changing the law.
Ms. Roberson. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Greenwood. Let me turn to Ms. Nazzaro for a moment. GAO
has had concerns for several years about DOE's practice of
using fast-track approaches on complex cleanup projects where
facilities are designed and constructed simultaneously. In
fact, this was the problem with the Pit 9 projects that this
subcommittee investigated in 1997.
Can you elaborate on why this fast track approach is risky
for the Hanford vitrification facility?
Ms. Nazzaro. Well, in general, what you are doing is you
are going ahead and building a facility without fully testing
the technologies that will be incorporated there. So certainly
you run the risk of having to retrofit after the fact.
This same process was used at the Savannah River Site and
did result in further delays and additional costs.
Mr. Greenwood. Well, in terms of testing and technology,
are we inventing a wheel here? I mean, is this brand new
technology that has not been tried and tested elsewhere, either
in this country or other countries?
Ms. Nazzaro. Each of these sites is unique as far as the
make up of the waste and what they are going to do as far as
their strategies for dealing with the waste. So, they are
really one of a kind facilities.
Mr. Greenwood. Ms. Roberson, why don't you respond to that.
GAO has said that you are kind of building the airplane as you
fly it along. What is your take on it?
Ms. Roberson. Well, I agree with GAO if that is the
approach that you employ, that certainly increases your risk in
a project. I would like to make two points however. One is that
there is a fundamental difference between the first of a kind
separations process at Savannah River and the current Hanford
separations process strategy.
The Savannah River separations process was one that relied
on both the technical approach not used in other government or
commercial applications and reliance on the chemical agent not
readily available in commercial scale quantities.
Additionally, no extensive testing of that process using
simulated waste was performed. The Hanford approach relies on
various components. Evaporators, filters, ionic exchange units,
that have successful operational history within DOE and the
commercial industry.
A pilot plant would do little to reduce process
uncertainties such as actual filtration rates because of the
wide range of Hanford tank waste requiring treatment. We are
attempting to mitigate any risk for the Hanford separations
process by performing tests at the Savannah River Technology
Center in which each unit is pilot tested and the product and
recycle streams produced are collected and process tested in
the receiving unit.
This simulates the plant design in that the products from
each unit operation will be collected in tanks and staged
before being fed to the next unit operation. Thus, we believe
that we have--that we are achieving integrated testing of our
operation before we are too far down the road in construction.
Also, in April 2003, with the majority of the design done,
as I talked about earlier, we integrated our accelerated
strategy with our project design. We also evaluated our risk at
that point and we believe we eliminated a significant number of
the technical risks that had been standing, which is in
conjunction with our project management process. So, we believe
that we are taking the necessary actions to mitigate risk in
this project which would exist in any project.
Mr. Greenwood. One final quick question for this round.
This committee has found that the Department of Energy, in
employing contractors, has frequently found that both
Department employees and contractor employees are given credit
cards. And there has been massive abuse by those credit cards
by DOE employees and DOE contractor employees. Do you know if
in this program, you have examined the utilization of credit
cards and checked your system to see whether in fact you are
subject to that kind of abuse?
Ms. Roberson. I believe last fall, following concerns
raised, not necessarily in Department of Energy, the Department
of Energy undertook a fairly extensive evaluation of credit
card usage across the Department. And, as I recall, the results
for the environmental management program and its contractors
was pretty good, in that the management controls in place were
effective.
Mr. Greenwood. My time has expired. The gentleman from
Florida.
Mr. Deutsch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Roberson, with
regard to DOE's plan to test separation technology at Hanford
after the full facility has been constructed, the GAO finds
that, and I quote, this approach does not fully reflect DOE's
guidance, which calls for ensuring that newer complex
technology is mature before integrating it into a project. Is
that an accurate statement?
Ms. Roberson. As I stated earlier, the Department does
disagree with that characterization. And we believe that we are
undertaking an integrated testing approach. We are not building
a pilot plant, but we are conducting integrated testing at the
Savannah River Technology Center.
We also believe that the components of this process do have
commercial success to buildupon, and are not first of a kind.
Mr. Deutsch. Okay. Why would the Department stray from its
own project guidelines?
Ms. Roberson. I don't believe that we are straying from our
own project guidance.
Mr. Deutsch. Can you comment on that, Ms. Nazzaro?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes. Our interpretation of what they are doing
is they are simulating integration, they are not fully
integrating. So until you have a full integration, you still
have a fairly high level of risk.
Mr. Deutsch. All right. According to the GAO, both in the
report and in testimony, DOE should conduct integrated pilot
scale testing at the separation facility at Hanford before
completing full scale construction. GAO believes that while DOE
has experience with individual separation technologies, a
thorough understanding of the integrated process is necessary.
DOE responds that this is--that it has adequate experience
with the technologies involved, the technologies are mature,
and that pilot testing of individual components in the
laboratory is adequate to mitigate any risk. Is this an
accurate summary of both GAO and DOE's position on this point?
Ms. Roberson. Yes, for DOE.
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes, it is. And we have a number of expert
endorsements behind that statement.
Mr. Deutsch. Okay. Now, moving on to an example in the GAO
report, we find that situation of Savannah River's experience
with the waste separation technology called in-tank
precipitation. In that case, GAO found that after $500 million,
15 years successful lab tests and the use of supposed-to-be
mature technology, the project was a bust. It took an
additional $1.8 billion and 7 years to address the problem.
Ms. Roberson, I assume before this debacle at Savannah
River began, that DOE felt it was on safe ground, relying on a
process that looks very similar to what you envision for
Hanford; is that correct?
Ms. Roberson. Well, Congressman Deutsch, I wasn't in the
Department at that time. But we certainly have tried to learn
those lessons that resulted from that experience as well as
others. And we have done that by making sure that we integrated
our expertise, people resources, capability, and experience in
the design and construction and review of the vitrification
plant at Hanford.
Mr. Deutsch. So now that the DOE has experience with the
similar project that went horribly, you know, poorly, it
doesn't stand that DOE has learned from its mistakes. The GAO
finds that the DOE is pursuing a similar strategy at Hanford,
and that several experts with whom we have talked caution that
if the separation processes at Hanford do not work as planned,
facilities will have to be retrofitted and potential cost
increases and schedule delays will be much greater than any
associated with integrated processing testing at a pilot
facility.
Ms. Roberson, given all that has happened at Savannah River
with enormous cost overruns and delays, combined with the GAO
findings, how can DOE possibly justify not conducting
integrated pilot scale testing?
Ms. Roberson. We believe we are conducting integrated
testing of the operational components of this system. We
believe that that is adequate to mitigate the risk of past
experience.
Mr. Deutsch. I mean, again the distinction that Ms. Nazzaro
talked about, the simulated testing, Ms. Nazzaro, in your
report, you state that numerous experts have proposed
constructing and operating an integrated pilot scale facility;
is that correct?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes. And contractors themselves also endorsed
that process.
Mr. Deutsch. Can you list some of those experts that you
consulted?
Ms. Nazzaro. I just wanted to check whether I could mention
their names, sir, that we have cleared them, this with them. We
had Milton Levenson, who is a retired vice president of
Bechtel. He is also a member of the Board of Radioactive Waste
Management of the National Research Council.
Allen Croff is a division director of chemical technology
at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a consultant to the
Committee on Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes. Ed Lahoda,
who is a consulting engineer with Westinghouse Science and
Technology Department in Pittsburgh, and is a member of the
Committee on Long-Term Research Needs for high-level waste at
the Department of Energy sites of the Board of Radioactive
Waste Management.
Greg Chopin, a Distinguished Lawton Professor of Chemistry
who is retired; also a member of the Board on Radioactive Waste
Management. Martin Steindler, director of the Chemical
Technology Division at Argonne National Laboratory, also a
member of the Board on Radioactive Waste Management, and Roy
Gephart, a senior program manager of Chemical Structure and
Group Dynamics at the Environmental Molecular Science
Laboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
We also had within our employ George Hinman, Doctor of
Science in Physics, and Professor Emeritus at Washington State
University.
Mr. Deutsch. You state that the DOE officials at Hanford
acknowledge that the pilot facility could be included in the
project without extending the project schedule; is that
correct?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes. That is correct. The original intent was
to do it in project development.
Mr. Deutsch. Ms. Roberson, you can, no doubt, understand
the skepticism that some members of the subcommittee may have
given the Department's track record on this issue. We all want
this waste disposed of in the safest, most efficient manner.
