Report to Congressional Committees

GAO-01-284

GAO

February 2001 NUCLEAR CLEANUP

Progress Made at

Rocky Flats, but

Closure by 2006 Is

Unlikely, and Costs

May Increase
Page i GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Letter 1

Appendix I Comments From the Department of Energy 42

Appendix II Comments From Kaiser-Hill Company, L.L.C. 44

Appendix III GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments 46

Tables

Table 1: Status of Major Cleanup Activities, as of September 30,

2000 9

Table 2: Estimates of Rocky Flats’ Closure and Post-Closure Costs 18

Table 3: Estimated Effects of Different Soil Cleanup Levels on the

Scope and Cost of the 903 Pad Cleanup 30

Figures

Figure 1: Workers in Protective Clothing Handling PlutoniumContaminated Equipment 5

Figure 2: Status of Structural Demolition in Rocky Flats’ Industrial

Area, by Severity of Contamination 14

Figure 3: Workers Load 14 of the 55-Gallon Transuranic Waste

Drums Into a Transportation Cask 24

Contents
Page ii GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Abbreviations

DOE Department of Energy

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

GAO General Accounting Office

WIPP Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Page 1 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

February 28, 2001

The Honorable John W. Warner

Chairman

The Honorable Carl Levin

Ranking Member

Committee on Armed Services

United States Senate

The Honorable Bob Stump

Chairman

The Honorable Ike Skelton

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Armed Services

House of Representatives

The Department of Energy (DOE) hopes to complete a monumental task—

the cleanup and closure of the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology

Site—by December 2006. One of the 16 major facilities that produced the

nation’s nuclear weapons, the Rocky Flats site (just 16 miles northwest of

downtown Denver) made plutonium triggers, or “pits,” for these weapons.1

The site’s weapons production activities left high-risk radioactive and

hazardous materials and wastes, severely contaminated buildings, and

large areas of contaminated soil—all in close proximity to the 2.5 million

residents of Denver and its surrounding communities. The job at hand is

huge. For example, the total amount of radioactive waste that the

contractor is required to package and ship off-site is enough to fill a 19-

story building the size of a football field. Initially, DOE planned to

maintain and gradually clean up the site until about 2070. However, in

1995, DOE undertook a more aggressive cleanup approach and signed a

contract with Kaiser Hill Company, L.L.C.,2

 to begin cleaning up the site.

Then, in 1997, the Secretary of Energy designated Rocky Flats, along with

several other nuclear sites, as a pilot site for cleanup and closure within 10

years. Subsequently, DOE and Kaiser-Hill set the challenging goal of

closing the site by December 15, 2006. If DOE and the contractor can

achieve this goal or come close to it, the Department stands to save

billions of dollars compared with what it would have spent to continue to

 1

The trigger is the primary device that is imploded to cause a fission reaction. Rocky Flats

has not produced plutonium triggers since 1989.

2

Kaiser-Hill is a joint venture between Kaiser Group International, Inc., and CH2M Hill.

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, DC 20548
Page 2 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

operate and maintain the site for an additional 60 years, and

environmental and safety risks will be reduced that much earlier.

Concerned about the Department’s ability to meet the 2006 site closure

date, the Senate and House Committees on Armed Services, in Public Law

106-65 (Oct. 5, 1999), directed GAO to review several aspects of the

closure project. As agreed with your offices, we reviewed (1) the status

and cost of the Rocky Flats closure project, (2) the likelihood that the site

will be closed by 2006, and (3) the management actions needed, if any, to

improve the likelihood of the project’s success.

In the more than 5 years that it has been the major contractor at the Rocky

Flats site, Kaiser-Hill has made significant progress toward cleaning up the

site, but the majority of the work—and the most complicated—remains to

be done. One of the four major activities—shipping nuclear materials such

as plutonium-contaminated metals and powders—is expected to be

completed in 2002. Another activity—shipping radioactive waste—has

begun, but hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of waste remain to be

shipped. Similarly, a third activity—cleaning up and demolishing hundreds

of structures—is under way but is only about 10-percent complete. KaiserHill is using some innovative techniques to speed the cleanup of the

contaminated structures, including the use of specialized cutting torches

in place of conventional hand tools. And finally, although three of the four

planned groundwater treatment systems have been installed, the vast

majority of contaminated soil areas remain to be remediated. Because of

the project’s difficulty, DOE entered into a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract

with Kaiser-Hill. If completed on time, the project will cost about $7.5

billion (in constant 2000 dollars) from the signing of the first cleanup

contract with Kaiser-Hill in July 1995 through the 2006 closure date, and

about $1.4 billion more thereafter, for such activities as site monitoring

and maintenance and for contractor employees’ retirement benefits. These

overall costs will increase if additional work is required or if the 2006

target date is not achieved; taking another 2 years to complete the project,

for example, could add about $530 million for such costs as employee

salaries and maintenance activities.

Kaiser-Hill and DOE are unlikely to meet the December 2006 target closure

date. Significant and complex challenges must be overcome first, such as

(1) addressing technical problems in order to successfully operate a

complex system for stabilizing and packaging plutonium—a system

already 3 years behind schedule; (2) overcoming limited numbers of

transportation casks and a limited loading capacity to ship huge quantities

Results in Brief
Page 3 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

of radioactive waste; (3) developing plans for cleaning up the site’s

structures and removing over 720 of them, mostly in the last 2 years before

the site’s closure; (4) resolving uncertainties about the extent of

contamination in the soil and the amount of contamination that can be left

in place; and (5) reducing the number of safety violations at the site, which

not only pose risks to the workers but which can also result in lengthy

building shutdowns that interrupt cleanup activities. If Kaiser-Hill and

DOE cannot overcome these major challenges, the site’s closure by 2006 is

unlikely. In light of these challenges, as of December 2000, Kaiser-Hill

estimated that it had only about a 15-percent probability of completing the

project by 2006.

Kaiser Hill and DOE are developing their respective plans for managing

the closure project, but DOE needs to take additional steps to effectively

implement its plan. The plans are intended to clearly delineate each party’s

responsibilities for closure and the time frames associated with those

responsibilities, and serve as tools for managing the project. DOE

identified weaknesses in Kaiser-Hill’s plan (referred to as the baseline) for

managing the thousands of activities necessary to clean up and close the

site, and company officials are working to resolve them. The

improvements that Kaiser-Hill is making to its baseline include developing

a more detailed cleanup strategy for the structures contaminated with

plutonium and ensuring compliance with regulatory and oversight

requirements. DOE’s plan, which is still under development, is intended to

identify DOE’s responsibilities under the contract and the sequence of

tasks for meeting them. Many elements of the plan appear to be sound,

including the process of documenting the tasks required, the time frames

for completion, and the organizations and sites whose contributions are

critical to successfully accomplishing the tasks. However, we have

concerns about DOE’s ability to effectively implement its plan because no

strategy is in place to identify and resolve problems. Two components are

missing—a clearly established authority for reconciling competing

demands for DOE’s resources and a process for limiting the amount of

time that a problem or conflict can languish unresolved. Without these

components, Rocky Flats has had difficulty getting other DOE

organizations to provide the support it needs to complete the cleanup,

such as obtaining transportation resources to ship its plutonium off-site

and certified containers needed for shipping nuclear materials. These

features are not in the plan now because the Department has been focused

on developing the basic tasks and time frames and, to date, DOE’s senior

managers have not been significantly involved in the project. It is

important to take these steps now because implementation is already

under way for certain aspects of the plan, the Rocky Flats project has a
Page 4 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

tight time frame for completion, delays in key activities can have a

cascading effect on other project activities and ultimately affect the

project’s completion date, and extending the project will increase its

overall cost. We are recommending that DOE address these

implementation issues to provide greater assurance that its plan will be

effectively implemented.

For nearly 40 years, the Rocky Flats site, located about 16 miles northwest

of downtown Denver, served as a nuclear weapons production facility, and

it now bears the scars of that role. Soil, groundwater, and surface water at

the site, as well as many of the buildings, are contaminated with

radioactive materials, such as plutonium and uranium; toxic metals, such

as beryllium; and hazardous chemicals, such as cleaning solvents and

degreasers. Accordingly, the site is now one of the Department’s priorities

for environmental cleanup. While most of the approximately 6,300 acres

that make up the Rocky Flats site served through the years as an

undeveloped buffer zone, about one-half of a square mile (385 acres) in the

center of the site constituted the industrial area, where, for decades,

plutonium was recycled and shaped into pits for use in nuclear weapons.

About three-fourths of the site’s more than 800 original structures

(buildings, guard towers, storage tanks) were not radiologically or

chemically contaminated by site operations over the years, but the

remainder were—some severely so. This was the case, for example, for

seven building complexes that housed the plutonium-processing

operations.

The cleanup and closure of Rocky Flats is a complex, tedious, and laborintensive undertaking. Because plutonium-contaminated materials must be

specially contained and carefully handled, the work is hard and slow.

Plutonium is dangerous to human health, even in minute quantities,

especially if inhaled. Workers dealing with plutonium-contaminated

materials and equipment must wear cumbersome protective suits with

enclosed respiratory systems and sometimes must wield heavy and

ungainly tools. The equipment being worked on must also be enclosed

within plastic or glass to prevent airborne contaminants from reaching

unprotected workers or surfaces. Figure 1 shows workers in protective

clothing dealing with contaminated materials.

Background
Page 5 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Figure 1: Workers in Protective Clothing Handling Plutonium-Contaminated

Equipment

Source: Kaiser-Hill.

Within DOE, the Office of Environmental Management is responsible for

cleaning up the Department’s nuclear weapons complex and closing down

facilities, including Rocky Flats, that are no longer needed for producing

nuclear weapons. At the Rocky Flats Field Office, approximately 190 DOE

employees oversee the contractor’s activities.
Page 6 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

In July 1995, Kaiser-Hill was awarded a 5-year contract to begin cleaning

up Rocky Flats. When we reported in April 1999 on the status of the

cleanup project,3

 Kaiser-Hill’s target date to close Rocky Flats was 2010. In

response to a 1996 DOE initiative to close as many sites as possible by

2006, DOE entered into negotiations with Kaiser-Hill that resulted in the

current closure contract, which took effect February 1, 2000. Kaiser-Hill

manages the cleanup work, which is done predominantly by

subcontractors. As required by the contract, Kaiser-Hill has developed a

closure project baseline, which serves as its detailed management plan for

the project.

