Audit Report: OAI-L-17-07

September 12, 2017

Interim Storage of Transuranic Waste at the Department of Energy

The Department of Energy’s National Transuranic (TRU) Program is an integral part of the mission to ensure the environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. TRU waste includes radioactive waste resulting from national nuclear defense program activities. The National TRU Program integrates TRU waste cleanup goals and activities of independently managed Department sites across the complex. This includes TRU waste inventory characterization, certification, packaging, interim storage, transportation, and final disposal at the Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). In 2016, the Department estimated that about 97 percent of anticipated TRU waste was stored, or will be generated at large quantity sites. These sites consist of the Savannah River Site, Hanford Site (Hanford), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos).

WIPP is the nation’s only repository for the permanent disposal of defense-related TRU waste. In 2014, two unrelated incidents (a fire involving a salt haul truck on February 5th and a radiological release event on February 14th) led to the suspension of WIPP waste emplacement operations until January 4, 2017. As a result of the suspension, WIPP was unable to receive TRU waste shipments. Given the Department’s regulatory commitments associated with TRU waste at multiple sites across the complex, we initiated this audit to evaluate the Department’s strategy for interim storage of TRU waste until WIPP accepted TRU waste again. WIPP resumed waste emplacement operations on January 4, 2017.

Our evaluation of the Department’s strategy for interim storage of TRU waste at large quantity sites found that the sites were able to meet their individual interim TRU waste storage needs until WIPP resumed operations. Also, although the Department did not satisfy all of its regulatory commitments related to TRU waste stored at large quantity sites, nothing came to our attention that would indicate that regulatory commitments impacted large quantity sites’ plans to store TRU waste on-site until WIPP resumed operations.

The Department’s guiding strategy for interim storage of TRU waste was to retain the waste at each individual site pending resumption of WIPP operations and, if possible, continue cleanup efforts. The Department’s strategy also included evaluating the impact of interim on-site storage and commitments with state regulators at TRU waste sites. These commitments affected the Department’s decisions to either maintain TRU waste on-site or move TRU waste to an off-site interim storage location.

Because we found that large quantity sites were able to meet their individual interim TRU waste storage needs until WIPP resumed operations and there was no impact to the Department regarding regulatory commitments, we are not making any formal recommendations.

Topic: Environmental Cleanup