And this report raises serious concerns about DOE's ability to
achieve this result. I hope you will give serious consideration
to the GAO's recommendation regarding pilot testing and
management practices. I yield back.
Mr. Walden [presiding]. The gentleman yields back his time.
The Chair would yield himself the appropriate 10 minutes.
Ms. Roberson, I noted that as I have had a chance to look
through the GAO audit, and I would admit I haven't had a lot of
time yet since it has just come out, but that there seems to be
a continuing issue about management weaknesses that has been
identified for some time in prior audits. And the GAO indicates
that those weaknesses would seem to be continuing in
management. They are concerned. I think I am characterizing
that correctly.
Can you speak to what your view of that is and what--how
you think those management weaknesses need to be addressed?
Ms. Roberson. Yes. Yes, sir, I would be glad to. I guess
quite frankly there are a number of points that I would like to
make; one specific to this project. As I stated earlier, for
the River Protection Project, we have taken the time to really
look closely at our approach, the schedule for design and
construction, and the April 2003 baseline that has been
provided to Congress, takes into consideration lessons learned
from previous projects, and really following very closely our
project management order and guidance in the Department of
Energy.
And we made adjustments to our design and construction
schedule to ensure that our confidence was high, that our risks
were mitigated in that process. And it is probably one of the
few projects that we have organized in a way that has an 80
percent confidence of success, which is the recommended level
of confidence, both financial and operational for a DOE
project.
So I think that we have taken the technical and operational
challenges very seriously--management in general. We have,
since the Secretary issued the Top to Bottom Review, I mean,
the Department itself acknowledged that reform of this program
was essential.
Mr. Walden. And well overdue.
Ms. Roberson. And well overdue. And for the last year and a
half, every action we have taken has been in support and
centered on the premise that those reforms were not just going
to be ideas or policies or statements, but actual
implementation.
I suspect that the GAO and others will continue until they
see the hard results. That is why, in my opening statement, I
think it is always important to put before people what actual
risk reduction environmental protection is occurring at our
sites on the ground. I could probably sit here and talk until I
am blue, but the only thing that is going to matter are the
actual results that we accomplish. And this is my experience at
other projects in the Department as well.
Mr. Walden. Good. I would commend the Department for the
changes that have taken place. I live in a little town of Hood
River, Oregon. It is about 150 miles downstream in the Columbia
River from the Hanford. I have lived near the Hood River nearly
all of my life. I must tell you there have been times where
what we have been told about what was happening at Hanford
hasn't turned out to be exactly truthful.
There are many people in my community who remain skeptical,
even with the changes, about what is going on there, and
remain, I think, in many ways, justifiably concerned about the
fact that this highly radioactive material is sitting in tanks
that have been leaking or burping, and that what is leaking may
be headed right into the Columbia River at some point if we
don't get this cleaned up.
And so obviously I have a personal and deep concern about
making sure this is done right and right the first time, and
that the proper testing is done to make sure it works.
Now, in the testimony from the folks from Washington State,
I don't know if you have had a chance to read it or not----
Ms. Roberson. I have not.
Mr. Walden. But they commend the changes that have taken
place at DOE. But they do raise an issue about an incentive
program of paying a million dollars a tank to close smaller low
risk tanks, that they don't agree with that concept, that we
may not be actually targeting what we need most, which is to, I
think, deal with the higher waste. It is not necessarily a true
measure.
They contend a wiser choice would be investing in treatment
and retrieval capabilities that will optimize risk reduction.
Can you explain to me why you think paying a million
dollars per tank to close smaller low risk tanks is the best
use of funds?
Ms. Roberson. Well, I can't say that I know the exact
amount of the incentive fee. But for discussion purposes, using
a million is fine.
Mr. Walden. Sure.
Ms. Roberson. I would say that we consider completing our
work in the tank farm to be the most important element, and
that all of the waste in the tanks, removal, remediation
following removal is the important element. And we are
starting--the way our program is designed, we start at both
ends. We are building a vitrification plant that is designed to
handle the high-level waste. On the other side, we are also
removing waste from single-shell tanks. And so our strategy for
accelerating cleanup of the tank farm is to work both ends at
the same time. We think that is a reasonable approach supported
by science and engineering capability.
Mr. Walden. Ms. Nazzaro, would you comment on that issue?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes. I would like to actually take a moment to
commend Ms. Roberson as well as the Department of Energy.
Because we agree that the steps that they are taking are
appropriate steps and they are good steps and they are good
first steps.
Our point in making--in reiterating our concerns as far as
the program management is that maybe they haven't gone far
enough, and that we would like to see them, you know, keep
pushing in this direction, particularly in the areas of
rigorous analysis before making key project decisions,
sufficiently testing new technologies and evaluating the
appropriateness of this concurrent design-build strategy.
Mr. Walden. That is pretty strong language in your report.
Ms. Nazzaro. Right. These are things that we have been
supporting for some time. And we do see that DOE is taking
first steps to move in these directions. We just don't think
they are there yet and we would like to see more being done.
Mr. Walden. Ms. Roberson, do you disagree with that?
Ms. Roberson. No. I would say that we have problems to
solve. Until those problems are solved, solutions implemented
and done, we continue to have challenges, management
challenges. I don't foresee a time that won't be the case.
Some of the other things that we are doing that are also
pointed out in the GAO report, which we appreciate, and will
continue to emphasize is, we have developed a specific project
team for helping us to validate and improve our strategy for
cleanup of high-level waste. We have formed 10 teams across the
complex. And those teams are producing results that we believe
will further improve our ability to achieve the results that we
have laid out. There will continue to be challenges until the
problems are solved. There is no doubt in my mind. And that
will continue to be a management challenge until that occurs.
Mr. Walden. In the GAO recommendations, it indicates here
that you disagree with the need to conduct integrated testing
of the Hanford waste separation technology. You just don't
think that is----
Ms. Roberson. We do not believe that it is necessary to
build a pilot-scale plant.
Mr. Walden. Because you can use best practices?
Ms. Roberson. Because--you can call it simulated. We are
doing testing of the operational components of the plant and
integrating the results of those.
Mr. Walden. I guess the biggest challenge that people like
me have in the job is sorting out when one certified smart
person and team says you should do it, and another group says,
we are doing it and it will be fine. How do we know, and there
is so much on the line in terms of public health and public tax
dollars here, I mean, right across the river in my district, we
are also building a facility to destroy one of the Nation's
stockpiles s of chemical weapons.
And, I mean, there has been enormous testing that has gone
on and in other facilities around the country, around the
world. And, you know, they have incorporated in using those
actual facilities, what--the lessons learned in the design of
this facility. It hasn't just been simulated. How do I know
that your simulated tests are going to do the job?
Ms. Roberson. Well, we believe that it will do the job
based upon the results. But the components of the systems that
we are testing also have commercial success behind them. They
aren't one of a kind, or first of a kind.
Mr. Walden. Ms. Nazzaro, do you care to comment on that,
because that is the heart of the matter here.
Ms. Nazzaro. We would agree that certain components have
been utilized in the past. Our issue is with the integration,
will they work together? We are not saying it won't work. But
we are saying if you want to minimize risk, this isn't a good
strategy, it has not been successful in the past.
Mr. Walden. That is the troubling part in your report, is
that you indicate that has been tried in the past, it has not
worked. And we are going down perhaps the same path.
Ms. Nazzaro. Correct.
Mr. Walden. What is at risk here?
Ms. Nazzaro. Well, the whole acceleration of the program is
at risk, whether you will achieve the savings, and not in terms
of just dollars, but also in time. Because if you have to
retrofit, you are going to certainly have to spend more time
and you are going to incur more dollars, more cost.
Mr. Walden. And where this has happened before, what kind
of cost and time delays have you seen?
Ms. Nazzaro. I don't have the exact specifics on--at
Savannah River, I was told that the initial cost was $500
million and the cost to redo is estimated at $1.8 billion.
Mr. Walden. Okay. My time has expired. The gentlewoman from
Colorado.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is very
important that this subcommittee is continuing our vigorous
oversight efforts over the Department of Energy's cleanup
efforts for radioactive high-level waste. And the chairman is
back just in time for me to thank him for holding this hearing.
This is a huge budget, as we just heard, with the
environmental management program spending over $7 billion each
year cleaning up the hazardous waste created during the cold
war years for weapons production activities. These radioactive
materials have inherent risks for the workers and for the
people who are transporting these materials. We are talking
about a cleanup program that is projected to stretch decades
into the future, 70 years by most accounts.