The closure contract specifies both Kaiser-Hill’s and DOE’s

responsibilities. Kaiser-Hill is responsible for processing, packaging, and

shipping off-site all of Rocky Flats’ nuclear materials and radioactive and

hazardous wastes;4

 cleaning up and demolishing more than 700 structures

that remained on-site in February 2000; and cleaning up the site’s

contaminated soil and groundwater. DOE is required to deliver a variety of

services and items to support the project. Essentially, the contract requires

DOE to arrange receiver sites for all the materials and wastes that must be

shipped off-site and to obtain the necessary certifications for the

containers in which the materials and wastes must be packed and shipped.

Many DOE sites will play a significant role in Rocky Flats’ cleanup and

closure, especially those sites that are scheduled to receive materials or

wastes from Rocky Flats, such as the Savannah River Site in South

Carolina and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.5

The closure contract is structured so that DOE pays all of the cleanup

costs plus an incentive fee for Kaiser-Hill’s services. Kaiser-Hill will not

 3

See Department of Energy: Accelerated Closure of Rocky Flats: Status and Obstacles

(GAO/RCED-99-100, Apr. 30, 1999).

4

These wastes—items such as clothing, gloves, equipment, rags, paper, filters, and plastic—

include low-level radioactive waste, transuranic waste, and mixed waste. Low-level

radioactive waste contains radioactive constituents measuring 100 or fewer nanocuries of

transuranic isotopes (described below) per gram of waste (a nanocurie is one-billionth of a

curie; a curie is the amount of radioactivity in 1 gram of radium). Transuranic waste is

radioactive waste contaminated with transuranic isotopes (i.e., isotopes of elements

heavier than uranium, such as plutonium), with half-lives greater than 5 years, in

concentrations above 100 nanocuries per gram of waste. And mixed waste is radioactive

waste—either low-level or transuranic—that also contains hazardous wastes such as toxic

metals, cleaning solvents, degreasers, and paint thinners.

5

WIPP is DOE’s deep geologic repository for transuranic and transuranic mixed wastes,

located in an underground salt formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Page 7 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

receive the majority of this fee until it has finished most of the cleanup and

closure tasks, as specified in the contract. Kaiser-Hill will earn a higher

incentive fee if it saves on costs and finishes its work before the target

completion date. In effect, DOE will share the savings from these lower

costs by paying Kaiser-Hill a higher fee. Conversely, if Kaiser-Hill exceeds

the contract’s target date and cost, resulting in higher costs to the

government, the contractor will earn a lower fee.

The contract also requires Kaiser-Hill to comply with the terms of the

Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement, which serves as the regulatory

framework for the site’s cleanup and closure. The agreement specifies the

roles and responsibilities of DOE and the two primary regulators for

Rocky Flats: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of

Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment. EPA derives its

regulatory authority primarily from the Comprehensive Environmental

Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, as amended,

commonly known as Superfund. Colorado exercises regulatory authority

over hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery

Act of 1976, as amended, as well as the Colorado Hazardous Waste Act.

Pursuant to the cleanup agreement, EPA has the lead regulatory authority

over the cleanup of the site’s buffer zone, while Colorado has the lead

authority over the cleanup of the industrial area. The cleanup agreement

incorporates the requirements of both Superfund and the Resource

Conservation and Recovery Act, and requires that the site’s other

stakeholders be consulted during the development of cleanup plans. These

other stakeholders include the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board;6

local governments; community, business, and citizen groups; and

individuals.

Under the terms of the contract, and as used in this report, “closure” is

defined as the point in time at which Kaiser-Hill has completed all of its

cleanup tasks, as specified in the contract. When Kaiser-Hill notifies DOE

that it has completed its work, DOE has 90 days either to accept the

project as complete or to provide a list of items that Kaiser-Hill must

address. The contractor will then have 9 months to complete its work on

these items. Separate from how “closure” is defined under the contract,

however, is the process of removing Rocky Flats from the list of

 6

The Safety Board is an independent agency created by the Congress in 1988 to oversee

health and safety at DOE’s defense nuclear facilities. Although not a signatory to the Rocky

Flats Cleanup Agreement, the Safety Board is part of this agreement through an attached

memorandum of understanding.
Page 8 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Superfund sites. When DOE and the regulators are satisfied that the

cleanup meets all regulatory requirements, and sufficient monitoring

information has been gathered on the condition of the air, water, and soil,

EPA will have the information it needs to consider removing the site from

the Superfund list.

After closure has been achieved, however, monitoring and maintenance

activities at the site will continue for many decades. Soil and water

conditions will continue to be monitored to ensure that contamination

remains within acceptable levels. Also, all treatment facilities, such as

groundwater treatment systems, will continue to be maintained as long as

necessary. DOE’s long-term cost estimates include the costs of monitoring

and maintenance activities through 2070, but some of the activities will

probably need to go on longer.

By the end of fiscal year 2000, Kaiser-Hill had made significant strides in

cleaning up the Rocky Flats site, but the vast majority of the work, and

some of the most technically challenging, remained. The bulk of the work

entails (1) processing, packaging, and shipping various forms of plutonium

and uranium; (2) processing, packaging, and shipping radioactive wastes;

(3) cleaning up and demolishing buildings and other structures; and (4)

remediating contaminated water and soil. The total cleanup cost is

estimated to be about $7.5 billion—in constant 2000 dollars—if the site’s

closure occurs by December 15, 2006. The project’s total cost will grow,

however, if additional work is required or if delays occur. After closure,

costs will continue through at least 2070 for activities such as site

monitoring and maintenance, and for contractor employee retirement

benefits. These long-term costs will be about another $1.4 billion in

constant 2000 dollars.

Since it began cleanup operations in fiscal year 1996,7

 the contractor has

made considerable progress toward closure in several work categories.

Progress has been greatest in two areas: shipping nuclear materials and

remediating groundwater. In most major areas of work, however, the lion’s

share remains to be done. Table 1 shows the status of the four major

cleanup activities, at the end of fiscal year 2000.

 7

Although the previous Kaiser-Hill cleanup contract took effect July 1, 1995, the early

months of the contract were spent mostly on planning, according to Kaiser-Hill officials.

Thus, our references to the cleanup activities under that contract indicate that they began

in fiscal year 1996.

Considerable Cleanup

Progress Has Been

Made, but Much Work

Remains, and Closure

Costs May Exceed

$7.5 Billion

Achievements to Date Vary

by Work Category, but the

Remaining Work Is

Substantial
Page 9 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Table 1: Status of Major Cleanup Activities, as of September 30, 2000

Major cleanup activities Percentage completed

Special nuclear materials shipments

Plutonium triggers 100

Highly enriched uranium a

Plutonium metals and oxides (fine powders) a

Waste shipments

Low-level and low-level mixed waste 13

Transuranic and transuranic mixed waste 2

Structural cleanup and demolition

Predemolition activities (e.g., dismantling equipment,

stripping out pipelines) 10

Structures demolished (of 802) 10

Environmental remediation

Groundwater treatment systems installed (of 4) 75

Soil remediated; regulators’ approval of remedial action

obtained (of 124 areas) 2

Regulators’ approval to take no remedial action obtained (of

184 areas) 24

a

National security concerns prevent the disclosure of the percentages of highly enriched uranium and

plutonium metals that have been shipped. Most of the highly enriched uranium has been shipped,

however, and shipments of plutonium metals have begun and are scheduled for completion by the

end of fiscal year 2002.

Source: GAO’s analysis of data provided by Kaiser-Hill.

Kaiser-Hill has made significant progress in shipping the site’s special

nuclear materials (plutonium and enriched uranium). When Kaiser-Hill

began cleanup work under its previous contract (in fiscal year 1996), the

site had over 16 metric tons of special nuclear materials, including various

forms of plutonium (e.g., pits, other metal parts, and oxides)8

 and enriched

uranium.9

 The contractor was responsible for stabilizing10 and packaging

all of the special nuclear materials and shipping them off-site, primarily to

other DOE sites, such as Oak Ridge (in Tennessee), Pantex (in Texas), and

 8

Plutonium oxides are fine powders produced when plutonium metals react with oxygen,

as happens during processing and storage.

9

The site had an additional 106 metric tons of plutonium residues, which contained over 3

metric tons of plutonium. However, these residues are being disposed of as transuranic

waste and are therefore included in the total for transuranic waste under the subheading

“Shipping Radioactive Waste,” and are not included in the total for special nuclear

materials.

10Stabilization includes brushing the plutonium metals to remove loose oxides and heating

the oxides to a very high temperature to remove moisture and other impurities.

Shipping Special Nuclear

Materials
Page 10 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Savannah River (in South Carolina). By the end of fiscal year 2000, the

contractor had inventoried the special nuclear materials and had prepared

and shipped all of the plutonium pits and most of the highly enriched

uranium. The contractor had also shipped some of the 6.6 metric tons of

plutonium metals.11

Kaiser-Hill still has to stabilize, package, and ship off-site the remainder of

the plutonium-contaminated highly enriched uranium, the remainder of

the plutonium metals, and all 3.2 metric tons of plutonium oxides.

According to a DOE official, shipments of plutonium metals began in the

spring of 2000; shipments of oxides are expected to begin in June 2001.

Kaiser-Hill plans to complete all shipments of metals and oxides by the

end of fiscal year 2002. In the sequence of activities necessary to close the

site, removal of the special nuclear materials logically precedes many of

the other cleanup activities.

Kaiser-Hill has made limited progress in processing, packaging, and

shipping the various radioactive wastes, including mixed waste that also

contains hazardous waste. The total amount of radioactive waste to be

shipped includes waste that was already stored at the site and waste that

is generated during cleanup activities. As of September 30, 2000, the

contractor had exceeded its shipping goal by shipping off-site more than

34,500 cubic meters of low-level radioactive and low-level radioactive

mixed wastes—about 13 percent of the total. In addition, by the end of

fiscal year 2000, the contractor had shipped off-site about 320 cubic meters

of transuranic and transuranic mixed wastes, or about 2 percent of the

total.12 The contractor was well below its goal for shipping transuranic

waste, having shipped only 25 percent of the amount it had projected to

ship in fiscal year 2000. Because waste will continue to be generated by

cleanup activities, waste shipments will continue through the life of the

cleanup project. From fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2006, for

example, the contractor expects to ship nearly 224,000 cubic meters of

low-level radioactive waste and about 14,400 cubic meters of transuranic

waste. In part, the contractor’s limited progress in shipping the transuranic

waste is due to the late opening of WIPP—the Department’s repository for

such waste. The WIPP facility did not open until late March 1999, and

 11National security concerns prevent our reporting the amount or percentage of plutonium

metals that has been shipped.

12Hereafter, “low-level radioactive waste” and “transuranic waste” include, by reference,

low-level radioactive mixed waste and transuranic mixed waste.

