Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Quality problems remain, audit says

DOE protests Yucca Mountain criticism

WASHINGTON -- A major report set for release this week says the Energy Department is failing to fix persistent technical and management problems on the Yucca Mountain Project, according to a draft copy obtained Tuesday.

Eight months before the Energy Department plans to apply for a nuclear waste repository license, investigators from the General Accounting Office said the project's safety underpinnings continue to be nagged by weaknesses.

Auditors said problems with Yucca Mountain quality controls could delay Nuclear Regulatory Commission repository licensing and DOE's plan to start burying nuclear waste in Nevada by 2010.

They said technical weaknesses could undercut the government's ability to show that 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel can be stored safely within the mountain ridge, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"Despite working three years to address recurring quality assurance problems, DOE lacks evidence to show that their actions have been successful," the GAO said in the 37-page draft.

The department "is not yet in a position to demonstrate to NRC that its quality assurance program can ensure the safe construction and long term operation of the repository," auditors said.

The GAO report, which the agency has scheduled to send to Congress on Friday, highlights a component of the Yucca Mountain Project that DOE has worked to get its arms around for years.

Nevada officials, congressional investigators and NRC evaluators have criticized Yucca quality assurance in reports dating to 1988.

Most recently, an NRC audit disclosed earlier this month described shortcomings that has led the Energy Department to commit about 100 workers to review technical documents, forcing changes in license preparations.

The Energy Department is protesting the latest GAO audit and argues the agency mischaracterized its efforts and overlooked improvements that new managers put in place starting in 2002.

Yucca managers said their repository science is not being questioned, rather the clarity and completeness of how that work is documented.

"We have demonstrated steady and significant progress," Yucca Mountain Project director Margaret Chu told the GAO in an April 19 letter.

Chu said DOE remains on schedule for a December license application, "and we have an effective quality assurance program in place that will enable us to meet that objective."

But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the GAO findings signals the repository program "is a mess."

"Quality assurance is supposed to verify that experiments were done right, but they have spent decades on this and spent billions of dollars, and it's a mess," he said. "They can't back up their science."

Officials from the Nuclear Energy Institute defended the Energy Department and said quality controls have grown effective over time. The institute is the political arm of the nuclear industry , which supports the repository program.

"We are confident the QA program will be in the right shape when they file a license application," said Steve Kraft, NEI waste management director.

Quality assurance is a key element of nuclear programs that must pass muster with the NRC.

Scientists and technicians must follow rigid procedures to document their work. In-house auditors must verify thousands of pieces of information, tracking chains of evidence for data sources and software codes, plus the analyses that tie them together into the building blocks for a project application.

When problems are found, an elaborate and formal corrective process is started that traces and dissects errors, fixes them and checks that they have been fixed.

But audits over the years revealed quality assurance to be a thorn for the Yucca project, the GAO said.

Program auditors identified significant software and science model problems in 1998 that prompted DOE to take corrective actions. But, the GAO said, the problems resurfaced in 2001 in a follow-up audit.

When Chu became project director in 2002, she put in place an initiative to overhaul the quality assurance program. But, the GAO said in its draft, its performance goals lack objective measurements and timetables to determine whether corrective actions are successful.

Steve Tetreault is the chief of the Stephens Washington Bureau.