I am hoping that Mr. Greenwood and I will not be here in 70
years continuing to have oversight over this program. But, I
think it is critically important that we continue our vigorous
oversight activities, especially in view of the recent U.S.
District Court decision in Idaho which granted the petition for
summary judgment filed by the Natural Resources Defense
Council.
And as a former lawyer myself, what struck me was that the
court granted the motion on summary judgment. So it seems clear
to me that they thought that there was no big issue of fact
here, and what they were really deciding was, the authority of
DOE, under the Atomic Energy Act, as a matter of law. And that
is kind of the direction I want to go in my questions a little
bit.
I first want to ask Ms. Roberson, in your testimony, you
say that Congress should enact legislation to reaffirm its
intent regarding DOE's authority to make determinations about
disposal of reprocessed waste. My first question is whether I
am correct in understanding that the Department is asking
Congress to essentially reverse the decision of the U.S.
District Court in Idaho. Is that really the Agency's intent?
Ms. Roberson. No, that is not the Agency's intent.
Ms. DeGette. What is the intent or the hope?
Ms. Roberson. What the Department is asking, and GAO
recommended is that Congress clarify its intent. The judge's
ruling is based upon its understanding and interpretation of
what Congress intended.
Ms. DeGette. But that would have the effect, if Congress
passed additional legislation, of reversing the Court's
decision.
Ms. Roberson. If that is what Congress intended. If--I am
sorry.
Ms. DeGette. No. My next question is, do you have specific
legislative language that you can give to us. Because as you
well know, and as your people well know, this is a very murky
area and requires very clear drafting.
Ms. Roberson. We are prepared to work with the committee
staff and provide recommended language.
Ms. DeGette. Okay. I would ask unanimous consent if they
could provide us that recommended language. What kind of
timeframe are you looking at, Ms. Roberson?
Ms. Roberson. That we could provide you recommended
language?
Ms. DeGette. Yes. I don't want to ask you to do something
in a timeframe that is unreasonable.
Ms. Roberson. I believe--I would like to check with our
general counsel, but certainly within a week we could do that.
Ms. DeGette. Great. That would be great. I would ask
unanimous consent then that the Department provide both staffs
with this language within 30 days.
Ms. Roberson. Okay. Thank you.
[The material appears at pg. 69.]
Ms. DeGette. The next question I have for you, Ms.
Roberson, in your testimony you respond to some of GAO's
concerns by saying that you do calculate uncertainty. Could you
expand on this declaration a little bit for me?
Ms. Roberson. Okay. That the specific reference then to--
involves some disagreement as to what the calculated savings
are. The methodology that we use to calculate our savings is
the same methodology used in the annual independent
environmental liability cost estimate for the Department.
Ms. DeGette. How do you do that? What factors enter into
that?
Ms. Roberson. They are actual baseline reviews that are
conducted to validate the cost estimate that we believe applies
to the work. And there is also a model for calculating
uncertainty. And so there is an uncertainty estimate that is an
element of the cost estimate for the program.
Ms. DeGette. That is a mathematical model that the
Department uses?
Ms. Roberson. Yes.
Ms. DeGette. Okay. Can you give me some examples of how you
would calculate that uncertainty?
Ms. Roberson. I can. Well, we obviously base our cost
savings on resource-loaded schedules that reflect inflation.
For example, a dollars worth of work today will cost a dollar
escalated by 10 years of inflation if the same work is
performed in 2013.
Ms. DeGette. I am a little confused, because I guess I am
not understanding how that is calculating uncertainty. Maybe we
are not understanding each other.
Ms. Roberson. There is a model used to calculate
uncertainty that is reviewed independently by the auditors who
perform the Department's environmental liability cost estimate.
And that is the same model that applies to this work, to
calculate the uncertainty.
Ms. DeGette. Okay. And that model that you are using was
developed in what context?
Ms. Roberson. Well, I am--I would actually like to have our
CFO to help me respond to that. I could follow up. I am just
not savvy enough in that skill area.
Ms. DeGette. If we could ask, Mr. Chairman, I would ask
unanimous consent that the Department supplement us with that
information about what that model is, and what factors go into
that model. That would be very helpful.
[The following was received for the record:]
There is uncertainty associated with the development of life-cycle
cost estimates for completing the Environmental Management (EM) cleanup
program. The major factors contributing to the uncertainty include
incomplete knowledge of the types and quantities of contamination, the
degree of innovation required to remediate the problems, and the fact
that many problems addressed by the EM program are complex and ``one of
a kind'' situations.
In 1999, EM developed a statistical model to aid in the calculation
of cost uncertainties in the life-cycle cost of the EM program. The
model is based primarily on a study on the cost of environmental
restoration projects undertaken in the 1990s. This study found that the
cost uncertainty range for environmental projects could range from -50
to +175 percent compared to the original cost estimate. For example, if
the initial cost estimate for a project was $1,000, the cost range for
the completed project would be $500 to $2,750. In addition, the study
found that there are three major factors that affect cost uncertainty
for environmental projects--project definition (i.e., how well the
project and what needs to be accomplished is understood and defined at
the time of the cost estimate), the complexity of the project, and the
degree of innovation required for the project. The study also found
that project definition contributes 50 percent to the uncertainty
range, complexity 22 percent, and innovation 28 percent.
Based on the results of this study, EM developed a system whereby
each EM project is rated by the Field Project Manager on a scale of 1
to 5 (where 5 equals maximum uncertainty and I equals minimal
uncertainty) for the three uncertainty factors (project definition,
complexity, and innovation). Using these uncertainty scores, a high-
and low-cost range is calculated for each project. These project cost
ranges are then loaded into a Monte Carlo probabilistic simulation
computer program and a cost uncertainty profile is developed for the EM
program as a whole. The mid-point of the uncertainty profile (the most
probable cost) is taken as the uncertainty contingency for the EM
program.
EM has used this model in calculating its environmental liability
since 1999 and the results have been used for the Department's audited
financial statements.
Ms. DeGette. Let me ask both you and Ms. Nazzaro about
whether the DOE had a backup plan in place to deal with the now
very real possibility that the courts would find the agency
lacked the authority to move forward with its plans.
Ms. Roberson.
Ms. Roberson. Let me just clarify two things.
One, the Department is still trying to understand what the
implications of the ruling of the judge in the Idaho District
Court is and what its impact would be on our program.
Second, the court ruling invalidated a section of our DOE
435 waste management order, and that section applies to waste
incidental to reprocessing--process that is captured in that
order. The DOE 435 Order captured longstanding processes to
remove waste from the tanks, treat those wastes and then
characterize waste streams according to radioactivity, the
heatload and isotopic composition. We are trying to understand
what the implications of that ruling are.
Ms. DeGette. Here is the thing that is puzzling me. If you
are trying to understand the implications of the ruling, how is
it Congress is then supposed to go back in and clarify the
language of the statute, if you don't even know what the
implications of the ruling are. How can we meaningfully fix the
problem?
Ms. Roberson. Let me just say simply, the ruling
invalidated a portion of our order. And what we would have to
do to understand the implications of this is make sure we
understand what Congress intended. And if the ruling is
accurate in what Congress intended, then we would need to
develop a different process under the law. The laws are still
our guiding requirement.
Ms. DeGette. I understand, but it seems to me that you
folks should get an understanding of the ruling before you come
back in and have us adjust what our intent is as to what this
should do.
Ms. Nazzaro, let me have you answer my question. I am about
out of time. And my question was: Did the DOE have a backup
plan in place to deal with the possibility that the courts
might find that the agency lacked the authority to move
forward?
Ms. Nazzaro. I would say no, and that was part of our
concern that because of this lawsuit, it certainly could
jeopardize the cost savings as well as the acceleration of the
program. And that's why at the time prior to the court ruling,
we suggested they seek clarification.
Now that the court ruling has been made, we're saying that
there may be another option and that option would be for DOE to
ask Congress to provide legislative authority to implement an
incidental waste policy. That would be different than what we
had originally recommended, and we're not making a judgment as
to the validity of the court ruling. We're just saying, let
that stand and where do you go from here?
Ms. DeGette. Thanks to both--Ms. Roberson.
Ms. Roberson. Might I clarify? The DOE 435 order was a
cataloging of waste management practices in the Department.
