a

GAO

United States Government Accountability Office

Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee 

on the Federal Workforce and Agency 

Organization, Committee on Government 

Reform, House of Representatives

March 2006 YUCCA MOUNTAIN

Quality Assurance at 

DOE’s Planned 

Nuclear Waste 

Repository Needs 

Increased 

Management Attention

GAO-06-313
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

March 2006

YUCCA MOUNTAIN

Quality Assurance at DOE’s Planned 

Nuclear Waste Repository Needs 

Increased Management Attention 

Highlights of GAO-06-313, a report to the 

Chairman, Subcommittee on the Federal 

Workforce and Agency Organization, 

Committee on Government Reform, 

House of Representatives

The Department of Energy (DOE)

is working to obtain a license from

the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission (NRC) to construct a 

nuclear waste repository at Yucca

Mountain in Nevada. The project, 

which began in the 1980s, has been

beset by delays. In a 2004 report, 

GAO raised concerns that

persistent quality assurance 

problems could further delay the 

project. Then, in 2005, DOE 

announced the discovery of 

employee e-mails suggesting

quality assurance problems,

including possible falsification of 

records. Quality assurance, which

establishes requirements for work 

to be performed under controlled 

conditions that ensure quality, is 

critical to making sure the project 

meets standards for protecting 

public health and the environment. 

GAO was asked to examine (1) the 

history of the project’s quality 

assurance problems, (2) DOE’s 

tracking of these problems and

efforts to address them since 

GAO’s 2004 report, and (3)

challenges facing DOE as it

continues to address quality 

assurance issues within the project. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends five actions 

DOE can take to improve the 

project’s management tools and 

identify and address quality 

assurance and other problems. 

In oral comments, DOE agreed

with GAO’s recommendations. 

DOE has had a long history of quality assurance problems at the Yucca

Mountain project. In the 1980s and 1990s, DOE had problems assuring NRC 

that it had developed adequate plans and procedures related to quality 

assurance. More recently, as it prepares to submit a license application for 

the repository to NRC, DOE has been relying on costly and time-consuming 

rework to resolve lingering quality assurance problems uncovered during 

audits and after-the-fact evaluations. 

DOE announced, in 2004, that it was making a commitment to continuous 

quality assurance improvement and that its efforts would be tracked by 

performance indicators that would enable it to assess progress and direct 

management attention as needed. However, GAO found that the project’s

performance indicators and other key management tools were not effective 

for this purpose. For example, the management tools did not target existing 

areas of concern and did not track progress in addressing them. The tools 

also had weaknesses in detecting and highlighting significant problems for 

management attention. 

DOE continues to face quality assurance and other challenges. First, DOE is 

engaged in extensive efforts to restore confidence in scientific documents 

because of the quality assurance problems suggested in the discovered emails between project employees, and it has about 14 million more project emails to review. Second, DOE faces quality assurance challenges in 

resolving design control problems associated with its requirements 

management process—the process for ensuring that high-level plans and 

regulatory requirements are incorporated into specific engineering details. 

Problems with the process led to the December 2005 suspension of certain 

project work. Third, DOE continues to be challenged to manage a complex 

program and organization. Significant personnel and project changes 

initiated in October 2005 create the potential for confusion over roles and 

responsibilities—a situation DOE found to contribute to quality assurance 

problems during an earlier transition. 

View of Yucca Mountain and the Exploratory Tunnel for the Repository 

Source: DOE.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-313.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Jim Wells at 

(202) 512-3841 or wellsj@gao.gov. 
Page i GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Contents

Letter 1

Results in Brief 6

Background 9

DOE Has a Long History of Quality Assurance Problems at Yucca 

Mountain and Is Relying on Costly and Time-Consuming 

Measures to Correct Problems Before Submitting Its License 

Application for the Repository 13

DOE Cannot Be Certain Its Efforts to Improve Quality Assurance 

Have Been Effective Because of Weaknesses in Tracking Progress 

and Identifying Problems 19

DOE’s ‘New Path Forward’ for Preparing to Submit Its License 

Application Faces Substantial Quality Assurance and Other 

Challenges 33

Conclusions 42

Recommendations for Executive Action 43

Agency Comments 44

Appendixes

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 46

Appendix II: Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns Programs 48

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 54

Tables Table 1: Visibility of Management Improvement Initiatives’ 

Effectiveness Indicators in Annuciator Panel When Last 

Prepared (Using August 2005 Data) 22

Table 2: Key Indicators for Processes with Quality Elements, Their 

Intended Focus, and Number of Times They Changed 

(March through August 2005) 25

Table 3: Employee Concerns Opened for Investigation under DOE’s 

Employee Concerns Program by Category of Concern, 

January through November 2005 51

Table 4: Employee Concerns Opened for Investigation under BSC’s 

Employee Concerns Program by Category of Concern, 

January through November 2005 51

Figures Figure 1: A Yucca Mountain Project Scientist Conducts Water 

Infiltration Tests inside Yucca Mountain 3
Contents

Page ii GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Figure 2: The 1.7-Mile Tunnel Built for Scientific Studies near the 

Potential Repository Area 10

Abbreviations

AMR Analysis and Model Report

BSC Bechtel/SAIC Company, LLC

CAP Corrective Action Program

CR condition report

DOE Department of Energy

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

Initiatives Management Improvement Initiatives

INPO Institute of Nuclear Power Operations

LSN Licensing Support Network

NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission

OCRWM Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management

RIT Regulatory Integration Team

USGS U.S. Geological Survey

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

United States. It may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further 

permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or 

other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to 

reproduce this material separately.
Page 1 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

