Nuclear Regulation

In response to a congressional request, GAO assessed Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) actions to ensure that operators of fuel-cycle facilities provide for eventual decommissioning, including: (1) the actions that licensees take to comply with NRC residual radiation guidelines; and (2) NRC assessments of facilities prior to terminating licenses.

GAO found that: (1) NRC fully or partially released two sites for unrestricted use where radioactive contamination was higher than its guidelines allowed; (2) it could not determine whether similar situations occurred at six other sites because licensee cleanup information was sometimes incomplete, ambiguous, or nonexistent, and NRC did not always have information about licensee decontamination activities; (3) NRC regulations did not specify how long either it or licensees should retain decontamination information; (4) licensees did not initially decontaminate their facilities to meet NRC guidelines; (5) although NRC required licensees to decontaminate facilities below its guidelines, 11 of 19 decommissioning plans would not meet that requirement; (6) although NRC required licensees to retain records on the radioactive wastes they buried, five of the eight cases reviewed involved buried waste on-site, but four of the licensees did not keep or complete disposal data; (7) NRC did not require licensees to monitor groundwater or soil contamination from buried waste, but five licensees found groundwater contaminated with radioactive substances at levels higher than drinking water standards allowed; and (8) although NRC believes that it can require former licensees to conduct additional cleanup activities, it does not have regulations to address the actions it can take. GAO also found that: (1) because the Environmental Protection Agency was responsible for developing residual radiation standards, but did not expect to finalize them until 1992, NRC used guidelines it developed to determine whether to terminate a license; and (2) a professional group that also developed residual radiation standards proposed some levels 3 to 50 times higher and some levels 3 to 5 times lower than NRC guidelines.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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