There were no new waste management practices generated either
in the WIR process or other parts of that order. It was a
cataloging of those practices over the last 20 years.
So we haven't generated any new requirement, any new
policy, any new process. It is, indeed, the basis for how the
Department has managed these wastes and how it believed it
would manage them going forward.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying your
answer.
Mr. Greenwood. The Chair thanks the gentlelady.
The Chair has a couple more questions, and we'll take as
much time to answer these questions and then yield similar
amounts of time to other members if they choose it.
Ms. Roberson, in the written testimony of David Wilson from
the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental
Control, he raises concerns that DOE has proposed to directly
dispose of approximately 20 million curies of high-level
radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site. The question is
can we store these wastes at Savannah safely?
Ms. Roberson. What the Site has proposed and is working on
with our regulators and parties in the community is strategy to
stabilize materials appropriately through a salt processing
operation.
Mr. Greenwood. What kind of processing?
Ms. Roberson. Salt processing. We are working with our
regulators. It clearly requires regulatory approval, but we do
believe we can do it safely or we would not have proposed it.
Mr. Greenwood. If you do that, do you have an estimate of
the cost savings you achieve as compared to disposing at Yucca
Mountain? I assume that's why you're doing it.
Ms. Roberson. We're doing it because we think it is
environmentally safe and safe for the workers. The cost impact
to Yucca Mountain, obviously, the more material that must be
dispositioned for Yucca Mountain will have an impact on that
operation, but I can't estimate what the impact would be.
Mr. Greenwood. Counsel and I are having a conversation as
well, and I would ask each of you to respond to this, what is
the impact of the court ruling in Idaho on, for instance, your
ability to dispose of the waste at Savannah or the implications
apply to all three sites?
Ms. Roberson. I have asked this question and our lawyers
have asked me not to respond to that until they can make a
determination as to its far-reaching impact, if any.
Mr. Greenwood. That is understandable.
Ms. Nazzaro your testimony points out that DOE's incidental
waste designation process was invalidated by Idaho District
Court as we've been discussing. What do you consider to be
DOE's alternative for dealing with the high-level waste if the
court ruling stands and it is not turned over on appeal and if
Congress were not to clarify the issue? If they had to live
with it, what would their options be?
Ms. Nazzaro. We are suggesting another option and that
option is that Congress could actually legislate authority to
DOE to implement an incidental waste policy. If they didn't, we
are back to square one, because their whole accelerated
program, whole clean-up program is based on the separation.
Mr. Greenwood. This is a very important question for us. So
what I want to understand is if the court ruling stands, if it
has the implications that we seem to think that it does and if
Congress does nothing, then what becomes of this material? What
alternatives exist?
Ms. Nazzaro. It seems that it all has to be treated as
high-level waste and would have to be processed and prepared to
go to a permanent repository.
Mr. Greenwood. It would have to be vitrified and it would
have to be taken to Yucca Mountain.
Ms. Nazzaro. Or to some repository. Yucca Mountain doesn't
have the capacity to handle all of the wastes that they have.
One of my predecessors said that if we had to dispose of all
the wastes at Hanford, we would have to build another Hanford.
There is so much waste. There is not enough room at Yucca
Mountain.
Mr. Greenwood. And so the point is, given the realities of
Yucca Mountain and how extraordinarily contentious politically,
legally and how difficult scientifically, technologically, it
has been to try to prepare Yucca Mountain, you would need to go
through a similar process. So we're talking probably decades,
if at all, before you could find an alternative. So it seems to
me that is an option that should not even be under
consideration because it is unrealistic.
So the options are really, as I understand them, either the
court decision is reversed, or Congress has to go back in and
make that clarification so the interpretation then falls the
way the Department thinks it was to begin with, and that is
they can dispose of it in the way they intended it to.
Ms. Nazzaro. Correct. We have been supportive of the whole
separation theory, and we believe it is a prudent strategy
because, as you say, Yucca Mountain can't handle it, and the
cost would be prohibitive.
Mr. Greenwood. Either one of you can respond to this, but
the court did not determine that disposing of the materials
onsite or disposing of them as the Department had planned to
was necessarily unsafe. It just interpreted the law in such a
way as to require the more onerous methodology; is that
correct?
Ms. Nazzaro. Yes.
Ms. Roberson. That is one of the questions we would want
clarification on as to whether the court ruling implies that
everything--and let me just say that people tend to focus on
the liquid in the tanks. But the WIR process, the waste
incidental to the reprocessing process in our order applies to
tank residuals and tank farm components. It would mean the
tanks would need to be cut up and dispositioned; personal
protective equipment that workers wore when handling. It is not
just about liquids in the tank.
Mr. Greenwood. Am I correct in saying that the court did
not find as a fact, didn't have expert testimony from witnesses
who said what the Department is doing unsafe, it is
environmentally unacceptable, it's risky. It wasn't that the
court determined that this process was wrong and unsafe, the
court looked at the Federal law and said, we think the law
intentionally or inadvertently requires the Department to take
these extraordinary methods.
Ms. Nazzaro. The law did not differentiate as far as what
the waste was. It just basically said that the law states--if
it is high-level waste, it needs to be sent to a permanent
repository.
Mr. Greenwood. Did witnesses come to the court and testify
that it was environmentally imperative to do it this way?
Ms. Nazzaro. No. It was a summary judgment as was discussed
earlier.
Mr. Greenwood. The gentlelady from Colorado is an attorney.
Ms. Roberson. Not being a lawyer, but my laymans definition
may be helpful. In reading the judge's ruling, what I
understand the judge to say is that the judge ruled that our
process was not compliant with the law, I think simply put.
That what we represented as congressional intent was not what
the intent was.
Mr. Greenwood. Who brought this case to court?
Ms. Roberson. Natural Resources Defense Council and others.
Mr. Greenwood. One might assume that they would be in
opposition to Congress changing the law.
Ms. Roberson. Likely.
Mr. Greenwood. The Chair yields the balance of his time and
would yield.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My understanding of what happened in this lawsuit in the
U.S. District Court in Idaho, is that the plaintiff was the
Natural Resources Defense Council. They filed a law suit. And
what they argued was that under the terms of the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act that if you are going to categorize waste as high-
level waste, then it has to be sent to that kind of facility
and it is going to supersede any other actions. And what the
Department is now asking us to do is to clarify the language to
determine what their authority is. Would that be accurate?
Ms. Roberson. That's correct.
Ms. DeGette. And my point is, before we can figure out--and
I sort of agree with you, it may not make sense to categorize
everything as one way. It may be the way that the statute was
written, but we need to be very careful as we go in to start to
rewrite the statute, or try to revisit what legislative intent
was, to make sure that we write it in the appropriate way. And
I think that that's where the GAO has helped, and I think that
that is also where the Department needs to provide us with some
pretty clear language. So in that vein, Mr. Chairman, I ask
unanimous consent if committee staff could, after this hearing,
propose some additional legal questions in writing to the
Department's general counsel and have those responded to within
2 weeks?
Mr. Greenwood. Without objection, the staff will be so
instructed.
Ms. DeGette. And thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I
yield back.
Mr. Greenwood. Ms. Roberson and Ms. Nazzaro, thank you for
your testimony. You are excused.
And that brings our second panel forward, and I would ask
Mr. Michael Wilson the Program Director of Nuclear and Mixed
Waste Program at Washington State Department of Ecology and Mr.
David Wilson the Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Land and
Waste Management at South Carolina State Department of Health
and Environmental Control. If you gentlemen, Messrs. Wilson,
would step forward. We take testimony under oath here. Do
either of you object to that? You are both entitled to be
represented by counsel. Do you wish to? Raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Greenwood. You are under oath, and we will start with
Michael Wilson. You have 10 minutes, sir.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL A. WILSON, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR AND
MIXED WASTE PROGRAM, WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY;
AND DAVID E. WILSON, JR., ASSISTANT CHIEF, BUREAU OF LAND AND
WASTE MANAGEMENT, SOUTH CAROLINA STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
Mr. Michael Wilson. Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of
the committee. My name is Mike Wilson and I manage the Nuclear
Waste Program for the Washington State Department of Ecology.