A

March 17, 2006 Letr

The Honorable Jon C. Porter

Chairman

Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce 

and Agency Organization 

Committee on Government Reform

House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

The nuclear waste created as a by-product of the nuclear power process in 

reactors can remain highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, 

and will require proper disposal to protect public health and the 

environment. Over 50,000 metric tons of this waste is currently being 

stored at 72 sites around the country, principally at commercial nuclear 

power plants. These wastes have been accumulating for several decades in 

surface storage designed to be temporary. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 

1982 obligated the Department of Energy (DOE) to construct an 

underground geological repository for permanent storage and begin 

accepting these wastes by January 31, 1998. However, it was not until 2002, 

after more than 15 years of scientific study, that Yucca Mountain in Nevada 

was approved by Congress as a suitable location for the repository. DOE is 

continuing to experience delays, and it does not currently have a schedule 

for when construction of the repository will begin. The project to build and 

operate a repository at Yucca Mountain is highly complex. It is also highly 

controversial among some of the public, in large part, because of their 

concern that the repository may not be adequate, over the long term, to 

prevent the release of radioactive material to the environment. DOE has 

established quality assurance procedures to ensure that its work relative to 

the project and the technical information it produces are of high quality and 

defensible. However, persistent problems with implementing these 

procedures and resulting questions about the quality of the work have 

significantly contributed to project delays. Resolving these quality issues is 

essential to proceeding with construction.

To construct a repository at the Yucca Mountain site, DOE must obtain a 

license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). As part of the 

licensing process, DOE must demonstrate to NRC that its plans for the 

repository will meet standards for protecting public health and the 

environment from harmful exposure to the radioactive waste. The 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set these standards in 2001, but as 
Page 2 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

a result of a 2004 court ruling, EPA is proposing to revise the standards to 

extend the protection period from 10,000 years to 1 million years.1

To demonstrate that it can meet these standards, DOE has been conducting 

scientific and technical studies at the Yucca Mountain site that will serve as 

supporting documentation for DOE’s planned license application. For 

example, it has developed mathematical models to measure the probability 

that various combinations of natural and engineered (human-made) 

features of a repository could safely contain waste for the long term; the 

models take into account possible water infiltration through the mountain 

(see fig. 1), earthquakes, volcanic action, or other scenarios. Thus, one of 

DOE’s most important tasks during the licensing process will be to 

demonstrate the adequacy of its data, software, and models. Accordingly, 

NRC requires nuclear facilities to develop a quality assurance program that 

ensures that the technical information submitted in support of a license 

application—such as scientific data, models, and details on design and 

construction—is well documented and defensible. More specifically, data 

used to support conclusions about the safety and design of the repository 

must meet transparency and traceability standards. That is, the data must 

be clear in justifying and explaining any underlying assumptions, 

calculations, and conclusions, and must be capable of being traced back to 

original source materials. 

1

Once EPA finalizes its new standards, NRC will revise its licensing regulations to make 

them consistent with the standards.
Page 3 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Figure 1: A Yucca Mountain Project Scientist Conducts Water Infiltration Tests 

inside Yucca Mountain

Source: DOE.
Page 4 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

To meet NRC’s requirements, DOE established a quality assurance program 

for the Yucca Mountain project. The program establishes requirements that 

scientific, design, engineering, and other work, such as procurement and 

record keeping, is to be performed under controlled conditions that ensure 

quality and enable the work to be verified by others. For example, the 

program establishes general requirements for calibrating equipment before 

conducting tests, stipulating when and how the equipment should be 

calibrated and how to document the results. The project’s line 

organizations, which are responsible for carrying out various functions or 

aspects of the work, then create their own policies and procedures to 

implement the requirements. 

Project employees are required to follow such procedures to help ensure 

the reliability of project information. Quality assurance auditors 

periodically verify that the procedures have been followed. Project 

employees, including quality assurance auditors, are required to identify 

when procedures are not being followed or when they encounter problems 

with the procedures. These problems can be identified in “condition 

reports” under the project’s Corrective Action Program, which establishes 

procedures for the prompt identification and correction of problems. 

Alternatively, project employees can submit problems for resolution 

through the Employee Concerns Program, which allows for submissions to 

be confidential or anonymous. 

Because quality assurance plays a key role in ensuring that the information 

DOE uses to support its license application is of high quality and fully 

defensible, problems in this area raise concerns about delays to DOE’s 

submission and NRC’s review of the license application. In April 2004, for 

example, we reported that recurring quality assurance problems at the 

Yucca Mountain project could delay the licensing and operation of the 

repository.2

 As we noted, a 2004 NRC evaluation found quality assurance 

problems such as data that could not be readily traced back to their 

sources. NRC indicated that unless DOE rectified such problems before 

submitting the license application, NRC could be in the position of 

requesting large volumes of additional information, which could prevent it 

from making a decision on the license within the time required by law. 

Then, in early 2005, DOE reported it had discovered a series of e-mail 

messages among some U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees working 

2

GAO, Yucca Mountain: Persistent Quality Assurance Problems Could Delay Repository 

Licensing and Operation, GAO-04-460 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 30, 2004).
Page 5 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

on the Yucca Mountain project under a contract with DOE that appeared to 

imply that workers had falsified records for scientific work. Several of 

these messages, written in the late 1990s, appeared to show disdain for the 

project’s quality assurance program and its requirements. As a result of 

these e-mails, DOE is engaging in an extensive review of records to restore 

confidence in scientific documents that will be used to support its license 

application.

