DOE IG report: DOE should consider closing DOE facilities, re-examining the sustainability of FFAs, and abolishing NNSA
Published: Tue, 11/15/11
EM and NNSA would undergo major structural and mission realignment under "cost reduction ideas" included in a DOE Office of Inspector General report released today.
DOE IG issues the "Management Challenges at the Department of Energy" report each year to identify what it considers to be the most significant management challenges facing DOE. Unlike prior reports, the 2012 version also identified a series of cost reduction and efficiency enhancement actions for consideration by DOE management.
"This is intended to assist the Department in dealing with the likely budget reductions facing most agency programs," according to DOE IG.
The ideas include:
Regarding DOE's environmental remediation efforts, the report asks "Are the Department's existing environmental remediation commitments sustainable in light of current budget realities and, as a corollary, would a risk-based strategy applied throughout the complex allow for improved targeting of scarce remediation resources?" The report recommends DOE "consider revising its current remediation strategy and instead address environmental concerns on a national, complex-wide risk basis. This would result in a form of environmental remediation triage."
Regarding NNSA, the report asks "Are the benefits of NNSA's semiautonomous status, with its resulting duplicative operations, worth the cost?" DOE IG further states that "this study could be utilized as a starting point in a deliberative process to evaluate the re-incorporation of NNSA into the Department's organizational structure."
In considering these issues, DOE IG "took into consideration several seemingly unavoidable and perhaps unpleasant realities."
Among those realities:
"In several states, with New Mexico, Idaho, South Carolina, Washington, and Tennessee as prime examples, the Department's facilities and contractor operations are among the largest employers and most potent economic generators in those jurisdictions. Any change to the organizational structure of the Department's complex will have a significant economic impact on these and other states and localities."
In the same report, DOE IG added Nuclear Waste Disposal to the list of management challenges for the first time "due to the decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain Project and the remaining uncertainty as to the path forward for disposing of spent commercial nuclear waste and high level defense waste."
The full report is available here.
Energy spending bill on Senate floor, Senators to meet with Secretary Chu on nuclear waste storage ECA The Senate started debate yesterday on the second Fiscal Year 2012 spending package (H.R. 2354), which is based on the Energy-Water spending bill (same bill number). The Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations spending bills will be added to the package later.
Senate leaders hoped to complete work on the package before Thanksgiving recess, although procedural hurdles and a large number of amendments have slowed work. Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened that lawmakers may have to stay through Thanksgiving if progress is not made.
Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein remains opposed to $96 million in small modular reactor (SMR) funding due to lack of a national nuclear waste storage solution. The President requested the SMR funding and the House's version of the Energy-Water spending bill agreed to provide it. The Senate bill does not include the funding, although Energy-Water Appropriations Ranking Member Lamar Alexander would like to see it added.
Feinstein and Alexander are reported to have a meeting with Secretary Chu next month to discuss spent fuel policy.
On Nov. 2, the Department of Energy's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, delivered a fairly critical report on Department of Energy's use of stimulus funds.
The investigation into American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spending came at the behest of the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending.
While the report validated some of the concerns regarding stimulus funds, the bright spot in the report was cleanup of the weapons complex sites under DOE's Office of Environmental Management.
Here in the Tri-Cities and Hanford, we should be applauding DOE, its contractors and subcontractors, and especially the workers who labored, safely, through the past 30-plus months.
For those of us who regularly visit the Hanford site, cleanup progress has been measurable, easy to see and remarkable.
As Matt McCormick, manager of DOE's Richland office, said, "We did almost $4 billion worth of cleanup work, for $1.96 billion in funding."
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