At Hanford over 53 million gallons of highly radioactive,
highly toxic waste produced in the manufacture of plutonium for
the Nation's nuclear defense sits in 177 aging tanks. At least
1 million gallons of these deadly wastes have already leaked
into the environment. Some of that waste has reached the
groundwater and is heading toward the Columbia River just a few
miles away. With that as a backdrop, I am here today to commend
the Department of Energy for significant achievements toward
our goal of reducing tank waste risk. The Hanford Waste
Treatment Plant is under construction and authorized for
completion. The Department of Energy, the administration and
the Congress have all risen to the challenge and we're
grateful. Moreover, during the last several years, there has
been a significant culture shift within the Department of
Energy. They are now moving aggressively to retrieve and treat
the waste rather than baby-sitting an aging, costly storage
system. For more than 15 years, the State of Washington has
pressed hard for real, lasting risk reduction in the tank
farms. And so I especially commend Assistant Secretary Roberson
for their focus on accelerating real risk reduction. A key
aspect of this change is the use of performance-based
contracting. We support aggressive use of incentives to
motivate real, appropriate achievement.
I would like to briefly address three issues related to
speeding the clean up and reducing costs. First retrieval and
treatment. We believe that the tank waste can and will be
separated into a highly radioactive portion and a low-activity
fraction. The high-level waste will be vitrified and sent to a
deep geologic repository and the low-activity fraction, perhaps
as much as 90 percent of the total volume, appropriately
treated and returned to shallow burial at Hanford in
perpetuity. To be acceptable to the State and to the people of
the Northwest, this low-activity waste must be isolated from
the environment for as long as it remains hazardous. That's why
we have supported vitrification for the low-activity waste, an
impervious durable waste form that will not end up in our air,
soil, groundwater or the Columbia River.
And I want to make one thing very clear. Leaving large
quantities of untreated waste in tanks is not acceptable to the
State of Washington. That is not real risk reduction and, at
best, it is only risk deferral. And if I might take a little
aside here because of the questions raised around the NRDC
lawsuit. We entered that lawsuit as friends of the court for
two purposes. One is that we felt that over the last several
years, the Department of Energy has looked at leaving large
quantities of waste in tanks, simply looking inside and waving
a wand over them and declaring them either too hard to get out,
or too expensive and declaring those no longer high-level
wastes. That was one of our concerns.
The other concern on the other side was that as a result of
the NRDC suit, we would lose the ability through the
pretreatment process to separate the waste into high-level and
low-activity fractions and send only that waste to the
repository that was declared to be high-level waste. That was
another of our concerns, that we would lose that ability.
Second, optimizing treatment capabilities. We won't see
significant permanent risk reduction until the treatment plant
comes online in 2011. Whether that reduction will be
accelerated or gradual, less or more expensive, depends on
critical decisions and investments in the next few years. We
are pleased that the Department of Energy decided to include a
second high-activity waster melt in the treatment plant. It
means that once treatment starts, a larger volume of the more
dangerous tank waste can be treated sooner, resulting in faster
risk reduction and substantial life cycle cost savings.
However, these benefits can only be achieved if enough low-
activity waste can be treated at the same time. This means
investing in additional treatment capacity for the low-activity
waste now so it can be available at the time treatment begins.
This may be in the form of additional treatment plant
vitrification capacity, or an alternative technology that meets
comparable waste form standard for shallow land disposal at
Hanford.
And third, closure is the end, not the beginning. It will
be important to properly close tanks and tank farms to prevent
long-term risk from the remaining contamination. But until
waste is retrieved and treated, closing tanks can only provide
marginal fiscal relief and little, if any, risk reduction.
While focusing on the near-term closure of tanks, most of the
tank waste, including the high-hazard waste, will remain in a
mobile form in failing tanks waiting for treatment. To us,
progress means risk reduction. Counting the number of tanks
closed is a false measure of progress and a false economy. The
only true measure of progress is the amount of tank waste
treated and sent to appropriate disposal. And it is the only
way to ultimately reduce the cost of tank farm management. We
do not agree that paying incentives to close small or low-risk
tanks makes sense at this time. A wiser choice would be
investing in retrieval and treatment capabilities that will
optimize risk reduction. We are working with the Department of
Energy to define the closure process. It is important that we
maintain our focus on the primary objective which is retrieve,
treat and properly dispose of the waste.
Thank you for your attention, and I would be happy to
answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Michael A. Wilson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Michael A. Wilson, Manager, Nuclear Waste
Program, Washington State Department of Ecology
Mr. Chairman: For more than 15 years the State of Washington has
pressed hard for real, lasting reduction of both short- and long-term
risks posed by Hanford's 177 underground tanks.
At Hanford, over fifty-three million gallons of highly radioactive,
highly toxic waste--produced in the manufacture of Plutonium for the
nation's nuclear defense--sits in aging tanks buried less than six feet
below the ground.
At least one million gallons of these deadly wastes have already
leaked into the environment. Some of that waste has reached the ground
water and is heading toward the only salmon spawning beds still left in
the Columbia River--just a few miles away.
With that as the backdrop, I am here today to commend the
Department of Energy for significant achievements toward our goal of
reducing tank waste risk. The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is under
construction and fully authorized for completion. The Department of
Energy, the Administration and the Congress have all risen to the
challenge, and we are grateful.
Moreover, during the last several years, there has been a
significant ``culture shift'' within the Department of Energy. They are
now moving aggressively to retrieve and treat the waste, rather than
``baby sitting'' an aging, failing, costly storage system. I especially
commend Assistant Secretary Roberson for her focus on accelerating real
risk reduction.
A key aspect of this change is the use of performance-based
contracting. We support aggressive use of incentives to motivate real
achievement.
To speed the cleanup of Hanford's tanks and to reduce costs, there
are three things that must be addressed:
1. Retrieving the waste from tanks and treating it.
2. Timing our investments to make the best use of the Waste Treatment
Plant.
3. Putting tank closure in proper perspective.
1. Retrieval and treatment:
We believe that the tank waste can and will be separated into a
highly-radioactive portion and a low-activity fraction. The high level
waste to be vitrified and sent to a deep geologic repository and the
low activity fraction, after appropriate treatment, returned to shallow
burial at Hanford, in perpetuity.
To be acceptable to the state and to the people of the Northwest,
this low-activity waste must be isolated from the environment for as
long as it remains hazardous. That's why we have supported
vitrification for the low-activity waste--an impervious, durable waste
form that will not wind up in our air, soil, groundwater or the
Columbia River.
I want to make one thing very clear. Leaving large quantities of
untreated waste in the tanks is not acceptable to the State of
Washington. That is not real risk reduction--at best, it is only risk
deferral.
2. Timing is crucial to optimal performance and savings
We won't see significant, permanent reductions in risk until the
treatment plant comes on-line in 2011. Whether that reduction will be
accelerated or gradual, less or more expensive, depends on critical
decisions and investments in the next few years.
We in Washington are very pleased that USDOE decided to include a
second high-activity waste melter in the treatment plant. It means
that, once treatment starts, a larger volume of the more dangerous tank
waste can be treated sooner, resulting in a steeper reduction in risk
and substantial life-cycle cost savings.
However, these benefits can be achieved only if enough low-activity
waste--perhaps 90 percent of the total volume--can be treated at the
same time. In turn, this will require investing in additional treatment
capacity for the low-activity waste to be available in, or shortly
after 2011.
This additional capacity may be in the form of an additional low-
activity vitrification capacity, or a supplemental technology that must
produce a comparably stable waste form for shallow-land disposal at
Hanford.
This means investing in this additional treatment capacity in the
fairly near term--even as the WTP is being built.
Meanwhile, the more modern double-shell tanks have been filled to
near capacity. And that will soon constrain our ability to continue
emptying the old single-shell tanks. This bottleneck will ease only
when the treatment plant comes on-line. Delay may mean the construction
of additional tanks. Not as an alternative to treatment but as a
necessary addition to the treatment and storage system.
3. Closure is the end, not the beginning
It will be important to properly close tanks and tank farms to
prevent long-term risk from Hanford's legacy of contamination. But
until waste is retrieved and treated, closing tanks can provide only
marginal fiscal relief--and little if any risk reduction.
While focusing on near term closure of tanks most of the tank
waste, including the high-hazard waste, will remain in a mobile form,
in aging tanks and facilities awaiting treatment. We feel that progress
is risk reduction. Counting the number of tanks closed is a false
measure of progress and false economy. The only true measure of
progress is the amount of tank waste treated and sent to appropriate
disposal and the only way to ultimately reduce the cost of tank farm
management.
We do not agree that paying incentives of $1 million per tank to
close small or low risk tanks makes sense at this time. A wiser choice
would be investing in retrieval and treatment capabilities that will
optimize risk reduction.