DOE’s recent efforts to better manage quality assurance problems include 

its Management Improvement Initiatives (Initiatives), which began in 2002 

and were reported completed in April 2004. The Initiatives’ purpose was to 

ensure that work and products consistently met quality objectives and 

were fully defensible by establishing a foundation for continuous 

improvement in areas of identified management weaknesses. In our 2004 

report, we concluded that, while DOE considered the Initiatives to have 

been completed, it could not assess their effectiveness in addressing the 

management weaknesses because its performance goals lacked objective 

measures and time frames for determining success.3 By the end of the 

Initiatives, DOE had established two tools to alert management about 

quality-related and other problems: (1) a one-page summary of 

performance indicators for key project activities and processes (the 

summary, which DOE refers to as a “panel,” is prepared monthly for 

discussion and action by project managers) and (2) quarterly trend 

evaluation reports analyzing patterns and trends in problems identified 

through the Corrective Action Program. Then, in October 2005, DOE 

initiated planning for an aggressive series of changes to the facility design, 

organization, and management of the Yucca Mountain project. This effort, 

known as the “new path forward,” is intended to address quality assurance 

and other challenges prior to submission of a license application. 

According to the project’s Acting Director, DOE will be considering 

changes in performance indicators and other management tools to better 

support the new path forward.

In this context, you requested that we provide additional information on 

the project’s quality assurance problems and DOE’s efforts to correct them. 

As agreed with your office, this report discusses (1) the history of the 

project’s quality assurance problems since its start in the 1980s, (2) DOE’s 

tracking of quality problems and progress implementing quality assurance 

requirements since our April 2004 report, and (3) challenges DOE faces as 

3

GAO-04-460, 5.
Page 6 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

it continues to address quality assurance issues at the project. In addition, 

you asked for information about concerns raised in recent years through 

the project’s Employee Concerns Program, which is provided in 

appendix II. 

To determine the history of quality assurance problems, we reviewed 

previous GAO, DOE, and NRC documents, visited the project, and 

interviewed officials from DOE, NRC, and Bechtel/SAIC Company, LLC 

(BSC), which is DOE’s management contractor for the Yucca Mountain 

project. To assess DOE’s tracking of quality-related problems and progress 

in addressing them, we examined management tools and associated 

documentation, such as monthly indicator panels and quarterly trend 

reports, and interviewed BSC and DOE officials regarding those tools. To 

identify current quality assurance and other challenges, we attended 

quarterly NRC management meetings, interviewed the Acting Director and 

other senior managers of the DOE project, and gathered information on 

management turnover. Due to the criminal investigation under way related 

to possible falsification of records implied in USGS e-mail exchanges, we 

did not examine the investigated issues beyond confirming that a concern 

about the e-mails had been submitted to the Employee Concerns Program. 

However, to determine if concerns about other instances of potential 

falsification of records had been raised by project employees, we reviewed 

employee concerns filed with the project’s Employee Concerns Program 

from January 2004 to December 2005. More information on our scope and 

methodology is provided in appendix I. We conducted our work from July 

2005 through January 2006 in accordance with generally accepted 

government auditing standards.

Results in Brief DOE has had a long history of quality assurance problems at the Yucca 

Mountain project. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, DOE had problems 

assuring NRC that it had developed adequate plans and procedures related 

to quality assurance. For example, as GAO reported in 1988, NRC had 

found that DOE’s quality assurance procedures were inadequate and its 

efforts to independently identify and resolve weaknesses in the procedures 

were ineffective. By the late 1990s, DOE had largely addressed NRC’s 

concerns about its plans and procedures, but its own audits identified 

quality assurance problems with the data, software, and models used in the 

scientific work supporting its potential license application. For example, in 

1998, a team of project personnel determined that 87 percent of the models 

used to simulate the site’s natural and environmental conditions, and to 

demonstrate the future repository’s performance over time, did not comply 
Page 7 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

with requirements for demonstrating their accuracy in predicting geologic 

events. More recently, as it prepares to submit the license application for 

the planned repository to NRC, DOE has been relying on costly and timeconsuming rework to resolve lingering quality assurance concerns. For 

example, to address problems with the transparency and traceability of 

scientific work in technical documents, DOE implemented, in the spring of 

2004, a roughly $20 million, 8-month project called the Regulatory 

Integration Team. This effort involved about 150 full-time employees from 

DOE, USGS, and multiple national laboratories, such as Sandia, Los 

Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore, working to inspect technical documents 

to identify and resolve quality problems. 

DOE cannot be certain that its efforts to improve the implementation of its 

quality assurance requirements have been effective because it adopted 

management tools that did not target existing management concerns and 

did not track progress with significant and recurring problems. Although 

DOE announced, in 2004, that it was making a commitment to continuous 

quality assurance improvement and that its efforts would be tracked by 

performance indicators that would enable it to assess progress and direct 

management attention as needed, its adopted management tools have not 

been effective for this purpose. Specifically, the one-page summary, or 

“panel,” of selected performance indicators that project managers used in 

monthly management meetings was not an effective tool for assessing 

progress. The indicators selected for the panel poorly represented the 

major management concerns and changed frequently. For example, the 

panel did not include an indicator to represent the management concern 

about unclear roles and responsibilities—a problem that could undermine 

accountability within the project. Use of the indicator panel was 

discontinued in late 2005, and DOE is deciding on a tool to replace it. 

