GAO report examines legal barriers to nuclear cleanup

The Government Accountability Office released a report finding that certain state regulatory actions may exceed state authority and have led to disagreements with the Department of Energy, longer cleanup schedules and billions in higher costs for the federal government.

The report said the Department of Energy's nuclear waste cleanup is proceeding largely under three laws that set cleanup and waste management requirements. Each law has different requirements, applications and regulators.

Experts who participated in GAO's National Academies meetings said some states are taking legal and regulatory actions that address radiological aspects of nuclear waste at DOE cleanup sites, which are generally regulated by DOE under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Such actions may exceed a state's authority to regulate hazardous waste under authorizations from the EPA pursuant to the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976.

The report found assumptions about anticipated future land and groundwater use are sometimes unrealistic and can unnecessarily increase costs and schedules. The agency said DOE has cleaned up some areas based on unrealistic assumptions about future uses, including agreeing to clean up large portions of some sites to allow for future residential use even though there are no plans for such use.

The agency said realistic decisions about future land use were critical to the successful cleanup of Rocky Flats in Colorado. After Congress designated that site as a national wildlife refuge in 2001, cleanup costs decreased from an estimated 23 billion dollars for residential use to about 10 billion dollars.

The report said DOE has estimated it could take until 2100 and cost 641 billion to 840 billion dollars to complete its nuclear waste cleanup mission. Much of the waste at DOE sites is mixed waste, meaning it includes both radiological and hazardous constituents.

The agency said all experts at its meetings recommended that DOE and EPA create an interagency task force of experts to review high-priority cleanup decisions and areas of legal and regulatory disagreement for opportunities to make DOE's cleanup approach more risk-informed and cost-effective.