Shipping Radioactive Waste
Page 11 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

shipments of transuranic waste from Rocky Flats did not begin until June

1999.

Kaiser-Hill has made headway on the vast amount of work involved in

preparing buildings and other structures for demolition, and has

demolished some structures. But the majority of both the preparatory

work and the demolition lies ahead. From fiscal year 1996 through fiscal

year 2000, the contractor dispositioned (i.e., disposed of, sold, or donated)

hundreds of thousands of pieces of uncontaminated personal property;

removed thousands of kilograms of plutonium and other nuclear materials

from furnaces, pipes, and other locations within buildings; and drained

and removed plutonium- or uranium-laden liquids or residues from

process pipes and tanks. The contractor also dismantled plutoniumprocessing furnaces, stripped out contaminated process pipelines, and cut

up and removed hundreds of contaminated glove boxes.13 How much of

the total preparatory work has been accomplished is difficult to say, as the

contractor does not measure that work separately. Nevertheless, a senior

Kaiser-Hill official estimated that only about 10 percent of the total

predemolition work had been completed as of September 30, 2000.

Although many of the remaining tasks are similar to those already

completed, others are structure-specific. For example, one building

contains processing equipment that is two stories tall; another houses a

huge plutonium storage vault that is the length of a football field and has

14-foot-thick concrete walls. In the six remaining plutonium-processing

complexes alone, hundreds of miles of piping must be stripped out, and

hundreds of contaminated glove boxes, furnaces, and other items must be

cut into pieces small enough to fit into shipping containers for disposal.

Kaiser-Hill is using innovative technology to clean up the plutonium

buildings. For example, it is using a fine aerosol sugar fog to clean some of

the most contaminated rooms at the site. The sugar fog—called Capture

CoatingTM—is created by a machine using sound waves to make the

droplets very small. The fog is then pumped into the room through a

flexible duct. Airborne radioactive particles adhere to the fog, which

settles onto the walls and floor and is allowed to dry. The contaminated

surfaces can then be more safely removed. Another innovative approach,

developed through experience Kaiser-Hill gained cleaning up the first

 13A glovebox is a closed glass, plastic, or metal chamber for handling hazardous or

radioactive materials. The operator handles the material through gloves sealed to the

chamber’s wall. Gloveboxes range in size from a few square feet to thousands of square

feet.

Preparing and Demolishing

Structures
Page 12 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

plutonium building, is using a plasma arc torch instead of conventional

tools to cut up large pieces of contaminated equipment. The plasma arc

torch—a device that electrically heats gas to form a plasma for hightemperature operations, such as melting metal—is much faster, and it

distances workers from sharp edges on tools and contaminated metal

parts. To further enhance worker safety, Kaiser-Hill is pursuing the use of

robotic arms to operate the torch.

To improve the overall efficiency of cleanup and demolition activities,

Kaiser-Hill is reducing the size of the site’s protected area—a restricted

zone within which special nuclear materials are kept under access and

security controls. Maintaining a protected area is expensive, requiring the

presence of extensive security equipment and armed guards. In addition, a

large protected area limits the time that workers can devote to cleanup

activities because only those with the necessary security clearances can

enter the protected area unescorted, and the entry and exit processes are

time-consuming. The protected area now includes all of the plutonium

buildings. By consolidating special nuclear materials and processes into

one building, Kaiser-Hill plans to reduce the protected area to about onefifth its current size in early 2001, saving an estimated $10 million per year

in security costs from then through closure, as well as achieving

productivity improvements.14 Kaiser-Hill plans to apply any such cost

savings to other cleanup work at the site, in accordance with direction

provided in the conference report on DOE’s fiscal year 2001

appropriations.15

Nearly all of the demolition work lies ahead. By the end of fiscal year 2000,

Kaiser-Hill had demolished 81 structures encompassing about 196,000

square feet. That equates to about 10 percent of the total number of

structures (802) that existed at the site when cleanup began but only about

5 percent of the total square footage. Although many of the 81 structures

 14Because of the remaining quantities of materials or classified matters, all or portions of

the other plutonium buildings will still require some additional safeguards and security—

although less than for a protected area. These savings estimates have not been adjusted for

inflation.

15Conference Report 106-988 (Oct. 18, 2000) stated, in regard to defense facilities closure

projects, that “Any savings resulting from safeguards and security costs are to be retained

and used for cleanup activities at the closure sites.” In providing technical comments on

this report, DOE noted that Kaiser-Hill cannot, of its own accord, redirect safeguards and

security savings to closure projects. Doing so would require coordination with DOE, so

that DOE could take the appropriate steps (e.g., notifying the Congress or reprogramming

funds).
Page 13 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

demolished so far are relatively minor (i.e., small or uncontaminated),

others represent major accomplishments for the contractor. For example,

Kaiser-Hill demolished one of the building complexes that, early in the

production era, housed plutonium-processing activities. This building

complex encompassed 13 structures and more than 75,000 square feet of

enclosed space. Its demolition, in fiscal year 2000, was the first in the

nation of a plutonium facility of that size and complexity. Remaining to be

demolished (after completion of the necessary preparatory activities) at

the end of fiscal year 2000 were 721 structures, encompassing about 3.4

million square feet. Most of this demolition is scheduled to occur during

the last 2 years of the project.16 Figure 2 shows, by severity of

contamination, the structures that remained to be demolished as of

September 30, 2000, and the ones already demolished.

 16Fiscal years 2005 and 2006, plus the first 11 weeks of fiscal year 2007 (up to the target

closure date of Dec. 15, 2006).
Page 14 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Figure 2: Status of Structural Demolition in Rocky Flats’ Industrial Area, by Severity

of Contamination

Source: GAO’s presentation of data provided by Kaiser-Hill.

And finally, the bulk of the environmental remediation remains to be done,

much of it also in the last 2 years of the project. Environmental

remediation activities at the site are designed to clean up contaminated

groundwater, surface water, and soil.17 Some contaminated groundwater

seeps to the surface, particularly during periods of rain or snow, and then

trickles into ditches and streams. Similarly, contaminated soil washes into

ditches and streams when it rains or snows. Accordingly, the remediation

of both the groundwater and the soil is designed to protect not only those

elements but also the surface water. When surface water leaves the site—

via ditches and streams—it must be safe for all purposes, including

drinking water. Currently, the site’s runoff water is collected in holding

ponds and tested prior to its release to ensure that radioactive materials

do not leave the site in surface water.

 17The groundwater contains such contaminants as uranium, nitrates, and volatile organic

compounds (degreasers and solvents such as trichloroethene, carbon tetrachloride, and

chloroform); the soil contains such contaminants as plutonium, uranium, and americium.

Remediating Contaminated

Groundwater and Soil

Major plutonium buildings—extensive radiological and hazardous contamination

Buildings with some radiological and/or hazardous contamination 

Buildings free of contamination 

Demolished major plutonium buildings 

Demolished buildings with some contamination 

Demolished buildings free of contamination 

200 400 Feet0
Page 15 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

By the end of fiscal year 2000, Kaiser-Hill had installed three of the four

planned groundwater treatment systems. Each system intercepts a

contaminated plume of groundwater before it can surface and funnels the

plume through treatment cells that remove or reduce the contaminants. At

least one more treatment system is planned--for the plume underlying the

industrial area, pending an investigation of the source, type, and severity

of the plume’s contaminants. But Kaiser-Hill plans no remediation of the

site’s other seven contaminated plumes because it believes they are

stationary under the site. According to the Rocky Flats Cleanup

Agreement, stationary groundwater plumes that do not present a risk to

surface water require no remediation, regardless of contamination levels.

Long-term monitoring of the seven plumes will be necessary to ensure that

they remain stationary.

As for the remediation of contaminated soil, most of it remains to be done.

Through the end of fiscal year 2000, Kaiser-Hill had excavated or treated

several areas of soil contamination that were ranked as high priorities for

remediation because of their potential risk to human health or the

environment. For example, the contractor excavated or treated soil

contaminated by past spills or leaks of radioactive or hazardous materials.

When Kaiser-Hill began its cleanup efforts at the site in fiscal year 1996, it

was responsible for 308 areas of potential soil contamination. Kaiser-Hill is

responsible for determining the levels of contamination present and, thus,

which of these areas require remedial action pursuant to the requirements

of the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement. At the time of our review, much of

the characterization remained to be done, particularly under the buildings

in the industrial area. As a result, the depth and extent of soil

contamination—particularly in the industrial area—was unknown. Relying

on preliminary investigations and site records, Kaiser-Hill thought it would

need to remediate 124 areas (of the 308) and to take no action (or no

further action) on the other 184 areas.18 Once it has finished characterizing

the soil in the industrial area, however, Kaiser-Hill’s remediation plans

may change. DOE and the regulators (EPA and Colorado) must approve

not only each remedial action that Kaiser-Hill takes but also each proposal

to take no remedial action on an area.

At the time of our review, Kaiser-Hill had completed remedial actions on

25 of the 124 areas thought to require remediation. Of the 25 remedial

actions, 3 had been approved by the regulators; the other 22 were awaiting

 18Further references to “no action” include “no further action.”
Page 16 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

approval. Remediation of the other 99 areas remained to be done. Most of

the remaining soil remediation is scheduled to occur toward the end of the

project, to coincide with or follow demolition activities. As for the 184

areas thought to require no remediation, Kaiser-Hill had submitted 111 noaction proposals. Of these, 45 had been approved by the regulators; the

other 66 were awaiting approval.19 Proposals had not been submitted on

the other 73 areas.

The immense task of cleaning up and closing Rocky Flats will cost about

$7.5 billion from fiscal year 1996 through the target closure date, plus

about $1.4 billion in post-closure costs through 2070.20 These costs,

however, could increase substantially, for various reasons.

The $7.5 billion estimate of costs through the target closure date is made

up of four components:

• The current contract, effective February 2000. This contract

represents more than half the total cost. If closure occurs by the target

date, the contract cost will be about $4 billion.21 DOE will pay all costs that

it determines are allowable under the terms of the contract. Kaiser-Hill’s

incentive fee, paid in addition to the allowable costs, is estimated to be

about $340 million but will vary—from $130 million to $460 million—

depending on the contractor’s performance. The fee is tied partly to

schedule and partly to cost. Kaiser-Hill will earn the “target fee” of $340

million if it completes its work within a specified schedule and cost range:

between December 16, 2006, and March 31, 2007, at a cost between $4

 19Some of the remedial actions completed and the no-action proposals submitted had been

rejected by the regulators; in other cases, the regulators had requested further information

before approving an action or a proposal.