We are currently working closely with the Office of River
Protection to define standards and processes for tank closure. This is
appropriate and timely work. But we never lose our focus on the primary
objective: retrieve, treat and properly dispose of the waste.
Mr. Greenwood. Mr. Wilson.
TESTIMONY OF DAVID E. WILSON, JR.
Mr. David Wilson. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
good morning.
My name is David Wilson, and I am the Assistant Chief for
the Bureau of Land and Waste Management at the South Carolina
Department of Health and Environmental Control. Thank you for
the invitation to testify at this hearing concerning the
Department of Energy's management of high-level radioactive
waste stored at the Savannah River Site located in South
Carolina.
First, I would like to tell you why this is such an
important issue to our State. The Savannah River Site began
operation in 1950. During the peak production years of
operation, activities included the operation of five nuclear
reactors, two chemical separations areas, fuel fabrication and
heavy water production. The high-level radioactive waste
generated is stored in a series of 51 tanks ranging in size
from 750,000 gallons to 1.3 million gallons in capacity. These
tanks contain a total of 37 million gallons of highly
radioactive waste with a cumulative content of over 400 million
curies. This storage activity presents the single most
potentially hazardous condition to the environment and the
people of South Carolina.
Over the years DOE has worked with the State to develop and
implement plans to remove this dangerous waste from the storage
tanks and transform it into a waste form that is more stable
and suitable for shipment to a national repository for ultimate
disposal. This has included the construction and operation of a
vitrification facility to convert the liquid high-level
radioactive waste into a glass matrix. This process has been
successful, and so far approximately 30 million curies of waste
has been processed which has allowed for the closure of two of
the original 51 storage tanks. Most recently, the Department of
Energy conducted a top-to-bottom review of environmental
management activities across its national complex. The result
of this review has been the development of site-specific
performance management plans that outline how many activities
can be accelerated to reduce risk and associated costs.
In general, we have agreed with this concept as evidenced
by a letter of intent to work with the Department on this
initiative that was signed on May 8, 2002. We have also signed
a letter of support for the Savannah River Site Performance
Management Plan on May 22, 2003 with one very important
exception. That exception deals directly with the management of
high-level radioactive waste. As part of the acceleration and
cost reduction, the Department of Energy has proposed to
directly dispose of approximately 20 million curies of high-
level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site. This is a
significant change from previous decisions made by the
Department of Energy to only leave residual amounts of high-
level radioactive waste onsite. This proposal was made in
accordance with DOE Order 435.1. The Department of Energy has
determined that this waste is no longer high-level radioactive
waste and does not have to be ultimately dispositioned at a
national repository as mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy
Act.
As you are aware, a recent Federal Court ruling found that
DOE Order 435.1 violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and
declared portions of the order invalid. We, of course, believe
this decision directly impacts any proposal by the Department
of Energy to dispose, onsite, a portion of the high-level
radioactive waste stored at the Savannah River Site. While we
do not believe that it is either technically or economically
feasible to send every curie of high-level radioactive waste to
a national repository, any proposal to manage residuals of this
waste onsite must be subject to full public debate and
deliberation prior to any final decision. This debate and
deliberation must address what is the acceptable amount of
residuals to be managed onsite, how the long-term stewardship
issues will be addressed, and the current direction from
Congress that all waste of this nature must be permanently
dispositioned at a national repository.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to provide these
comments, and I look forward to answering any questions you may
have.
[The prepared statement of David E. Wilson, Jr. follows:]
Prepared Statement of David E. Wilson, Jr., Assistant Bureau Chief,
Land and Waste Management, South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, good morning. My name is
David Wilson and I am the Assistant Chief for the Bureau of Land and
Waste Management at the South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control. Thank you for the invitation to testify at this
hearing concerning the Department of Energy's management of high-level
radioactive waste stored at the Savannah River Site located in South
Carolina.
First, I would like to tell you why this is such an important issue
to our state. The Savannah River Site began operation in 1950. During
the peak production years of operation, activities included the
operation of five nuclear reactors, two chemical separation areas, fuel
fabrication and heavy water production. The high-level radioactive
waste generated is stored in a series of fifty-one tanks ranging in
size from seven hundred and fifty thousand gallons to one point three
million gallons in capacity. These tanks contain a total of thirty
seven million gallons of highly radioactive waste with a cumulative
content of over four hundred million curies. This storage activity
presents the single most potentially hazardous condition to the
environment and the people of South Carolina.
Over the years, DOE has worked with the state to develop and
implement plans to remove this dangerous waste from the storage tanks
and transform it into a waste form that is more stable and suitable for
shipment to a national repository for ultimate disposal. This has
included the construction and operation of a vitrification facility to
convert the liquid high-level radioactive waste into a glass matrix.
This process has been successful and so far approximately thirty
million curies of waste have been processed which has allowed for the
closure of two of the original fifty-one storage tanks.
Most recently, the Department of Energy has conducted a top to
bottom review of all management activities across its national complex.
The result of this review has been the development of site specific
performance management plans that outline how many activities can be
accelerated to reduce risk and associated cost. In general, we have
agreed with this concept as evidenced by a letter of intent to work the
Department on this initiative that was signed on May 8th, 2002. We have
also signed a letter of support for the Savannah River Site Performance
Management Plan on May 22nd, 2003 with one very important exception.
That exception deals directly with the management of high-level
radioactive waste. As part of acceleration and cost reduction, the
Department of Energy has proposed to directly dispose of approximately
twenty million curies of high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah
River Site. This is a significant change from previous decisions made
by the Department of Energy to only leave residual amounts of high-
level radioactive waste on site. This proposal was made in accordance
with DOE Order 435.1 through which Department of Energy has determined
that this waste is no longer high-level radioactive waste and does not
have to be ultimately dispositioned at a national repository as
mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
As you are aware, a recent Federal District Court Ruling found that
DOE Order 435.1 violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and declared the
Order invalid. We, of course, believe this decision directly impacts
any proposal by the Department of Energy to dispose, on-site, a portion
of the high-level radioactive waste stored at the Savannah River Site.
While we do not believe it is either technically or economically
feasible to send every curie of high-level radioactive waste to a
national repository, any proposal to permanently manage residuals of
this waste on-site must be subject to full public debate and
deliberation prior to any final decision. This debate and deliberation
must address what is the acceptable amount of residuals to be managed
on-site, how the long-term stewardship issues will be addressed, and
the current direction from Congress that all waste of this nature must
be permanently dispositioned at a national repository.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to provide these comments. I
look forward to answering any questions you may have.
Mr. Greenwood. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes himself for 10 minutes for
questioning.
Let me ask both of you. You were here during the previous
discussion when we talked about the need to clarify the law,
and it appears to me that it is probable that Congress will try
to do just that. So my question is: What would your admonitions
be to Congress with regard to clarifying the law? Do you
support the idea of clarifying the law so that this waste--I
think your testimony seemed to indicate that, but I would like
you to focus on that.
Mr. Michael Wilson. First of all, I think there is
potentially a lot of jumping the gun going on in not yet fully
interpreting the court decision. As I said, we had two reasons
for going into the case as friends of the court. And we felt
that a lot of the information and a lot of the resulting
decision contained a lot of information that we had supplied to
the judge.
In our initial look, and I will make the usual statement
here that I am not an attorney either and my attorneys,
however, last week said that they felt there was enough room in
this decision with their initial read that we can continue on
our way with the intended course at Hanford. My admonition
might be that rather than seek clarification from Congress,
that first we seek clarification from the court. And go from
there. We have not yet had a full meeting of the parties after
the decision, and to my knowledge that's not going to take
place until Monday. So the parties have yet to get--I mean the
plaintiffs and friends have not yet gotten together to
determine what the real meaning of the decision is among
themselves.
Mr. Greenwood. Clearly, the State of Washington is not
trying to achieve the result that all of this waste has to be
stored as high-level waste.
Mr. Michael Wilson. Absolutely not.
Mr. Greenwood. What is your understanding of the other
plaintiffs? The Environmental Defense Fund want to achieve--the
NRDC want to achieve that?
Mr. Michael Wilson. I am not the Attorney General for the
State, and I didn't represent the State of Washington. I wasn't
part of the talks and so forth that went on as part of that.
I'd rather not characterize their position myself and as to the
other States, we have at least one of them here.