Moreover, a second management tool—trend evaluation reports—also did 

not track relevant concerns. The reports generally had technical 

weaknesses for identifying recurrent and significant problems and 

inconsistently tracked progress in resolving the problems. For example, 

lacking reliable data and an appropriate performance benchmark for 

determining the significance of human errors as a cause of quality 

problems, DOE’s trend reports offered no clear basis for tracking progress 

on such problems. In addition, under the trend reports’ rating categories, 

the rating assigned to convey the significance of a problem was overly 

influenced by a judgment that there were already ongoing management 

actions to address the problem, rather than solely assessing the problem’s 

significance. For example, the trend report’s rating of one particular 
Page 8 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

problem at the lowest level of significance did not accurately describe the 

problem or sufficiently draw management’s attention to it. 

Before DOE submits a license application, its aggressive “new path 

forward” effort faces substantial quality assurance and other challenges. 

First, the March 2005 announcement of the discovery of USGS e-mails 

suggesting the possible falsification of quality assurance records has 

resulted in extensive efforts to restore confidence in scientific documents, 

and DOE is conducting a wide-ranging review of approximately 14 million 

e-mails to determine whether they raise additional quality assurance issues. 

Such a review creates a challenge not just because of the sheer volume of emails to be reviewed, but also because DOE will have to decipher their 

meaning and determine their significance, sometimes without clarification 

from authors who have left the project. Furthermore, if any of the e-mails 

raise quality assurance concerns, further review, inspection, or rework may 

need to be performed to resolve any newfound problems. Second, DOE 

faces quality assurance challenges in resolving design control problems 

associated with an inadequate requirements management process—the 

process responsible for ensuring that broad plans and regulatory 

requirements affecting the project are tracked and incorporated into 

specific engineering details. In December 2005, DOE issued a stop-work 

order on some design and engineering work until DOE can determine that 

the requirements management process has been improved. Third, DOE 

continues to be challenged by managing a changing and complex program 

and organization. Significant project changes initiated in October 2005 

under the new path forward create the potential for confusion over 

accountability as roles and responsibilities change—a situation DOE found 

to contribute to quality assurance problems during an earlier transition 

period. For example, a proposed reorganization, establishing a lead 

laboratory to assist the project, not only would have to be effectively 

managed, but also would introduce a new player whose accountability 

DOE would have to ensure. DOE has also experienced turnover in 9 of 17 

key management positions since 2001—including positions related to 

quality assurance—that has created management continuity challenges. 

For example, the director position for the project has been occupied by 

three individuals since 1999 and is currently occupied by an acting director. 

Since DOE is still formulating its plans, it is too early to determine whether 

its new effort will effectively resolve these challenges.

We are making recommendations to DOE aimed at improving the 

effectiveness of its management tools for monitoring performance in key 

areas, including quality assurance, by improving the tools’ ability to identify 
Page 9 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

problems and track progress in addressing them. We provided DOE and 

NRC with draft copies of this report for their review and comment. In 

comments, DOE agreed with our recommendations. Both DOE and NRC 

provided technical and editorial comments that we incorporated into the 

report, as appropriate.

Background Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to establish a 

comprehensive policy and program for the safe, permanent disposal of 

commercial spent fuel and other highly radioactive wastes in one or more 

mined geologic repositories. The act charged DOE with (1) establishing 

criteria for recommending sites for repositories; (2) “characterizing” 

(investigating) three sites to determine each site’s suitability for a 

repository (1987 amendments to the act directed DOE to investigate only 

the Yucca Mountain site); (3) recommending one suitable site to the 

President, who, if he considered the site qualified for a license application, 

would submit a recommendation to Congress; and (4) seeking a license 

from NRC to construct and operate a repository at the approved site. The 

act created the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management within 

DOE to manage its nuclear waste program. 

Since the 1980s, DOE has spent years conducting site characterization 

studies at the Yucca Mountain site to determine whether it is suitable for a 

high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel repository. DOE, for 

example, has completed numerous scientific studies of the mountain and 

its surrounding region for water flow and the potential for rock movement, 

including volcanoes and earthquakes that might adversely affect the 

performance of the repository. To allow scientists and engineers greater 

access to the rock being studied, DOE excavated two tunnels for studying 

the deep underground environment: (1) a five-mile main tunnel that loops 

through the mountain, with several research areas or alcoves connected to 

it; and (2) a 1.7-mile tunnel that crosses the mountain (see fig. 2). This 

second tunnel allows scientists to study properties of the rock and the 

behavior of water near the potential repository area. In July 2002, Congress 

approved the President’s recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site for 

the development of a repository. 
Page 10 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Figure 2: The 1.7-Mile Tunnel Built for Scientific Studies near the Potential 

Repository Area

The Yucca Mountain project is currently focused on preparing an 

application to obtain a license from NRC to construct a repository. The 

required application information includes both repository design work and 

scientific analyses. DOE is engaged in necessary tasks such as compiling 

information and writing sections of the license application, and is 

conducting technical exchanges with NRC staff and addressing key 

technical issues identified by NRC to ensure that sufficient supporting 

information is provided. It also plans to further develop the design of the 

repository, including revised designs for the repository’s surface facilities 

and canisters to hold the waste. DOE is also identifying and preparing 

potentially relevant documentary material that it is required to make 

available on NRC’s Web-based information system, known as the Licensing 

Support Network. This is a critical step because DOE is required to certify 

that the documentary material has been identified and made electronically 

Source: DOE.
Page 11 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

available no later than 6 months in advance of submitting the license 

application.4

In February 2005, DOE announced that it does not expect the repository to 

open until 2012 at the earliest, which is more than 14 years later than the 

1998 goal specified by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. More recently, 

the conference report for DOE’s fiscal year 2006 appropriations observed 

that further significant schedule slippages for submitting a license 

application are likely. Further delays could arise from factors such as the 

time needed for EPA to establish revised radiation standards for Yucca 

Mountain and for DOE to revise its technical documents in response. Such 

delays could be costly because nuclear utilities, which pay for most of the 

disposal program through a fee on nuclear power, have sued DOE, seeking 

damages for not starting the removal of spent nuclear fuel from storage at 

commercial reactors by the 1998 deadline. Estimates of the potential 

damages vary widely, from DOE’s estimate of about $5 billion to a nuclear 

industry’s estimate of about $50 billion, but the cost for the damages will 

likely rise if there are further delays to opening the repository. 