20Unless otherwise noted, all costs cited in this section have been adjusted for inflation and

are expressed in constant 2000 dollars. The $7.5 billion closure cost estimate differs, for

several reasons, from the $6.3 billion estimate contained in DOE’s March 2000 Status

Report on Paths to Closure. Primarily, our estimate of $7.5 billion is a lifecycle cost

estimate through closure and, as such, includes all costs incurred by Kaiser-Hill since July

1, 1995, when Kaiser-Hill’s first closure contract began. In contrast, DOE’s cost estimate

begins in fiscal year 1997, when the Secretary of Energy designated Rocky Flats as an

accelerated closure project. Also, we express costs in constant 2000 dollars; DOE’s

estimate is in constant 1999 dollars. DOE’s estimate of post-closure costs was similar to the

estimate in this report.

21In this paragraph only, the cost and fee amounts are those cited in the contract; they have

not been adjusted to reflect inflation.

Projected Closure Cost Is

About $7.5 Billion but May

Increase
Page 17 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

billion and $4.2 billion. Kaiser-Hill can earn an additional “schedule

incentive” fee of up to $20 million and an additional “cost incentive” fee of

30 cents of every dollar saved from the target cost of $4 billion.

Conversely, for late or more costly completion, Kaiser-Hill loses a portion

of its fee. For each day that closure is delayed beyond March 31, 2007,

Kaiser-Hill loses about $55,000. And for each dollar of costs in excess of

$4.2 billion, Kaiser-Hill loses 30 cents of its fee. In no case, however (aside

from fee reductions stemming from safety violations), will the contractor

earn a fee less than $130 million or more than $460 million.

• The previous Kaiser-Hill contract. This contract, which cost about $2.9

billion, including the fee, took effect in July 1995 and ran through January

2000.

• The cost of DOE’s Rocky Flats Field Office. This cost is about $553

million, from fiscal year 1996 through the target closure date. This cost is

for staff salaries, site utilities, litigation support, regulatory oversight, and

other expenses.

• The cost incurred by other DOE sites and organizations in support

of Rocky Flats’ closure. This cost—about $130 million, from fiscal year

1996 through target closure—is for such activities as certifying shipping

containers, providing transportation for nuclear materials and wastes, and

receiving and storing Rocky Flats’ materials and wastes. Although DOE

has not quantified all of these sites’ costs to support Rocky Flats’ closure,

DOE officials provided us with the major ones. For example, DOE is

spending about $35 million to modify a storage facility at Savannah River

to accommodate nuclear material shipped from Rocky Flats. Also, through

2006, DOE will spend between $17 million and $22 million to ship

transuranic waste from Rocky Flats to WIPP. In addition, for the same

period of time, the estimated cost of the DOE headquarters office that

supports Rocky Flats’ closure is about $12 million.

The $1.4 billion estimate of long-term (post-closure) costs is made up of

two components:

• Site monitoring and maintenance activities. Through 2070, these are

estimated to cost $400 million. After site closure, DOE or some other

entity will need to monitor environmental conditions at the site and

maintain the systems and structures that remain there (such as the

groundwater treatment systems and monitoring wells).

• Post-retirement benefits for Rocky Flats’ contractor employees.

These benefits—about $1 billion through 2070—include pensions and

medical and life insurance. According to a Rocky Flats budget official,

DOE is liable for such costs under the provisions not only of the current

Kaiser-Hill contract but also of previous site management contracts with
Page 18 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Kaiser-Hill and its predecessors (i.e., Rockwell International Corporation;

EG&G, Inc.; and Dow Chemical Company). This official also said that DOE

has recently assembled a task force to evaluate post-closure liability issues

at DOE’s closure sites.

Table 2 summarizes the estimated Rocky Flats closure and post-closure

costs.

Table 2: Estimates of Rocky Flats’ Closure and Post-Closure Costs

In millions of constant 2000 dollars

Cost component Cost

Closure costs through 2006 target date

Current Kaiser-Hill closure contract, including incentive fee $4,004.4

Previous Kaiser-Hill cleanup contract, including incentive fee 2,883.9

Rocky Flats Field Office (1996-2006)a,b 552.8

DOE support (1996-2006)a,c 130.0

Total $7,571.1

Post-closure costs, fiscal years 2007-70

Monitoring and maintenance activities $ 388.4

Contractor employee retirement benefits (e.g., pensions and medical

and life insurance) 1,010.5

Total $1,398.9

a

In fiscal years; includes first 11 weeks of fiscal year 2007.

b

Costs such as staff salaries, site utilities, litigation support, and regulatory oversight.

c

Costs borne by various DOE sites and organizations for such activities as certifying shipping

containers, arranging receiver sites for materials and wastes from Rocky Flats, transporting materials

and wastes off-site, and overseeing the closure project.

Source: GAO’s analysis of information provided by DOE and Kaiser-Hill.

The projected costs, both through closure and after closure, could be

substantially greater than those shown in table 2, as explained below.

Changes to the scope of the project or the contract requirements could

result in changes to the target cost and the duration of the project.

Changes could result, for example, if DOE imposed new requirements for

characterizing waste or failed to supply a service or item specified in the

contract. If changes are outside the scope of the existing contract or if

DOE fails to deliver as required and thereby jeopardizes the contractor’s

schedule and, thus, its potential fee, Kaiser-Hill could seek relief using a

standard federal contracting provision called a “request for equitable

adjustment.” The relief could take the form of adjustments to the project’s

schedule, contract cost, or both.

Changes to the Contract Could

Increase the Target Cost and

Extend the Schedule
Page 19 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

In early November 2000, Kaiser-Hill submitted to DOE its first request for

equitable adjustment, seeking a $2 million cost increase and a $170,000 fee

increase for harm caused by DOE’s directed change to the design of a

shipping container for plutonium. In late November 2000, Kaiser-Hill

submitted another request, which sought a $1 million cost increase for

delays and cost increases—in fiscal year 2000 alone—caused by the

change in waste acceptance criteria imposed by New Mexico for the

disposal of transuranic waste at WIPP. Kaiser-Hill has also advised DOE

that it plans to submit another request for equitable adjustment related to

the change in the WIPP waste acceptance criteria—this request will be for

schedule delays and cost increases for fiscal years 2001 and beyond. The

contractor was considering about eight additional requests for equitable

adjustment, any of which could increase the final cost—or extend the

closure date—of the project. At the time of our review, DOE officials were

reviewing the requests in preparation for negotiations with Kaiser-Hill.

Thus, the two parties had not yet reached agreement on what adjustments,

if any, would be made to the contract’s schedule and cost as a result of the

first two requests.

If closure is delayed because Kaiser-Hill is late in completing its cleanup

activities, the financial effect could be significant. For example, if closure

were delayed by 2 years, the project’s cost would increase by about $530

million; these costs would be paid by DOE.22 As we discuss later in this

report, we have substantial reason to expect that delays will occur.

 22A 2-year delay would increase the project’s cost (e.g., the contractor’s salaries and

equipment) by as much as $630 million, but this amount would be reduced by the

approximately $155 million of fee that Kaiser-Hill would lose as a result of closing the site

later and at a higher cost than targeted. Furthermore, DOE would incur about $55 million

for the continued operation of the field office.

Closure Delays Would Result in

Increased Costs
Page 20 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

The total cost at Rocky Flats would also rise if any claims for monetary

damages are brought against DOE to compensate for injuries to natural

resources, such as wildlife, fish, and lakes, on or near the site.23 Since some

injuries to natural resources may be addressed in a cleanup, the amount of

damages for which DOE may be liable depends, in part, on the nature and

extent of the remedial action. According to DOE officials, no claims for

damages have been filed at Rocky Flats and DOE has not yet estimated the

extent of its potential liability for natural resource damages at that site.24

Costs resulting from such claims for monetary damages are not included

in the estimated costs of the site’s cleanup and closure presented in this

report.

The estimated cost of site monitoring and maintenance activities assumes

that no further environmental problems will surface at the site because of

DOE’s past activities. However, it is unclear whether this assumption will

prove to be correct. Furthermore, while the DOE estimate includes costs

through 2070, some costs will continue beyond that date. Some monitoring

activities, for example, are likely to continue in perpetuity.

To close Rocky Flats on time and within budget, Kaiser-Hill and DOE must

overcome major challenges: (1) getting the automated plutoniumpackaging system to reliably perform at the rate needed for timely

completion; (2) overcoming limitations on the available number of

transportation casks and on loading capability for transuranic waste; (3)

completing the planning necessary to accomplish the cleanup, demolition,

and remediation of the site’s structures, most of which are scheduled for

the final 2 years of the contract; (4) clarifying uncertainties about the

 23In addition to requiring the cleanup of waste sites, the Comprehensive Environmental

Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, as amended, allows federal, state, and

Indian tribal officials who have been designated as trustees to file claims for monetary

damages for injuries to natural resources resulting from releases of hazardous substances.

Damages are usually for injuries that were not rectified by the cleanup and are to be used

to restore, replace, or acquire equivalent resources. Under the act, the Department of the

Interior has developed regulations for identifying and measuring injuries to resources and

for determining the amount of monetary damages. For more information on natural

resource damage issues at DOE, see Natural Resource Restoration Issues at DOE

(GAO/RCED-97-28R, Dec. 18, 1996) and Natural Resource Damages at DOE (GAO/RCED96-206R, Aug. 16, 1996).

24DOE has disclosed, in its financial statements, a contingency for potential resource

damage claims at its sites. For all of its sites, DOE estimated the range of its liability at $1.4

billion to $2.5 billion.

Injury to Natural Resources on

or Near the Site Could Result in

Claims Against the Government

Site Monitoring and

Maintenance Costs Could Be

Greater Than Anticipated

Closing the Site by

2006 Is Unlikely,

Considering the

Magnitude of

Remaining Challenges
Page 21 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

extent of contamination and cleanup requirements at the site; and (5)

preventing safety problems, which can result in work shutdowns that can

delay cleanup work. Kaiser-Hill and DOE are working to address these

challenges, but their number and complexity make closure by 2006

unlikely. Kaiser-Hill’s own risk assessment concluded that it had only

about a 15-percent probability of meeting the target closure date.

Furthermore, after 8 months of performance under the new contract, the

project was already slightly over cost and behind schedule.

The development and implementation of the site’s plutonium stabilization

and packaging system—a prototype for the Department—has faced

numerous delays. The system was designed to package plutonium metals

and oxides in long-term storage containers. Plutonium reacts with water to

form hydrogen gas and, in some forms, can spontaneously ignite when

exposed to oxygen. Accordingly, the first stage of the system is designed

to stabilize the plutonium by heating it in furnaces to very high

temperatures (at least 950 degrees Celsius) to remove moisture and

impurities, and thereby stabilize the oxides. The second stage of the

system—the automated packaging portion—will place the plutonium

metals and oxides into specially designed, long-term storage containers,

consisting of three nested cans. All the packaging steps, including laserwelding the lids to the containers, will be controlled remotely.