Mr. Greenwood. But you do agree that your intention--you
don't think that's how this thing should wind up.
Mr. Michael Wilson. Our purpose in being in there was to
protect our interests. And our interests were sort of on both
sides of the issue. One is to prevent the Department of Energy
from making wholesale declarations that waste could remain in
tanks without being treated. And second, that we are able to
carry on the proposed plan at Hanford, which is to separate the
waste and send what would be the high-activity fraction to the
repository. And we have long accepted the fact that a majority
of this waste will be appropriately treated and stored at
Hanford or disposed of.
Mr. Greenwood. And that's the position of South Carolina as
well?
Mr. David Wilson. I'll agree with many of the comments that
my colleague from the State of Washington has made. We too
signed on as a friend of the court during the lawsuit for many
of the same reasons. And I'll tell you that, as we move forward
through this, either as reinterpretation of the Court's
decision and clarifying that, or as Congress looks at this
issue, the matter most important to the State of South Carolina
is that the State be involved in the decisionmaking process.
For us, that was the basic problem with Order 435.1, was that
it left to the discretion solely of DOE in making those
determinations without specific involvement from the States.
Mr. Greenwood. Has this been a hot political issue, for
instance, in gubernatorial races and State legislative races
and congressional races?
Mr. David Wilson. We're relatively new in a Governor's
administration, so there are a lot of State budget issues that
are high on the agenda at this point. But certainly this does
receive attention.
Mr. Greenwood. Hotter than radioactive waste?
Mr. Mike Wilson, you framed your testimony with a statement
in the beginning that some of the Hanford tank wastes have
reached the groundwater and are heading toward the only salmon
spawning beds left in the Columbia River. Is there scientific
evidence that the Hanford tank waste has already harmed
wildlife?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Not to my knowledge that the tank waste
has gotten that far. We have other wastes from the reactor
areas that have entered the actual salmon spawning beds in
what's called the Hanford Reach, which is the last free flowing
stretch of the Columbia River that flows by and through the
Hanford Reservation.
Mr. Greenwood. Is the Department of Energy doing everything
in its power to manage that?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Lots of things being done in that area.
This is particularly--not even a radioactive waste issue. It's
a chemical or heavy metal problem with chromium that's entering
the river. And there's lots of work being done right now to try
to prevent that.
Mr. Greenwood. You've heard DOE testify that it hopes to
save billions with proposed changes in the way it treats and
disposes of its high-level wastes. Do you have any concerns
about these new accelerated initiatives, either of you?
Mr. Michael Wilson. I'll just restate that I think the
contracting method--last year at this time when I was here, I
think I praised their new contracting methods also, and we've
seen good results from that. I did raise the issue specific to
giving incentives to contractors for the right thing. We've
seen that given incentives, the contractors work toward those
incentives. It is a psychological theory that when you give
incentives, you get what you incentivize. So you have to be
careful that you are putting the incentives on the right issue.
And the issue that was raised earlier about closing tanks gives
us some concern. They have put incentives on closing up to or
around 26 tanks between now and 2006. Our concern is that
Hanford has yet to close one tank, and we are in the process of
talking about the process for doing that, that perhaps it's a
little bit much to ask to close up to 26 tanks, and perhaps
that those incentives could be placed elsewhere.
Mr. Greenwood. Again, to you, Mr. Wilson of Washington. As
you know, Hanford is building a vitrification facility to treat
its low-activity waste fraction. However, other DOE sites in
other countries have found grout to be a more economical
solution to disposing of their low-activity waste. GAO has
pointed out that DOE has not done a rigorous analysis to
determine whether grout is a better and more economical
alternative that allows safe disposal and meets scheduled
dates. What are your States' concerns about using treatment
technology such as grout other than vitrification to treat
Hanford's low-level waste fraction?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Well, several things. We have got a
plant underway that is building vitrification capacity for low-
activity waste. We are in a position here in a number of areas
of trying to balance our frustration with a decade of delay and
in not pushing the Department of Energy to do something stupid.
We have had a decade of experience with grout. In one of the
earlier permutations of the treatment plant, we looked at grout
and found that grout was an inadequate waste form to maintain
the integrity of the waste over a long enough period of time.
And as I mentioned, we are fully----
Mr. Greenwood. When you say you found, what sort of
scientific expertise was brought to bear to come to that
conclusion?
Mr. Michael Wilson. I have to get back with you on that.
There were a number of radionuclides that weren't adequately
maintained over a period of time.
Mr. Greenwood. Would you submit to the committee that
supporting documentation?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Certainly. It goes back to earlier
environmental impact statements and so forth over a long period
of time. So we are not--so we have a vitrification plant under
construction to deal with the low-activity waste. At the same
time, we are working with the Department of Energy to look at
alternative technologies, additional technologies for dealing
with the low-activity waste should that--and should those prove
to be as effective as glass in maintaining the integrity of the
waste over a long enough period of time, we're open to looking
at those also. I know there are some new grout formulations and
also some different vitrification technologies now that look
like they hold some promise.
[The following was received for the record:]
History of Grout as Waste Form for Hanford Tank Waste
white paper
washington state department of ecology
A series of decisions resulted in Department of Energy (USDOE) and
Washington State moving away from grout for immobilizing Low Activity
(after pretreatment separations) portion of Hanford Tank Waste in the
early 1990s.
The decision to move from grout to vitrification for low activity
waste was based on: technical risk and land use considerations, and on
strong public resistance to what was perceived as a risky approach that
could not be corrected once set in motion.
1) Technical: There were questions raised about the ability of the
grout formulation to solidify. Although grout has been used
around the world in treating low level waste, it was always
done in small containers; or in the case of Savannah River, a
series of relatively small pours. Hanford was going to use a
single pour of approximately 1.4 million gallons (approximately
1 million gallons of waste and 400,000 gallons of grout
formers). Whether a continuous pour could set up uniformly was
not clear. Several experts raised questions regarding the heat
of hydration, which might be affected by heat generated by
radioactive decay. If the grout might not set (solidify), then
the construction of very expensive grout vaults, capable of
holding liquid grout, would be required. This approach put a
high reliance on the engineered barriers in the short term when
the waste was liquid and in the long term for the long lived
radionuclides. Questions were also raised about the safe
retrieval of the grout once it was poured, should retrieval be
needed in the future.
2) Long Term Performance Assessment or Risk: USDOE's performance
assessment order required the long term performance assessment
for grout to be modeled based on the maximum contaminant
concentration for each constituent (presumably at a point of
compliance or at significant receptor(s)). This analysis
resulted in identification of three constituents that would
ultimately violate drinking water standards. The three
constituents (nitrate, Iodine-129, and Technetium-99) violated
drinking water standards before and after the 10,000 year
timeframe (Performance Assessment of Grouted Double Shell Tank
Waste Disposal at Hanford, 1995, WHC-SD-WM-EE-004 Rev. 1). In
combination this analysis raised the issue of technical
acceptability of grout as a long term waste form.
3) Land Use: Grout as a final waste form increases the volume to be
disposed significantly. The original grout program projected 44
vaults to contain the low activity portion of waste from
Hanford's 28 double shell tanks. In formulating the grout
program, USDOE assumed that the waste in the single shell tanks
would not have to be retrieved or treated. In 1993, when single
shell tank wastes were added to the retrieval and treatment
schedule, the number of vaults grew from 44 up to 200. This
meant the land consumed by grout disposal vaults would impact
large undisturbed areas. This land use impact became a major
concern for the Tribes, regional interest groups, and local
governments. These undisturbed areas represented significant
shrub steppe habitat and/or areas for future missions and
industrial development.
Based on these concerns, the Hanford Waste Task Force (1993), a
stakeholder advisory group, concluded (in Appendix F of the report)
that ``Grout doesn't adequately protect public, workers and
environment'' and that ``reduction of waste volume was an issue for
grout'' since grout increases final waste form volume significantly.
Recognizing this broad-based public concern about grout, and the
potential for low activity waste vitrification at costs that appeared
not greatly different from those for grout on a grand scale, Washington
State opted for vitrification in negotiating a new set of milestones
for tank waste treatment. In return, Washington State agreed to USDOE's
desire to delay construction of the Hanford Waste Vitrification Plant
(HWVP) for technical and budgetary reasons.