Given these schedule slippages, Congress has considered other options for 

managing existing and future nuclear wastes, such as centralized interim 

storage at one or more DOE sites. The conference report for DOE’s fiscal 

year 2006 appropriations directed DOE to develop a spent nuclear fuel 

recycling plan to reuse the fuel. However, according to the policy 

organization of the nuclear energy industry, no technological option 

contemplated will eliminate the need to ultimately dispose of nuclear waste 

in a geologic repository.

In October 2005, the project’s Acting Director issued a memorandum 

calling for the development of wide-ranging plans for the “new path 

forward,” DOE’s effort to address quality assurance and other challenges 

prior to applying for a license. To restore confidence in scientific 

documents that will support the license application, some of the plans will 

address the need to review and replace USGS work products, a 

requirement for USGS to certify its scientific work products, and 

establishing a lead national laboratory to assist the project. Other plans are 

focused on a new simplified design for the waste canisters and repository 

facilities, a design that is expected to improve the safety and operation of 

4

In addition, DOE must update this certification at the time of license application submittal, 

as required by NRC regulations.
Page 12 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

the repository by eliminating the need to directly handle and process the 

spent fuel at the repository. Further, this aggressive effort called for 

management changes, including a transition plan; more rigorous project 

management, including a new baseline schedule; rescoping existing 

contracts and developing new contracts; tracking project hiring actions; a 

financial plan; and new reporting indicators.

After DOE submits the license application, NRC plans to take 90 days to 

examine the application for completeness to determine whether DOE has 

addressed all NRC requirements. One of the reviews for completeness will 

include an examination of DOE’s documentation of the quality assurance 

program to assess whether it addresses all NRC criteria. These criteria 

include, among other things, organization, design control, document 

control, corrective actions, quality assurance records, and quality audits. If 

it deems any part of the application is incomplete, NRC may either reject 

the application or require that DOE furnish the necessary documentation 

before proceeding with the detailed technical review of the application. If it 

deems the application is complete, NRC will docket the application, 

indicating its readiness for a detailed technical review.5

Once the application is accepted and placed on the docket, NRC will 

conduct its 18-month technical review of the application to determine if the 

application meets all NRC requirements, including the soundness of 

scientific analyses and preliminary facility design, and NRC quality 

assurance criteria. If NRC discovers problems with the technical 

information used to support the application, it may conduct specific 

reviews, including inspections, to determine the extent and effect of the 

problem. Because the data, models, and software used in modeling 

repository performance are integral parts of this technical review, quality 

assurance plays a key role since it is the mechanism used to verify the 

accuracy of the information DOE presents in the application. NRC may 

conduct reviews, including inspections, of the quality assurance program if 

technical problems are identified that are attributable to quality problems. 

NRC will hold public hearings chaired by its Atomic Safety and Licensing 

Board to examine specific topics. After completing the proceedings, the 

board will forward its initial decision to the NRC commissioners for their 

review. Finally, within 3 to 4 years from the date that NRC dockets the 

application, NRC will make a decision to grant the construction 

5

Docketing is the formal acceptance of the license application by NRC after it determines 

that it contains adequate information for a formal review.
Page 13 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

authorization, reject the application, or grant the construction 

authorization with conditions.6

 NRC will grant a construction authorization 

only if it concludes from its reviews that the repository would meet its 

reasonable expectation that the safety and health of workers and the public 

would be protected.

DOE Has a Long 

History of Quality 

Assurance Problems at 

Yucca Mountain and Is 

Relying on Costly and 

Time-Consuming 

Measures to Correct 

Problems Before 

Submitting Its License 

Application for the 

Repository 

DOE has repeatedly experienced quality assurance problems with its work 

on the Yucca Mountain project. In the late 1980s, DOE had been challenged 

to fix and develop adequate plans and procedures related to quality 

assurance. By the late 1990s, audits by GAO, DOE, and others identified 

recurring quality assurance problems with several aspects of key scientific 

data, models, and software. Currently, in preparing to submit the license 

application to NRC, DOE is relying on costly and time-consuming rework 

to resolve lingering quality assurance problems with the transparency and 

traceability of data and in project design and engineering documents 

uncovered during audits and after-the-fact evaluations.

DOE Has Had Problems 

Implementing and 

Maintaining an Effective 

Quality Assurance Program 

DOE has a long-standing history of attempting to address NRC concerns 

about its quality assurance program. Although NRC will have responsibility 

for regulating the construction, operation, and decommissioning (closure) 

phases of the project, its regulatory and oversight role does not begin until 

DOE submits a license application. As a result, NRC’s role in the project has 

been limited to providing guidance to DOE to ensure an understanding of 

NRC regulations and that the years of scientific and technical work will not 

later be found inadequate for licensing purposes. Specifically, since 1984, 

NRC has agreed to point out problems it identifies with the quality 

assurance program so that DOE can take timely corrective action. Initially, 

this NRC guidance was mainly focused on ensuring that DOE had the 

necessary quality assurance organization, plans, and procedures.