A number of problems delayed the system’s startup and increased its

costs. For example, the laser-welds on the container lids proved to be

porous when tested inside the negative pressure of a glove box. The

porosity had not been apparent in earlier tests at normal atmospheric

pressure. Design and construction flaws caused delays as well. For

example, the design of the furnaces in the stabilization portion of the

system did not allow adequate access for maintenance, and the furnaces

were unreliable. Consequently, the stabilization portion of the system,

originally designed to be automated, was replaced by a manually operated

process. In addition, the ceramic shelves in the manual furnaces took too

long to heat up and had to be replaced with metal shelves. These and other

problems are now resolved.25 However, the delays increased the system’s

 25We issued two reports that discuss problems with the plutonium stabilization and

packaging system, which DOE supplied to Kaiser-Hill as government-furnished equipment.

See Department of Energy: Problems and Progress in Managing Plutonium (GAO/RCED-98-

68, Apr.17, 1998) and Department of Energy: Accelerated Closure of Rocky Flats: Status

and Obstacles (GAO/RCED-99-100, Apr. 30, 1999).

Technical Problems

Continue to Delay the

Stabilization and

Packaging of Plutonium
Page 22 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

cost from an original estimate of less than $30 million to over $85 million,

as of September 2000.26

In January 2001, Kaiser-Hill estimated that the system would start

operating in March 2001, but the system had not yet completed operational

readiness testing, and ongoing problems may further delay startup. One

ongoing problem is that in August 2000, DOE directed Kaiser-Hill to ensure

that it could meet the plutonium stabilization and packaging requirements

issued at that time by the Savannah River Site, where Rocky Flats’

packaged plutonium will be sent for storage, pending its ultimate

disposition. These requirements, for plutonium to be stored at Savannah

River, include developing and implementing a plan for testing the

container welds and meeting criteria for monitoring and blending the

plutonium. Kaiser-Hill concluded that the additional tasks required would

increase the cost and delay the start of the plutonium stabilization and

packaging system. However, there is some debate between DOE and the

contractor about whether these requirements are in addition to those that

were included under the closure contract. If it is determined that KaiserHill was directed to meet requirements in addition to those in the contract,

Kaiser-Hill could request an equitable adjustment to the contract.

Once the system begins operations, it is not clear if it can sustain the

necessary production rate to allow the site’s closure by the target date.

According to DOE officials, to complete the plutonium packaging on time

before delays compressed the schedule, the system needed to operate only

about 10 percent of the time.27 Under its compressed schedule, though, the

system must operate over 70 percent of the time. In effect, under the

compressed schedule, the packaging portion of the system will have to

produce eight containers a day—one container for every 2 hours of

operation. Although Kaiser-Hill officials believe that this production rate is

within the system’s capability, no empirical evidence supports this view.28

If the system cannot meet its expected production rate, many other

cleanup activities will be delayed because they cannot begin until the

completion of the system’s activities.

 26These cost estimates have not been adjusted for inflation.

27Kaiser-Hill plans to operate the system 16 hours a day, with two 8-hour production shifts,

and perform system maintenance during a third 8-hour shift.

28The plutonium packaging system has only been tested with “cold” or simulated material;

its operational capability when packaging plutonium has not been proven.
Page 23 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Because of continuing concerns about the viability of the system, KaiserHill is studying alternatives for packaging the site’s plutonium; the study

had not been completed at the time of our review. Thus, it is unclear

whether a viable alternative exists and could be installed in time to

complete plutonium-packaging operations as scheduled by May 2002.29

Removing the transuranic wastes is one of the most difficult obstacles to

the site’s closure because of the large quantity of wastes and the complex

challenges they present. Kaiser-Hill must ship a total volume of

transuranic waste comparable to over 80,000 drums (55 gallons each), or

more than 2,000 truckloads.30 Kaiser-Hill’s ability to ship this waste off-site

to WIPP by the site’s target closure date is questionable for the following

two reasons:

• Limited Availability of Transportation Casks Could Affect the

Shipping Rate. Transuranic waste must be shipped to WIPP in special

transportation casks approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.31

DOE made a commitment to deliver 1,440 casks per year to Rocky Flats

during the peak shipping years (fiscal years 2002-4). This number is

sufficient for fiscal year 2004 but not for fiscal years 2002 and 2003. For

example, to meet Kaiser-Hill’s projected shipping schedule for fiscal year

2003 (696 shipments), DOE would need to provide 2,088 casks, or 648

more than DOE has agreed to provide.32 It is unclear whether DOE will

provide enough additional casks. According to a DOE transuranic waste

program manager, DOE will supply the 1,440 casks it has agreed to, but it

 29DOE made a commitment to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to have all of the

site’s plutonium packaged into long-term storage containers by May 2002.

30These are estimates; the final numbers will depend on actual waste generation volumes

and waste packaging configurations.

31Each reusable cask can hold 14 of the 55-gallon waste drums, or two standard waste

boxes. A standard waste box fits into the same space in a transportation cask as seven

waste drums and can hold items larger than will fit into the drums, so not as many waste

items have to be cut up (size-reduced) for disposal. Kaiser-Hill can ship up to three casks

per trailer. A shipment may have up to 42 drums of waste, but the number in any given

shipment may be restricted by weight or content.

32According to DOE officials, Kaiser-Hill’s current planned shipping schedule (from the

contractor’s Sept. 2000 request for government-furnished services and items) is more

aggressive than the shipping schedule in the closure contract. However, in the contract,

DOE agreed to use its best efforts to accelerate closure activities, including maximizing

shipping flexibility and capacity.

Compression of the

Transuranic Waste

Shipping Schedule

Stresses the Site’s

Limitations on

Transportation Casks and

Loading Capability
Page 24 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

will provide additional casks on a “best efforts basis, considering the

schedules and requests from other sites.” Other DOE sites, also under

pressure to ship their waste by specific dates, will be competing for use of

the casks. Figure 3 shows workers loading drums into a transportation

cask.

Figure 3: Workers Load 14 of the 55-Gallon Transuranic Waste Drums Into a

Transportation Cask

Source: Kaiser-Hill.

• Loading Capability May Not Meet Shipping Needs. Kaiser-Hill may

not have adequate loading capability to support its shipping needs,

especially as the compressed schedule increases the projected need for

loading capability in the site’s peak shipping years. The waste is loaded by

crane into the transportation casks on flatbed trailers. The site currently

has only one loading facility; two more comparable loading facilities are

under construction and expected to be completed by November 2001.

However, even with all three loading facilities operating, the amount of

waste to be shipped is expected to exceed loading capacity for the next
Page 25 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

several years. To meet the shipping schedule for the site’s peak shipping

years, the contractor will have to consistently operate all three loading

facilities at capacity. For example, to make the number of shipments

scheduled for fiscal year 2003, Kaiser-Hill will need to make over 13

shipments each week. Kaiser-Hill officials believe that the three shipping

facilities together can meet the shipping schedule. This capability has not

been demonstrated and is in doubt. To make 13 shipments per week, each

of the three loading facilities will have to consistently load four or more

truckloads of waste each week, with little or no margin for problems or

delays. However, largely owing to outside factors influencing its

performance, such as building shutdowns for safety problems and changes

in the requirements for characterizing transuranic waste for disposal, the

existing loading facility was able to perform at this level only 1 week

during fiscal year 2000.

Two main factors have contributed to the compression of the site’s

transuranic waste shipping schedule. First, numerous delays in opening

DOE’s only transuranic waste disposal facility (WIPP) delayed the

shipping schedule. Although fully constructed in 1988, WIPP was not

certified to receive transuranic waste until 10 years later. Kaiser-Hill sent

its first shipment to WIPP in June 1999—several years later than planned.

As a result, the shipments that had been scheduled for earlier years had to

be added to later years’ shipping schedules.

Second, the shipping schedule has been compressed by changes to the

requirements for characterizing transuranic waste prior to shipment. The

WIPP waste acceptance criteria, which prescribe how the waste must be

characterized, were revised, and New Mexico subsequently imposed

additional requirements in conjunction with allowing WIPP to accept

mixed waste. These revisions had not been incorporated into the contract,

but DOE directed Kaiser-Hill to comply with them. As a result of the

changes, the contractor stopped shipping wastes to WIPP for 4 months

while it determined what changes needed to be made, implemented them,

and obtained the necessary approvals for shipping the wastes to WIPP.

Shipments were also delayed because 2,000 drums of waste that had been

characterized under the previous requirements had to be recharacterized

before they could be shipped. In addition, the new requirements increased

by thousands the number of waste drums that had to go through some or

all of the steps in the characterization process (depending on the type of

waste): x-raying the drums to determine their contents, opening the drums

to verify their contents visually, and sampling the drums to analyze their

wastes and gases, among other actions. Complete characterization of a

single drum takes approximately 2 to 4 weeks, costs an average of $10,000,
Page 26 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

and generates about 800 pages of required documentation. Because of the

changed characterization requirements, Kaiser-Hill shipped only about 25

percent of the transuranic waste that it had projected it would ship in

fiscal year 2000, therefore adding the remaining amount to other years’

shipping schedules.

DOE and Kaiser-Hill are working to overcome these challenges, but it is

unclear whether all of the transuranic waste can be shipped off-site by

December 2006. In August 2000, the state of New Mexico approved several

DOE requests for modifications to its WIPP permit. These modifications

streamlined some of the new requirements. For example, for one type of

waste, the new requirements called for gas sampling and analysis in 100

percent of the drums (previously, no sampling was required for this waste

type). The approved modification reduces this sampling requirement to 10

percent of the drums of this particular waste type. DOE is submitting

additional requests for permit modifications to further ease the

requirements.