In the early 1990s, USDOE's budgetary and scheduling assumptions
made the costs of a grout program and to a low activity waste
vitrification facility seem comparable. A recent (2003) report from
Office of River Protection--USDOE to USDOE-HQ compared the cost of
various options including an all vitrification option and an all grout
option. This 2003 report shows that an all vitrification option is the
most cost effective approach and that an all grout option would be one
of the most costly approaches because of project impact costs
associated with changing project direction and mitigating nitrate and
Technetium impacts (Assessment of Low Activity Waste Treatment And
Disposal Scenarios for the River Protection Project, Holton, L.K., et.
al., April 14, 2003).
Based on technical issues, cost, schedule, land use, and public
concern, USDOE and the State of Washington agreed to a new baseline
that replaced grout with vitrification for the low activity portion of
Hanford tank waste. In return, USDOE was given a longer time (which was
further extended in order to accommodate subsequent privatization
initiatives) to begin treating Hanford's tank waste.
More recently (2001-2003), Washington State has agreed to consider
other waste forms to supplement the production of the Waste Treatment
Plant (which includes the Low Activity Vitrification facility) in order
to help move the end of treatment date closer to 2028 compared to
2050s. This agreement has been based on the condition that any new
waste form will need to perform as well as vitrified glass. That is,
the waste form, which will remain near the land surface and the
Columbia River in perpetuity, must contain the waste for as long as it
is hazardous to human health and the environment, must be in some
manner retrievable or correctable in the event of failure, and must not
greatly multiply the volume of waste, and thus the land area required
for disposal. Currently USDOE is evaluating three technologies that may
augment the Waste Treatment Plant including Steam Reforming,
Containerized Grout, and Bulk Vitrification. The State of Washington is
engaged in the evaluation, and will carefully assess the results in
terms of the previously stated criteria.
Mr. Greenwood. Okay. My time has expired. The gentlelady
from Colorado.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Michael Wilson, as I understood your testimony and also
I think this was true of South Carolina, both of your States
entered as an amicus curiae for the plaintiff--really a friend
of the court brief that you filed. But what I heard you saying
was the reason you entered in this suit--and this is to clarify
a question that the chairman asked, too. It is not that you
think that all of this waste should be characterized the same
and sent to Yucca Mountain or similar facility, correct?
Mr. Michael Wilson. That's correct.
Ms. DeGette. What you were really concerned about, as you
said, was that you wanted to make sure that the DOE did not--
you said two things you wanted to make sure that the DOE didn't
mischaracterize the high-level waste and leave it lying around
in tanks.
Mr. Michael Wilson. That they don't go through some
simplified internal process that doesn't include a treatment of
the waste and declare it no longer high-level waste, so it
could stay potentially in the tanks at Hanford.
Ms. DeGette. And Mr. David Wilson, was that a similar
concern that South Carolina had?
Mr. David Wilson. I think that characterizes it very well.
Ms. DeGette. Mr. Chairman, I was given a little sheet by
the Natural Resources Defense Council. What they said is that
they were hoping to have some testimony and sort of a statement
by them. I ask unanimous consent to put that and also the court
decision----
Mr. Greenwood. Only reserve the right to reject just to
give counsel an opportunity to look at that document.
Ms. DeGette. It is a one-page statement of what their
rationale for the lawsuit was. And I think the record would be
complete if we put it in there. So we will give you a copy of
it. This is the only copy I have. What they are saying in here
is that what they were concerned about in the lawsuit is that
they didn't want the DOE to reclassify high-level radioactive
waste as incidental waste, which is the same concern you guys
are expressing. You are both nodding. Would that be your
understanding as well?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Yes.
Mr. David Wilson. Yes.
Ms. DeGette. And so, I guess what I'm--I think we are kind
of agreeing here which is that we don't want the DOE
mischaracterizing high-level waste as low-level, so they don't
have to treat it appropriately. But at the same time, we don't
think that the law should mandate that once some of the waste
is high-level everything has to be characterized that way and
sent off to the facility. Would that be your understanding?
Mr. David Wilson. Yes. Even though we agree as to how the
waste is characterized, there is still the issue of how much
remains onsite, because you can have quite a significant amount
of quantities of radioactivity that is going to have to be
managed for a very long time onsite. And, of course, that's a
very big concern for us.
Ms. DeGette. So you want to make sure that whatever statute
that Congress enacts does not give the DOE the authority, the
other direction to just leave high-level waste onsite. You want
it correctly disposed of.
Mr. David Wilson. That's correct.
Mr. Michael Wilson. You use the word characterize, and I
think one of our concerns is not just characterizing, but it's
the treatment of the high-level waste. So once it is treated to
remove the significant radionuclides, that that which is
remaining could then be characterized as low-activity or some
other kind of waste.
Ms. DeGette. Now, this court decision, as I understand it,
came out on July 2 of this month. Is that correct?
Mr. Michael Wilson. I have heard that.
Ms. DeGette. And you say the parties are planning to meet
to talk about what the court decision meant and what next steps
people might be taking. Is that right?
Mr. Michael Wilson. As far as I know, there's a conference
call.
Ms. DeGette. Is your Attorney General also working on this
in South Carolina?
Mr. David Wilson. We're doing it through our Department,
but yes, they'll be involved.
Ms. DeGette. Do you know when that meeting might be taking
place?
Mr. Michael Wilson. Next week.
Ms. DeGette. I want to shift gears for 1 second and ask Mr.
Wilson of Washington, you heard the GAO, voice concern over the
fact that DOE does not plan to construct an integrated-pilot-
scale testing facility prior to a full-scale facility. I am
wondering if Washington has a position on that.
Mr. Michael Wilson. And I'm back to this balanced position
that we find ourselves in as regulators. Because, again, for 10
years there has been delay, delay, delay and again, we don't
want to be in the position of forcing them to do something
stupid. So to a certain extent and then again, we're not the
experts in this field, but we are told pretty much what Ms.
Roberson talked about this morning that--I mean these
technologies have never been combined perhaps in this type of
facility, that individually many of the technologies have been
developed up to and including commercial scale. So as we
understand it, they think that they can do the job and we're on
board with that.
Ms. DeGette. I mean, do you have any concern that some of
the problems that they had at Savannah River with the Intake
Precipitator Project might be repeated?
Mr. Michael Wilson. I'm just not that familiar with the
specific individual technologies. I'll go back to what Mr.
Walden said earlier. He was referring to the nerve gas plant in
his district across the river in Boardman. And those were
technologies that were well-developed and what he didn't say
was that when they started working there, they had problems
also. I think in any large chemical processing plant of this
nature, and nuclear facility of this nature, that come 2000 and
whenever, when they throw the switch, it's not going to work
perfectly the first time, and that's why they have a ramp-up
period of that time, and they'll work through the problem.
Ms. DeGette. That's why I think the GAO is concerned that
maybe they should do a pilot-scale testing facility instead of
just some lab tests. Because, of course, if they throw the
switch and there's big problems like at Savannah River, it
could delay the whole project for an indeterminate amount of
time. Does that give you concern?
Mr. Michael Wilson. At Hanford almost all the waste
treatment facilities that have been constructed out there have
been first or one-of-a-kind or at least limited-production
kinds of facilities, and there have been problems, and they
work through them. This is bigger and the most complex plan to
date, and, again, we are relying to a large extent on the
expertise in place.
Ms. DeGette. Mr. Chairman, I would just conclude by, again,
renewing--I guess counsel has now reviewed the NRDC testimony.
Renewing my request for insertion of that testimony and the
court decision in the record.
Mr. Greenwood. The Chair thanks the gentlelady and the
Chair withdraws his reservation and without objection the
statement of the Natural Resources Defense Council dated July
17, 2003 will be a part of the record.
I would like to clarify. I think the gentlelady may have
misspoke or was misadvised, the NRDC did not request to testify
at this hearing.
Ms. DeGette. I apologize. I didn't mean to insinuate.
Mr. Greenwood. We would have been delighted to have them
testify, and if there are legislative hearings on a rewrite of
the law, we would certainly invite their testimony and
expertise.
Ms. DeGette. I think it would be very useful not just to
have the NRDC and other parties, but also to have some of the
attorneys involved both for the Department and for the parties
after they have their meeting next week, because I think we
need to work very, very carefully as we draft additional
legislation to make sure that we address the concerns expressed
by the States here, but also that we bring some rationality to
the law.
Mr. Greenwood. And, of course, I am sure there will be
legislative hearings, and Mr. Barton will be making those
decisions.
The Chair thanks the witnesses for testifying and the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The
Committee on Energy and Commerce |
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