6

NRC is required to issue or deny a construction authorization not later than 3 years after 

receiving a license application, unless it extends this period by not more than 1 year and 

reporting the reasons for doing so to the Secretary of Energy and Congress.
Page 14 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

As we reported in 1988, NRC had reviewed DOE’s quality assurance plans 

and procedures comprising the principal framework of its quality 

assurance program, and concluded that they were inadequate and did not 

meet NRC requirements.7

 NRC also concluded that DOE’s efforts to 

independently identify and resolve weaknesses in the plans and procedures 

were ineffective. After observing DOE quality assurance audits, NRC 

determined that the audits were ineffective for measuring whether quality 

assurance procedures were being effectively implemented. Further, NRC 

identified additional concerns, during the 1980s, related to DOE 

management and organizational deficiencies relating to the quality 

assurance program. Specifically, among other things, NRC found the 

following:

• DOE had a small staff and relied heavily on contractors to provide 

quality assurance oversight. Based on its experience in regulating 

nuclear power plants, NRC found that these types of organizations 

frequently developed major quality-related problems.

• DOE had indirect project control, with administrative and functional 

control over the project split between different offices. NRC found that 

such project control arrangements tend to have serious quality 

assurance-related problems because conflicts can arise between quality 

and other organizational goals, such as cost and schedule.

• During a 1984 NRC visit to Nevada, DOE project participants had 

expressed the opinion that quality assurance is “unnecessary, 

burdensome, and an imposition.” Further, in 1986, DOE issued a stopwork order to the USGS based on a determination that USGS staff did 

not appreciate the importance of quality assurance and that USGS work 

would not meet NRC expectations. NRC believed that organizational 

attitudes can indicate whether a project is likely to experience problems 

relating to quality assurance and found such examples troublesome.

Finally, based in part on the information obtained from its oversight 

activities, NRC concluded, in 1989, that DOE and its key contractors had 

yet to develop and implement an acceptable quality assurance program.

7

GAO, Nuclear Waste: Repository Work Should Not Proceed Until Quality Assurance Is 

Adequate, GAO/RCED-88-159 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 29, 1988). 
Page 15 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

However, by March 1992, NRC came to the conclusion that DOE had made 

significant progress in improving its quality assurance program. NRC noted 

that DOE had addressed many of its concerns, specifically that, among 

other things, (1) all of the contractor organizations had developed and were 

in the process of implementing quality assurance programs that met NRC 

requirements, (2) quality assurance management positions had been filled 

with full-time DOE personnel with appropriate knowledge and experience, 

and (3) DOE had demonstrated that it is capable of evaluating and 

correcting deficiencies in the overall quality assurance program. 

Nevertheless, in October 1994, NRC found problems with quality 

assurance, particularly with the site contractor’s ability to effectively 

implement corrective actions and DOE’s ability to oversee the site 

contractor’s quality assurance program.

Recurring Issues with 

Project Data, Models, and 

Software Illustrate DOE’s 

Difficulties Addressing 

Quality Assurance Problems

As DOE’s quality assurance program matured, it resolved NRC concerns 

about its organization, plans, and procedures, and in the late 1990s began 

successfully detecting new quality assurance problems in three areas 

critical to the repository’s successful performance: the adequacy of the 

data sources, the validity of scientific models, and the reliability of 

computer software developed at the site. These problems surfaced in 1998 

when DOE began to run the initial version of its performance assessment 

model. Specifically, DOE was unable to ensure that critical project data had 

been collected and tracked back to the original sources. In addition, DOE 

did not have a standardized process for developing scientific models used 

to simulate a variety of geologic events or an effective process for ensuring 

that computer software used to support the scientific models would work 

properly. As required by DOE’s quality assurance procedures, the 

department conducted a root cause analysis and issued a corrective action 

plan in 1999. After corrective actions were taken, DOE considered the 

issues resolved. 

However, in 2001, similar deficiencies associated with models and software 

resurfaced. DOE attributed the recurrence to ineffective procedures and 

corrective actions, improper implementation of quality procedures by line 

managers, and personnel who feared reprisal for expressing quality 

concerns. Recognizing the need to correct these recurring problems, DOE 

conducted a comprehensive root cause analysis that included reviews of 

numerous past self-assessments and independent program assessments, 

and identified weaknesses in management systems, quality processes, and 

organization roles and responsibilities. Following the analysis, in July 2002, 

DOE issued its Management Improvement Initiatives (Initiatives) that 
Page 16 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

addressed quality problems with software and models. In addition, DOE 

added other corrective actions to address management weaknesses that it 

found in areas such as roles and responsibilities, quality assurance 

processes, written procedures, corrective action plans, and work 

environment. 

However, DOE continued to face difficulties in resolving quality assurance 

problems concerning the data, software, and modeling to be used in 

support of the licensing application:

• Data management. As part of NRC’s quality assurance requirements, 

data used to support conclusions about the safety and design of the 

repository must be either collected under a quality assurance program 

or subjected to prescribed testing procedures to ensure the data are 

accurate for their intended use. In addition, the data supporting these 

conclusions must also be traceable back to its original source. In 1998, 

DOE identified quality assurance problems with the quality and 

traceability of data—specifically that some data had not been properly 

collected or tested to ensure their accuracy and that data used to 

support scientific analysis could not be properly traced back to their 

source. DOE again found similar problems in April and September 2003, 

when a DOE audit revealed that some data sets did not have the 

documentation necessary to trace them back to their sources; the 

processes for data control and management were unsatisfactory; and 

faulty definitions were developed, which allowed unqualified data to be 

used. 