Kaiser-Hill has limited flexibility to adjust its schedule for shipping

transuranic waste. Although the contractor does not have the

characterization and loading capability to move its projected shipments

from peak shipping years to those earlier years with less shipping demand,

it plans to increase its shipping rates by operating multiple shifts on

existing equipment and acquiring additional equipment as needed, such as

the two additional loading facilities. In addition, the contractor is looking

for ways to speed up various steps in the characterization process, such as

acquiring automated analysis units to reduce the gas sample analysis time

to hours instead of weeks, thereby reducing a key bottleneck in the

characterization process. These are important improvements because

Kaiser-Hill did not build extra time into the schedule to deal with delays

related to characterizing, loading, and shipping the site’s transuranic

wastes, and it scheduled shipments right up to the target closure date. If

Kaiser-Hill falls behind on its aggressive characterization and shipping

schedules, subsequent delays will occur in the cleanup and demolition of

the facilities housing the characterization and loading operations, as well

as the storage facilities.
Page 27 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Kaiser-Hill has to overcome numerous challenges to clean up and remove

over 720 structures remaining at the site. These structures range in size

and complexity from multistory, very large plutonium-processing buildings

to small shacks and outbuildings. Kaiser-Hill’s strategy is to demolish over

475 structures in the last 2 years of the project.33 According to DOE and

Kaiser-Hill officials, as part of the contractor’s strategy to reduce risk,

most of these buildings will have been decontaminated and otherwise

cleaned out so they can be safely left standing while awaiting demolition.

Kaiser-Hill expects that this approach will allow for a more efficient and

continuous demolition phase.

The cleanup and removal of the plutonium buildings will be especially

difficult because of their size and because they contain severe radioactive

and hazardous contamination and large quantities of processing

equipment. The six remaining plutonium buildings contain a total area of

about 925,000 square feet. In several instances, parts of these buildings

were severely contaminated by fires or accidents. Some rooms, referred to

as “infinity rooms,” were sealed off because of their extremely high

radioactive contamination. In addition, when production activities were

suddenly and unexpectedly halted in 1989, plutonium and other dangerous

materials were simply left in equipment and processing pipes. Buildings

other than the plutonium buildings are contaminated as well—with

beryllium, uranium, or other radioactive substances. And even buildings

without such contamination can present challenges; because many were

built in the 1950s and 1960s, they may contain asbestos or other hazardous

materials.

Kaiser-Hill has not fully planned how it will clean up and demolish the

site’s structures within the time available. Without detailed plans, KaiserHill cannot ensure that the work will proceed in a timely and successful

manner. The contractor’s baseline includes some time for this work, but in

several instances, insufficient detail exists to determine if the schedule is

realistic. For example, Kaiser-Hill officials have not yet planned how they

will clean up some radiologically contaminated facilities, such as a heavily

contaminated two-story storage vault and the equipment used to stack and

retrieve plutonium within it. In addition, Kaiser-Hill has allowed itself

limited time in the schedule to address unforeseen problems. For example,

Kaiser-Hill had allowed only 40 days for such problems in the 7-year

schedule for the cleanup and demolition of one of the plutonium buildings.

 33Fiscal years 2005 and 2006, and the first 11 weeks of fiscal year 2007.

Incomplete Planning Could

Impede Removal of the

Site’s Structures
Page 28 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

In the first 8 months of cleanup, all of these days had been used up, and

the cleanup of this building was behind schedule.

Kaiser-Hill identified improved planning for the cleanup of some its

plutonium buildings and buildings with other contaminants as one of its

top risk mitigative actions. Kaiser-Hill officials said that they intend to

develop more detailed plans over the next year. In addition, Kaiser-Hill

plans to hire an outside expert to develop a detailed cleanup and

demolition plan for the hundreds of remaining structures.

How much environmental remediation must be done, and how much it will

cost, is not yet certain. For one thing, the extent of soil contamination on

the site is not fully understood because the industrial area, where nuclear

weapons production took place, has not been fully characterized. The soil

under many of the former production buildings is contaminated, but the

depth and degree is not yet known. Ongoing activities in the industrial area

and the presence of the buildings themselves have prevented thorough

characterization of the contamination. Until the soil in the industrial area

is fully characterized, the full extent and cost of the required cleanup will

not be known.

Also uncertain is “how clean is clean;” that is, how much plutoniumcontaminated soil must be removed.34 DOE, the regulators, and the site’s

other stakeholders have not reached agreement on an appropriate level of

soil cleanup, although several different levels are being considered.

Pending a final decision, an addendum to the Rocky Flats Cleanup

Agreement set an interim soil level35 of 651 picocuries of plutonium per

 34In general, it is more cost effective to remove plutonium-contaminated soil than to treat

and return it.

35The interim levels in the addendum are actually interim “soil action levels.” An action

level is a numeric level that, when exceeded, triggers an evaluation, remedial action, and/or

management action. The action taken is determined through a process prescribed by the

Cleanup Agreement. If remedial action is required, the cleanup may well be to a level lower

than the action level. The addendum sets two different interim action levels. When

contaminants are found to exceed the Tier I level (651 picocuries), that will generally

trigger an action such as removal. Exceeding the Tier II level (115 picocuries) would

generally trigger a less aggressive action, which may include “hotspot” removal or access

restrictions.

Uncertainties About

Extent of Contamination

and Cleanup Requirements

Complicate Environmental

Remediation
Page 29 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

gram of soil.36 This level assumes that a future resident on the site could

not receive a dose higher than 85 millirems per year from the plutonium

remaining in the soil.37 Another interim level being considered—115

picocuries per gram—results in a reduced maximum dosage of 15

millirems per year for that future resident. Other levels more stringent

than these two are also under consideration. Because stakeholders were

concerned about the sufficiency of these interim levels if they were to be

used as the final cleanup levels, and as part of the periodic review process

required under the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement, DOE funded an

independent study by a private contractor, Risk Assessment Corporation.

On the basis of an assumption of land use by a resident rancher family, the

resulting February 2000 report recommended a level of 35 picocuries of

plutonium per gram of soil. However, the ultimate soil cleanup could also

be affected by the need to meet surface water quality standards because

soil contamination can enter surface water through erosion. A level of 10

picocuries per gram or lower, the use of engineered controls (such as

ditches and holding ponds), or both may be required to ensure compliance

with surface water standards.

The soil cleanup level established for the site could have a dramatic effect

on the scope and cost of cleanup. Although DOE officials believe that the

level has not yet been determined,38 Kaiser-Hill assumes that, under the

contract, the interim level of 651 picocuries will be used. If the final

decision on the level varies from this level, cost and schedule could

change significantly. For example, the work scope and cost of cleaning up

the 903 Pad, one of the site’s biggest environmental remediation projects,

 36A picocurie is a trillionth of a curie, which is the amount of radioactivity in a gram of

radium. The higher the soil cleanup level, the more plutonium can be left in the soil. A

lower cleanup level means that less plutonium can be left, so more soil must be removed.

37Although the future use of the site is expected to be open space, it is impossible to

guarantee that residential use would not be considered sometime in the future. Therefore,

the interim cleanup levels were designed to protect the health of the public, should this

occur.

38DOE officials stated that the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement does not explicitly state a

cleanup level. Their position is that the contract assumes that the level triggering a cleanup

action is 651 picocuries but that the required action could require cleanup to a level lower

than 651 picocuries.
Page 30 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

could differ dramatically, depending on the cleanup level.39 Table 3 shows

estimates of these differences.

Table 3: Estimated Effects of Different Soil Cleanup Levels on the Scope and Cost

of the 903 Pad Cleanup

Soil cleanup level (in picocuries of plutonium per gram of

soil)

651pCi/gram 115pCi/gram 35pCi/gram 10pCi/gram

Acres to be cleaned

up 5.4 18.8 48.8 341.7

Truckloads of waste

to be removed 1,130 1,860 3,430 18,680

Estimated costa $35,000,000 $47,800,000 $74,900,000 $339,600,000

Legend

pCi = picocuries

a

Cost estimates have not been adjusted for inflation.

Source: GAO’s presentation of data provided by Kaiser-Hill.

The three parties to the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement—DOE, EPA, and

the state of Colorado—are currently determining an appropriate soil level

for the site. A decision is expected by the end of fiscal year 2001. If the

level selected differs from the level determined to be prescribed by the

closure contract, Kaiser-Hill could request an equitable adjustment to the

contract.

Many of the environmental remediation activities are scheduled for the

final years of the closure project, when the limited amount of time

remaining before the target date makes changes more difficult to

accommodate. Kaiser-Hill’s ability to respond to problems may also be

limited. Often owing to the logical sequencing of activities, about 65

percent of the site’s remediation activities are scheduled for the last 2

years of the closure project. However, Kaiser-Hill has no time built into the

remediation schedule to address unexpected problems or delays in

preceding activities. As of September 30, 2000, Kaiser-Hill’s schedule had

 39The 903 Pad is an area where, in the 1950s and 1960s, over 5,000 drums of plutoniumladen solvents and oils were stored on the open ground. Over time, the drums corroded and

leaked contamination into the soil. In the late 1960s, the drums were removed, and an

asphalt pad was installed to cover and contain the contamination. However, because of

wind and other erosion before the pad was installed, plutonium contamination spread

south and east over many acres.
Page 31 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

already projected that some of the last remediation activities in the

industrial area would occur after the target closure date of December 15,

2006, because of cleanup delays experienced in the plutonium buildings.

Numerous safety violations have occurred at the Rocky Flats site. In fiscal

year 2000, 49 safety violations were reported, up from 27 the previous

year.40 These safety violations—mainly procedural violations—ranged in

severity from relatively minor, such as inadequate or improper

maintenance of equipment and paperwork problems, to major, such as

improperly handling equipment, which could have caused significant

injury. Safety violations can result in significant work stoppages and

schedule delays because, during a safety-related building shutdown, no

cleanup activities or processing operations can occur. According to a DOE

safety official, shutdowns owing to safety problems occur periodically in

the site’s nuclear facilities—including the major plutonium buildings—and

usually last hours or days, but sometimes weeks or even months.41 In fiscal

year 2000, for example, work practices not in compliance with approved

safety procedures resulted in a 3-month shutdown of a building that was

used to store transuranic waste that had already been characterized. By

the time the shutdown ended, the characterization requirements had

changed, so the waste could not be shipped until it was recharacterized.

Safety violations can also result in financial penalties. Since fiscal year

1996, Kaiser-Hill and its subcontractors have received eight PriceAnderson Act enforcement actions for significant violations of nuclear

safety requirements and were assessed $353,750 in penalties.42 These

violations included noncompliance with radiological control procedures,

resulting in worker contamination; lack of controls over procurement

procedures, resulting in the use of substandard waste containers; and

failure to implement corrective actions sufficient to address previously

identified nuclear safety problems. In addition, under the safety provisions

specified in the closure contract, in July and November 2000, DOE

assessed fines against Kaiser-Hill totaling $410,000 (in fee reductions).

 40These numbers refer to violations of the site’s operational and technical safety

requirements.

41Neither DOE nor Kaiser-Hill maintains centralized data on the frequency or duration of

the site’s safety-related building shutdowns.

