Nuclear Weapons

The Energy Department (DOE) has not produced tritium--a radioactive gas that must be replaced periodically in nuclear weapons if they are to work as intended--since the last of its production reactors was shut down in 1988 because of safety and operational problems. DOE has been considering two technologies to produce tritium: a commercial reactor and an accelerator. In 1997, DOE requested proposals from commercial reactor allow for the agency to buy either a reactor or irradiation services. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the only responsive bidder, offered proposals to finish building a partially complete commercial reactor and to provide irradiation services. In December 1998, DOE chose the commercial reactor technology option, specifically the purchase of irradiation services from TVA's commercial power reactors, as the means to produce tritium. DOE also decided to continue to develop and design--but not to construct--an accelerator that could function as a backup for the production of tritium. This report determines (1) if the cost estimates used by DOE during the process of selecting between the tritium production technology options were comparable and adequately supported; (2) what management, technological, and legal activities could affect the completion of the commercial reactor on schedule and within budget; and (3) whether DOE's current plan to develop and design the accelerator is an effective backup that the agency could build and operate within cost and schedule estimates.

GAO noted that: (1) the Secretary of Energy's December 1998 technology selection decision was based, in part, on the estimated costs of the two technologies under consideration--a commercial reactor and an accelerator--to produce tritium over the program's 40-year life cycle; (2) the commercial reactor option was estimated to cost from $1.2 billion to $3.6 billion over the program's 40-year life cycle, depending on whether DOE decided to invest in Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) partially complete reactor or to purchase irradiation services; (3) the accelerator option, which was estimated to cost about $9.2 billion, would produce a comparable amount of tritium over the same span; (4) in order to ensure that the selected option--the production of tritium in a commercial reactor --is successful, several key activities must be accomplished on schedule and within budget; (5) DOE must closely monitor the reactor program's cost and schedule baseline; (6) because of a congressional moratorium on tritium-related construction in fiscal year (FY) 1999, the schedule for completing the facility needed to process new supplies of tritium has very little time left to accommodate any further schedule slippage; (7) if DOE selects a non-U.S.-owned company to manufacture the specially designed rods that will be placed in TVA's reactors to produce tritium, additional time may be needed to qualify the company for access to the necessary classified technical data; (8) DOE must implement the detailed interagency agreement under which TVA will provide DOE with irradiation services; (9) finally, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must approve amendments to TVA's operating licenses in order for its reactors to install the specially designed rods that will produce tritium to meet DOE's defense-related needs; (10) DOE's current approach for developing the accelerator introduces cost and schedule risks that threaten the accelerator's availability as a tritium production backup option as originally intended; (11) in its FY 1999 Stockpile Stewardship Plan, DOE stated that if the accelerator were chosen as a backup, the Department would need to complete an extensive technological development effort and develop preliminary and final design packages; (12) however, DOE reduced the funding allocated to the accelerator and redefined its approach to the accelerator backup option; (13) under DOE's current plans, it is unlikely that the plant could be built and begin producing tritium within DOE's original 5-year time frame; and (14) however, other alternatives for implementing the backup accelerator approach exist.

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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