Nuclear Health and Safety

Since 1989, the Department of Energy (DOE) has used Tiger Teams--groups composed of DOE and contractor experts--to assess DOE facilities' compliance with environment, safety, and health (ES&H) regulations. Although the Tiger Teams have helped establish a baseline of compliance at major facilities and have raised awareness throughout DOE about the need to improve performance in this vital area, considerable efforts will be needed to fully comply with ES&H requirements and to establish vigorous and formal ES&H programs at DOE. It could take as long as seven years to complete all corrective actions on Tiger Team findings. As a result, DOE needs to continue to work with its field offices on verifying the adequacy of corrective actions. DOE needs to ensure that specific measures of contractor responsiveness to Tiger Team findings are included in all performance evaluation plans.

GAO found that: (1) as of January 1993, the Secretary of Energy has approved corrective action plans for 30 of the 35 DOE facilities assessed by tiger teams; (2) as of March 31, 1992, 23 DOE facilities had completed 40 percent of the planned corrective actions, but progress was slower than anticipated; (3) the facilities' failure to meet their corrective action plan milestones is due to inadequate resources, overly optimistic schedules, and revised work plans; (4) some DOE facilities lack procedures for verifying corrective actions; (5) DOE has verified and closed about 64 percent of completed corrective actions and returned 126 cases to the contractors for further action; (6) DOE offices did not always independently verify the corrective action that they were responsible for; (7) DOE could not determine the effect of ES&H compliance on contractor award fees, since performance criteria were highly subjective; (8) DOE issued guidance in July 1990 that all performance evaluation plans should include corrective action performance, but field offices are not uniformly implementing the guidance; and (9) DOE has developed databases and workshops to share information on ES&H compliance, but not all facilities use the information effectively.