• Software management. DOE quality assurance procedures require that 

software used to support analysis and conclusions about the 

performance and safety of the repository be tested or created in such a 

way to ensure that it is reliable. From 1998 to 2003, multiple DOE audits 

found recurring quality assurance problems that could affect confidence 

in the adequacy of software codes. For example, in 2003, DOE auditors 

found problems related to software similar to those found previously in 

areas such as technical reviews, software classification, planning, 

design, and testing. Further, a team of industry professionals hired by 

DOE to assess quality assurance problems with software reported in 

February 2004 that these problems kept recurring because DOE did not 

assess the effectiveness of its corrective actions and did not adequately 

identify the root causes of the problems. 
Page 17 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

• Model validation. Models are used to simulate natural and 

environmental conditions at Yucca Mountain, and to demonstrate the 

performance of the future repository over time. However, before models 

can be used to support the license application, DOE must demonstrate 

through a process called validation that the models are able to 

accurately predict geologic events. In 1998, a team of project personnel 

evaluated the models and determined that 87 percent did not comply 

with the validation requirements. In 2001, and again in 2003, DOE audits 

found that project personnel were not properly following procedures—

specifically in the areas of model documentation, model validation, and 

checking and review. Further, the 2003 audit concluded that previous 

corrective actions designed to improve validation and reduce errors in 

model reports were not fully implemented.

After many years of working to address these quality assurance problems 

with data, software, and models, DOE had mostly resolved these problems 

and closed the last of the associated condition reports by February 2005.

DOE Is Now Relying on 

Costly and Time-Consuming 

Rework to Resolve 

Additional Problems

As DOE prepares to submit the Yucca Mountain project license application 

to NRC, it has relied on costly and time consuming rework to ensure that 

the documents supporting the application are accurate and complete. 

Specifically, DOE has relied on inspections and rework by DOE personnel 

to resolve quality assurance problems with the traceability and 

transparency of technical work products. These efforts to deal with quality 

problems at the end, rather than effectively ensuring that work 

organizations are producing quality products from the beginning, add to the 

project’s cost and could potentially delay DOE’s submission of the license 

application to NRC. In addition, DOE’s efforts indicate that some corrective 

actions have been ineffective in resolving problems with the quality 

assurance process. Further, DOE is now detecting quality assurance 

problems in design and engineering work that are similar to the quality 

assurance problems it experienced with its scientific work in the late 

1990s.

Although DOE did not initiate its major effort to address these problems 

until 2004, the department and NRC for years had known of quality 

assurance problems with the traceability and transparency of technical 

work products called Analysis and Model Reports (AMR). AMRs are a key 

component of the license application, and contain the scientific analysis 

and modeling data demonstrating the safety and performance of the 

planned repository. Among other quality requirements, AMRs must be 
Page 18 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

traceable back to their original source material and data, and must also be 

transparent in justifying and explaining their underlying assumptions, 

calculations, and conclusions. In 2003, based in part on these problems as 

well as DOE’s long-standing problems with data, software, and modeling, 

NRC conducted an independent evaluation of three AMRs. The scope of the 

review was to determine if the AMRs met NRC requirements for being 

traceable, transparent, and technically appropriate for their use in the 

license application. NRC found significant problems.8

 First, in some cases 

DOE was not transparent in explaining the basis on which it was reaching 

conclusions. For example, in some circumstances, DOE selected a single 

value from a range of data without sufficient justification. Other times, 

DOE did not explain how a range of experimental conditions were 

representative of repository conditions. Second, where DOE did 

sufficiently explain the basis for a conclusion, it did not always provide the 

necessary technical information, such as experimental data, analysis, or 

expert judgment, to trace the support for that explanation back to source 

materials. For example, DOE did not explain how information on one type 

of material provided an appropriate comparison for another material. 

Moreover, while DOE had identified similar problems in the past, the 

actions taken to correct them did not identify and resolve other 

deficiencies. NRC concluded that these findings suggested that other AMRs 

possibly had similar problems, and that if not resolved, such problems 

could delay NRC’s review of the license application as it would need to 

conduct special inspections to resolve any issues it found with the quality 

of technical information. 

To address problems of traceability and transparency, DOE in the spring of 

2004 initiated an effort called the Regulatory Integration Team (RIT) to 

perform a comprehensive inspection and rework of the AMRs to ensure 

they met NRC requirements and expectations.9

 According to DOE officials, 

the RIT involved roughly 150 full-time personnel from DOE, USGS, and 

multiple national laboratories such as Sandia, Los Alamos, and Lawrence 

Livermore. First, the RIT screened all of the approximately 110 AMRs and 

prioritized its efforts on 89 that needed additional rework. Ten AMRs were 

determined to be acceptable, and 11 were canceled because they were no 

8

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff 

Evaluation of U.S. Department of Energy Analysis Model Reports, Process Controls, and 

Corrective Actions (Washington, D.C., Apr. 7, 2004). 

9

In addition, the RIT edited the AMRs to assure consistency and ease of technical and 

regulatory reviews.
Page 19 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

longer needed to support the license application. According to DOE 

officials, approximately 8 months later, the RIT project was completed at a 

cost of about $20 million, with a total of over 3,700 problems and issues 

addressed or corrected. In February 2005, in a letter to DOE, the site 

contractor stated that the RIT effort was successful and that the AMRs had 

been revised to improve traceability and transparency. 