42Under the Price-Anderson Amendments Act of 1988 (P.L. 100-408) and subsequent orders,

DOE is responsible for investigating possible violations of nuclear safety rules, regulations,

or orders, and can assess penalties on its contractors and subcontractors.

Safety Problems May Delay

Cleanup and Site Closure
Page 32 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Under the contract, DOE can fine Kaiser-Hill for events or incidents that

are considered to be symptomatic of a breakdown in the safety

management system. These fines resulted from a series of violations,

including unsuitable handling of low-level wastes, improper operation of a

ventilation system in a plutonium building, and work control events

involving hazardous electrical work and potential radioactive

contamination.

Kaiser-Hill reports that it recognizes that safety is one of the company’s

highest priorities and that it has set targets for reducing the number and

frequency of safety violations. The contractor reports that, since it took

over the management of the site in 1995, it has improved the overall safety

performance at the site, as measured by radiological violations, criticality

infractions, and recordable employee injury rates. Despite these data,

Kaiser-Hill is concerned about the recent negative trend in nuclear safety

performance at the site. To address these safety concerns, Kaiser-Hill

reports that it is taking several steps. For example, it is (1) encouraging

workers to identify potential safety issues before they become a matter of

regulatory concern and penalty, (2) providing additional worker training to

address various safety issues, and (3) assessing and revising work control

processes for the site’s nuclear facilities.

Even with these efforts, it is unclear if Kaiser-Hill can sufficiently improve

safety to avoid delaying the site’s closure. The trend in the number of

safety violations is not encouraging. From July 1999 through September

2000, the contractor met its monthly target for reduced safety violations

(of operational and technical safety requirements) only once.

Furthermore, in the spring and summer of 2000, the Rocky Flats on-site

representatives of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board reported on

recurring problems over the previous year caused by workers who did not

follow safety procedures. For example, they reported on (1) informal

changes being made to procedures without evaluating their impact on

safety, (2) conduct of activities that were not authorized, and (3) failure to

comply with safety procedures for planning and executing several cleanup

activities.

DOE is concerned about the number and severity of safety violations that

have occurred since the inception of the current contract. In a January 5,

2001, letter to the president of Kaiser-Hill, the Rocky Flats Field Office

manager criticized Kaiser-Hill’s failure to improve its safety record. Among

the concerns she cited were that Kaiser-Hill (1) lacked an adequate

process for identifying key information on safety incidents, including their

root causes, and ensuring that lessons learned from safety incidents are
Page 33 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

incorporated into future work activities; (2) lacked effective work

controls; and (3) had not developed an effective safety and health

organization. She also stated that Kaiser-Hill workers and supervisors,

especially those engaged in critical activities involving the handling of

material, did not understand their roles and responsibilities. She

concluded that Kaiser-Hill’s management was inadequate, “at every level

and in each project,” to ensure safe operations at the site. Within days of

this letter, the Rocky Flats Field Office manager and the president of

Kaiser-Hill sent a joint letter to every Rocky Flats worker discussing the

unacceptable trend in safety incidents at the site and emphasizing the

importance of safety in all aspects of the project. This letter also stated

that Kaiser-Hill would be developing an improvement plan and response to

DOE’s concerns, and that DOE would assess the effectiveness of the

corrective actions. At the time of our review, Kaiser-Hill was developing a

comprehensive plan to improve its safety and compliance performance,

and expected to submit this plan to DOE in February 2001.

Considering the challenges and uncertainties that must be overcome to

achieve the site’s closure, Kaiser-Hill’s own risk assessment paints a bleak

picture of the likelihood of closing the site by the December 2006 target

date. Each quarter, Kaiser-Hill performs a risk assessment to identify and

assign priority to risks and uncertainties that represent the greatest threat

to successfully completing the closure project, so that they will receive the

necessary management attention. In its December 2000 risk assessment,

Kaiser-Hill estimated that it had only about a 15-percent chance of

achieving the site’s closure by December 15, 2006; a 35-percent chance of

achieving the site’s closure by March 31, 2007; and a 97-percent chance of

achieving closure by December 2008—2 full years past the target date.

This assessment is considerably more favorable than the one reflected in

our April 1999 report, when Kaiser-Hill’s risk analysis concluded that the

contractor had only a 1-percent chance of closing the site by the end of

fiscal year 2010. The recent improved risk assessment is due in part to

Kaiser-Hill’s and DOE’s overcoming several obstacles to closure that were

identified in our April 1999 report, such as the opening of WIPP and a

decision on the disposition of the uncontaminated rubble from the

demolition of the site’s buildings.

Despite this progress, another indication that closure may be delayed is

Kaiser-Hill’s performance to date under the closure contract. After the first

8 months of the new contract, Kaiser-Hill’s performance data showed that

the project was already slightly behind schedule and over cost. However,

Kaiser-Hill officials remain hopeful that they can recover from the

Kaiser-Hill’s Data Indicate

Closure Will Be Delayed
Page 34 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

schedule slippages and complete the closure project on time, even though

they know that doing so will require overcoming significant obstacles.

Although both Kaiser-Hill and DOE have made considerable progress on

their respective plans for managing the Rocky Flats closure project,

further improvements are needed to help ensure that they meet the target

date for the site’s closure. At the time of our review, Kaiser-Hill and DOE

were working to complete their plans, which are intended to clearly

delineate each party’s responsibilities for the closure project, the time

frames associated with each responsibility, and the effect of delays.

Kaiser-Hill was making changes to its own baseline in response to DOE’s

review comments. As for DOE’s plan, it was still under development, but

many of its elements appear to be sound, including the process of

documenting the tasks required and the time frames for completion.

However, two additional components would help DOE to implement the

plan—a clearly established authority for reconciling the competing

demands for resources among DOE’s organizations and a process for

limiting the amount of time that a problem can languish unresolved. These

features are not part of the plan now because DOE has been focused on

the more basic components of the plan and DOE’s senior managers have

had only limited involvement in the project. However, the absence of these

implementation components in the plan has affected DOE’s progress in

obtaining transportation resources and certified shipping containers for

Rocky Flats. It is important to address these implementation issues for

several reasons, including that implementation of certain aspects of the

plan is already under way and any delays in completing key project

activities can affect subsequent activities and ultimately the project’s

completion date and cost.

Kaiser-Hill is making changes and improvements to its baseline in

response to concerns DOE raised during its review of the contractor’s

baseline. Kaiser-Hill submitted its baseline for DOE’s review on June 30,

2000. At the time of our review, the Department had not yet agreed to the

baseline, pending the resolution of its concerns. The following are among

the many improvements that Kaiser-Hill is making to the baseline:

• Developing a more detailed strategy for cleaning up the major

plutonium buildings and reassessing the cleanup work planned for

other structures. In its review of the June 30, 2000, baseline, DOE noted

that Kaiser-Hill had not provided enough detail to clearly convey the work

it planned to do to clean up some of the major plutonium buildings and to

Kaiser-Hill and DOE

Are Improving

Management of the

Project, but Concerns

Remain About

Implementation of

DOE’s Plan

Kaiser-Hill Is Working to

Improve Its Closure

Baseline
Page 35 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

conduct environmental remediation studies and risk assessments.

Accordingly, Kaiser-Hill agreed to provide additional detail in these areas.

• Ensuring compliance with regulatory and oversight requirements.

DOE had commented that the baseline was not fully consistent with

commitments to regulatory and oversight bodies and with requirements

contained in the contract. For example, DOE had agreed to meet the

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s recommendation that the site’s

plutonium would be packaged into long-term storage containers by May

30, 2002. However, Kaiser-Hill’s baseline did not show this work being

completed until August 2002. This inconsistency has since been resolved:

DOE directed Kaiser-Hill to meet all commitments to the site’s regulatory

and oversight bodies, and Kaiser-Hill adjusted the baseline to

accommodate this direction.

• Addressing schedule insufficiencies. DOE questioned whether KaiserHill had included sufficient time in its schedule to respond to

unanticipated problems, deal with uncertainties, and still meet the target

closure date. Kaiser-Hill officials had a different view of whether its

baseline schedule was realistic. They stated that because many of the

scheduled activities have never been performed before, it is not known

whether the time they have allotted to accomplish these activities is

insufficient. Nevertheless, Kaiser-Hill officials acknowledged that slippage

on any one of several key activities would delay subsequent activities and

could ultimately delay the site’s closure. Accordingly, they have been

working to build in additional time without extending the schedule. For

example, they are seeking more efficient ways to accomplish tasks and are

considering alternatives to potentially troublesome systems and processes.

In August 2000, DOE’s Office of Site Closure began developing a detailed

plan for carrying out the Department’s responsibilities for Rocky Flats’

closure. When completed, the plan is intended to formalize DOE’s strategy

to deliver services and items to Kaiser-Hill, such as transportation for

nuclear materials and off-site locations for storage and disposal of those

materials. DOE expects that this plan will increase the likelihood of DOE’s

meeting its responsibilities in a timely way and thus avoid adversely

affecting the project’s completion date and cost. Because Kaiser-Hill

depends on DOE to deliver services and items critical to completing

various aspects of the project, the contractor may not be able to complete

the closure project as scheduled, should DOE fail to deliver on time.

DOE intends for its plan to identify each service or item for which DOE is

responsible, the DOE organizations involved and their responsibilities, and

a schedule for accomplishing the necessary activities. For example,

DOE Is Developing a Plan

to Meet Its Contractual

Responsibilities, but Issues

Remain
Page 36 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

concerning the problem of finding off-site storage and disposal locations

for all of the site’s so called “orphan” wastes and materials, the Office of

Site Closure is compiling a complete list of these orphans; examining

possible storage, treatment, and disposal locations; determining the

regulatory and other requirements that must be met; and establishing time

frames for the necessary activities. Once DOE has a strategy for

addressing these and other issues, it intends to obtain agreement from the

responsible DOE organizations and sites that they will provide the

necessary services and items within the specified time frames. In addition,

DOE intends for its plan to improve the monitoring of the project to

surface problems or challenges that need to be addressed. As designed,

DOE’s plan has many of the elements needed to serve as a useful tool to

manage DOE’s responsibilities; however, we are concerned that two issues

may hamper the plan’s implementation.

First, DOE has not designated an individual or organization with the

requisite authority to make decisions and resolve conflicts that arise

among the DOE organizations and sites over competing priorities or

limited resources. The Office of Site Closure, which has spearheaded the

plan’s development, does not have the authority to resolve problems or

conflicts as they arise between DOE organizations, such as Environmental

Management and Defense Programs. Because of this lack of a recognized

authority to make such decisions, some issues with the potential to

adversely affect Rocky Flats’ closure have not been resolved. For example,

Rocky Flats has had difficulty obtaining assurance that sufficient

transportation resources (trucks, trailers, and personnel) will be available

when needed to ship its plutonium and uranium. These resources are

managed by an organization within Defense Programs, which routinely

gives priority to its own activities over the activities of Environmental

Management—such as Rocky Flats’ cleanup and closure. Most of Defense

Programs’ transportation resources are committed to shipments of nuclear

materials from other sites, so the resources may not be available to ship

Rocky Flats’ materials when needed to meet its target closure date.

