Nuclear Waste

Hanford Tank Waste Program Needs Cost, Schedule, and Management Changes Gao ID: RCED-93-99 March 8, 1993

The Department of Energy (DOE) has been trying to clean up the radioactive waste at its Hanford Site in Washington state by encasing it in glass--a process known as vitrification--and shipping it to a geologic repository for permanent disposal. Major technical problems have beset all key steps of the program. Specifically, DOE has not determined how many samples it will ultimately need to determine the contents of the waste and lacks adequate facilities for analyzing the material. DOE has not fully tested its approach for retrieving different wastes to be treated and is basing its pretreatment plans on unproven technology. Even if DOE surmounts these obstacles, the vitrification plant may not be large enough to treat all of the high-level waste in a reasonable time frame and the technical feasibility of DOE's approach to disposing of low-level waste has yet to be demonstrated. In addition to these technical uncertainties, questions have also been raised about the program's cost, schedule, and management. For example, estimates for completing the project have soared from $14 billion to nearly $50 billion.

GAO found that: (1) DOE has not determined how many samples it will need for waste characterization and lacks adequate facilities for analyzing the samples; (2) the Tri-Party Agreement requires DOE to analyze 309 samples by 1998, but DOE is several years behind schedule; (3) DOE has not developed techniques for retrieving and pretreating Hanford's tank wastes; (4) if the plant begins operations by December 1999 in accordance with the Tri-Party Agreement, the amount of pretreated waste may be insufficient to operate the plant on a continuous basis; (5) in 1988, DOE estimated that waste disposal would cost $14 billion, but 1992 estimates indicate the cost could amount to $50 billion; and (6) continued adherence to the Tri-Party Agreement could result in construction of facilities that are not cost-effective or do not work.

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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