Officials from Environmental Management have been trying to arrange for

the transportation resources needed by Rocky Flats through informal

discussions with officials from Defense Programs, but they have not been

completely successful. According to a DOE official evaluating DOE’s

transportation needs and resources and another from the Office of Site

Closure, this situation has remained unresolved for months because no

individual or organization currently involved in the process has the

recognized authority or is at a high enough management level to determine

what trade-offs should occur across the DOE organizations or how the

Department’s limited transportation resources should be put to their most
Page 37 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

effective use. If the transportation resources are not available when

needed, Kaiser-Hill will have to continue to store the nuclear materials,

potentially delaying the cleanup and removal of the storage buildings.

The second implementation problem is that DOE does not have a

mechanism in place to limit the amount of time that an issue can languish

unresolved before it is referred to the appropriate authority for resolution.

Some issues that affect DOE’s and Kaiser-Hill’s ability to close Rocky Flats

by 2006 have remained unresolved for long periods of time. For example,

DOE has not been able to certify a transportation container needed for

Rocky Flats to ship its plutonium off-site, although this container has been

in various stages of the certification process since 1988. The certification

process requires coordination among many DOE organizations, sites, and

laboratories.43 In a November 2000 report on nuclear material container

issues,44 DOE’s Inspector General concluded that because DOE did not

adequately coordinate among the various entities responsible for

container activities, it failed to certify, in a timely manner, containers

needed to ship plutonium materials from Rocky Flats to Savannah River.

As of January 2001, this problem had not been resolved, and DOE

expected additional delays in the certification of the transportation

container for Rocky Flats’ plutonium metals and oxides. Both Kaiser-Hill

and DOE officials see the container certification delays as one of the major

obstacles to getting the site’s plutonium shipped to Savannah River. If

DOE does not certify this container by the time the plutonium packaging

system is operational, currently scheduled for March 2001, the subsequent

cleanup and closure activities could be delayed.

These two features are not part of DOE’s plan now because the Office of

Site Closure has been focused on developing the plan and has focused

little attention on the plan’s implementation. In addition, to date, DOE’s

senior managers have not been significantly involved in the plan’s

development or its implementation. However, DOE cannot wait until the

plan is complete to start implementing it. Instead, officials from the Office

of Site Closure are implementing components of the plan as they are

 43Container certification is an iterative process of testing and addressing safety concerns

and questions. The process involves one or more of DOE’s laboratories, various DOE sites,

and many DOE organizations, including the Office of Environmental Management and the

National Nuclear Security Administration’s Offices of Defense Programs and Defense

Nuclear Nonproliferation.

44See Audit Report: Containers Suitable for Shipping Fissile Material (DOE/IG-0490, Nov.

28, 2000).
Page 38 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

developed. For example, they are already working to obtain agreement

from various DOE entities to provide the services and items necessary to

ship the site’s special nuclear materials off-site. Because of the tight time

frames for the cleanup and closure of Rocky Flats, key activities relating

to the site’s special nuclear materials must be completed on time or they

will affect subsequent cleanup activities, ultimately delaying the site’s

closure and increasing its cost.

The need for high-level managers’ awareness and oversight of DOE’s

activities in support of Rocky Flats’ closure was also raised by DOE’s

Acting Deputy Director for Management and Administration in a January

2001 memorandum. After reviewing the closure project’s administration,

he recommended that DOE establish a special management control

mechanism to ensure appropriate visibility and resolve problems that

arise. However, as of February 2001, DOE was still considering these

recommendations. An Office of Site Closure official stated that

implementing DOE’s plan will be challenging, especially without the

requisite authority and a process in place to raise and resolve issues in a

timely manner.

Closing the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site by December 2006

is a laudable goal and a formidable challenge, especially given the

magnitude and complexity of the cleanup project. Kaiser-Hill has made

significant progress in the cleanup of the site on several fronts. However,

because of the scope and complexity of the remaining work, and the

compressed schedule for completing it, there is little margin for resolving

the many obstacles that could delay the completion date. Because we

found no specific governmental action that would resolve the challenges

Kaiser-Hill faces, the contractor needs to continue its efforts to address

these challenges quickly and effectively, with diligent attention to safety.

However, DOE can take actions to establish the decision-making authority

and process for implementing its plan and thereby improve the likelihood

of achieving the target closure date and cost. Doing so is important

because it will be costly to DOE to keep the Rocky Flats site operating

beyond 2006. Even with these actions, because of the many challenges that

Kaiser-Hill must overcome, site closure by 2006 is unlikely. However,

completing the cleanup and closure of Rocky Flats close to the target date

represents the reduction of significant financial and environmental

liabilities for DOE and the public.

Conclusions
Page 39 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

To improve the chance of achieving the target closure date and cost, and

to minimize schedule extensions and cost increases associated with any

closure delays, we recommend that the Secretary of Energy develop an

implementing strategy for DOE’s plan at Rocky Flats that (1) clarifies the

authority and responsibility for reconciling competing demands for DOE’s

resources needed to support Rocky Flats’ closure and (2) specifies a

process by which these differences between DOE organizations are

identified and resolved within specified time frames.

We provided the Department of Energy and Kaiser-Hill Company, L.L.C.,

with a draft of our report for their review and comment. DOE said that the

report was a thorough and credible assessment of the challenges facing

the Rocky Flats Closure Project and the Department’s prospects of

meeting very aggressive cost and schedule objectives for this complex

project. DOE also agreed with our observations and recommendation

concerning the need for a means to resolve conflicts that arise as part of

the complexwide coordination of activities needed to support Rocky Flats’

closure.

However, DOE raised two main issues about the content of the report.

First, DOE noted that our 1999 report on this project included information

that there was less than a 1-percent chance of meeting the target closure

date, which was 2010 at that time. DOE said that the contractor’s more

recent assessment of a 15-percent chance of meeting the 2006 target

closure date was a significant improvement that should be recognized in

our draft report. We modified our final report to include this information.

Second, DOE said that several of the challenges we discussed in our 1999

report, such as the recycling of uncontaminated building rubble and the

delays in opening WIPP, had been resolved but that we did not explicitly

mention this progress in our draft report. We modified our final report to

include this information. DOE also provided several technical corrections,

which we incorporated as appropriate.

DOE’s comments are presented in appendix I.

Kaiser-Hill said that our draft report was accurate and indicated a strong

understanding of the challenges and obstacles facing the Rocky Flats

Closure Project. However, Kaiser-Hill raised several issues concerning the

report. First, Kaiser-Hill mentioned the two concerns that DOE had raised

above. As noted, we modified our final report to address those concerns.

Second, Kaiser-Hill said that our draft report should acknowledge that the

company had emphasized safety in its operations at the site since the first

contract was signed in 1995 and had seen consistent improvement in some

safety indicators until the recent development of a negative safety trend.

Recommendations for

Executive Action

Agency Comments

and Our Evaluation
Page 40 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

We clarified this information in our final report. Finally, Kaiser-Hill said

that even if closure occurs 1 or 2 years after the 2006 target date, the

public would still receive significant safety and financial benefits but that

our draft report did not explicitly recognize this point. Although our draft

report acknowledged the benefits of closing the site decades earlier than

originally planned, we added information to our final report to emphasize

these benefits.

Kaiser-Hill’s comments are presented in appendix II.

To obtain the necessary information on the closure project’s status and

cost, and the likelihood of meeting the target closure date, we visited

Rocky Flats’ facilities and observed cleanup activities, reviewed

documents, and interviewed DOE and contractor officials. We also

contacted officials and reviewed documents provided by DOE’s

headquarters and other DOE field locations. We analyzed Kaiser-Hill’s

baseline and various planning, budget, and cost documents and other

records. We also reviewed DOE’s draft plans for meeting its contractual

cleanup commitments and other DOE records pertaining to DOE’s

responsibilities under the contract and its oversight of Kaiser-Hill’s

activities. In addition, we reviewed records and interviewed officials of the

regulatory and oversight agencies with cognizance for the site’s cleanup—

EPA’s Region VIII Office in Denver, the Colorado Department of Public

Health and Environment in Denver, and site representatives of the Defense

Nuclear Facilities Safety Board located at Rocky Flats. We also reviewed

documents and attended meetings of various Rocky Flats stakeholder

groups, including the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, Rocky Flats

Coalition of Local Governments, and Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement

Stakeholder Focus Group.

To determine the management actions needed, if any, to improve the

likelihood of the project’s success, we compared the major challenges

affecting the closure of the site with Kaiser-Hill’s and DOE’s plans for

addressing them. We assessed whether the planned actions appeared to

address the important aspects of these challenges. We also discussed the

challenges and planned actions with DOE and Kaiser-Hill officials,

regulatory and oversight agency officials, and stakeholders involved in the

cleanup and closure of the Rocky Flats site.

We conducted our review from May 2000 through February 2001 in

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Scope and

Methodology
Page 41 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

We are sending copies of this report to the Honorable Spencer Abraham,

Secretary of Energy; the Honorable Mitchell Daniels, Director, Office of

Management and Budget; and Mr. Robert Card, President and Chief

Executive Officer, Kaiser-Hill Company, L.L.C. We will make copies

available to others upon request.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please call me at

(202) 512-3841. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix III.

(Ms.) Gary L. Jones

Director, Natural Resources

 and Environment
Appendix I: Comments From the Department

of Energy

Page 42 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Appendix I: Comments From the Department

of Energy
Appendix I: Comments From the Department

of Energy

Page 43 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats
Appendix II: Comments From Kaiser-Hill

Company, L.L.C.

Page 44 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

Appendix II: Comments From Kaiser-Hill

Company, L.L.C.
Appendix II: Comments From Kaiser-Hill

Company, L.L.C.

Page 45 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats
Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff

Acknowledgments

Page 46 GAO-01-284 Cleanup and Closure of Rocky Flats

William R. Swick (206) 287-4800; Pamela J. Timmerman (303) 572-7306

In addition to those named above, Lee H. Carroll, Amy Cram Helwich,

Pamela K. Tumler, and Amy E. Webbink made key contributions to this

report.

Appendix III: GAO Contacts and Staff

Acknowledgments

GAO Contacts

Staff

Acknowledgments

(141426)
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