Subsequently, however, additional problems with traceability and 

transparency have been identified, requiring further inspections and 

rework. For example, after the March 2005 discovery of e-mails from USGS 

employees written between May 1998 and March 2000 implying that 

employees had falsified documentation of their work to avoid quality 

assurance standards, DOE initiated a review of additional AMRs that were 

not included in the scope of the 2004 RIT review. The additional AMRs 

contained scientific work performed by the USGS employees and had been 

assumed by the RIT to meet NRC requirements for traceability and 

transparency. However, according to DOE officials, DOE’s review 

determined that these AMRs did not meet NRC’s standards, and additional 

rework was required. Further, similar problems were identified as the focus 

of the project shifted to the design and engineering work required for the 

license application. In February 2005, the site contractor determined that in 

addition to problems with AMRs, similar traceability and transparency 

problems existed in the design and engineering documents that comprise 

the Safety Analysis Report—the report necessary for demonstrating to 

NRC how the facilities and other components of the repository site will 

meet the project’s health, safety, and environmental goals and objectives. In 

a root cause analysis of this problem, the site contractor noted that 

additional resources were needed to inspect and rework the documents to 

correct the problems.

DOE Cannot Be 

Certain Its Efforts to 

Improve Quality 

Assurance Have Been 

Effective Because of 

Weaknesses in 

Tracking Progress and 

Identifying Problems

DOE cannot be certain that it has met continuous improvement goals for 

implementing its quality assurance requirements, a commitment DOE 

made at the closure of its Management Improvement Initiatives (Initiatives) 

in April 2004. At that time, DOE told us it expected that the progress 

achieved with the initiatives would continue and that its performance 

indicators would enable it to assess further progress and direct 

management attention as needed. However, DOE’s performance indicators, 

as well as a second management tool—trend evaluation reports—have not 

been effective for this purpose. More specifically, the indicators panel did 

not highlight the areas of concern covered by the initiatives and had 

weaknesses in assessing progress because the indicators kept changing. 
Page 20 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

The trend evaluation reports also did not focus on tracking the concerns 

covered by the Initiatives, had technical weaknesses for identifying 

significant and recurring problems, had inconsistently tracked progress in 

addressing problems, and could not fully analyze projectwide problems.10

In addition, the trend reports’ tracking of problems for which corrective 

actions were already being taken was at times overly influenced by 

judgments about whether additional management action was warranted 

rather than the problems’ significance.

The Panel’s Focus and 

Frequent Changes Hindered 

the Tracking of Progress 

with Management Concerns 

and Quality Problems 

By the time that the actions called for by the Initiatives had been completed 

in April 2004, project management had already developed the indicators 

panel, which DOE refers to as the annunciator panel, to use at monthly 

management meetings to monitor project performance. The panel was a 

single page composed of colored blocks representing selected performance 

indicators and their rating or level of performance. A manager viewing the 

panel would be able to quickly see the color rating of each block or 

indicator. For example, red indicated degraded or adverse performance 

warranting significant management attention; yellow indicated 

performance warranting increased management attention or acceptable 

performance that could change for the worse; and green indicated good 

performance. The panel represented a hierarchy of indicators in which the 

highest level, or primary, indicators were shown; secondary indicators that 

determined the primary indicators’ ratings were shown for some primary 

indicators; but lower third- or fourth-level indicators were not shown. Our 

review analyzed a subset of these indicators that DOE designated as the 

indicators that best predict performance in areas affecting quality. While 

we were conducting our review, DOE suspended preparation of the panel 

after August 2005 while it reconsiders its use of indicators to monitor 

project performance. DOE had also suspended preparation of the panel 

from late 2004 to early 2005 in order to make substantial revisions. These 

revisions were made, in part, to emphasize fewer, more important 

indicators for management attention. 

10Similar to our findings, a January 2006 NRC observation audit report noted that a DOE 

audit had found the trend program was unsatisfactory. Specifically, the DOE audit found 

that the trend program was not handled as a priority for management attention, and has 

historically identified broad causal issues with no adverse trends. 
Page 21 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

The Initiatives raised concerns about five key areas of management 

weakness as adversely affecting the implementation of quality assurance 

requirements:

1. Roles and responsibilities were becoming confused as the project 

transitioned from scientific studies to activities supporting licensing. 

The confusion over roles and responsibilities was undermining 

managers’ accountability for results. The Initiatives’ objective was to 

realign DOE’s project organization to give a single point of 

responsibility for project functions, such as quality assurance and the 

Corrective Action Program, and hold the project contractor more 

accountable for performing the necessary work in accordance with 

quality, schedule, and cost requirements. 

2. Product quality was sometimes being achieved through inspections by 

the project’s Office of Quality Assurance rather than being routinely 

implemented by the project’s work organizations. As a result, the 

Initiatives sought to increase work organizations’ responsibility for 

being the principle means for achieving quality.

3. Work procedures were typically too burdensome and inefficient, which 

impeded work. The Initiatives sought to provide new user-friendly and 

effective procedures, when necessary, to allow routine compliance with 

safety and quality requirements. 

4. Multiple corrective action programs existed, processes were 

burdensome and did not yield useful management reports, and 

corrective actions were not completed in a timely manner. The 

Initiatives sought to implement a single program to ensure that 

problems were identified, prioritized, and documented and that timely 

and effective corrective actions were taken to preclude recurrence of 

problems. 

5. The importance of a safety-conscious work environment that fosters 

open communication about concerns was not understood by all 

managers and staff, and they had not been held accountable when 

inappropriately overemphasizing the work schedule, inadequately 

attending to work quality, and acting inconsistently in practicing the 

desired openness about concerns. Through issuing a work environment 

policy, providing training on the policy, and improving the Employee 

Concerns Program, the Initiatives sought to create an environment in 

which employees felt free to raise concerns without fear of reprisal and 
Page 22 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

with confidence that issues would be addressed promptly and 

appropriately.

As shown in table 1, the Initiatives’ effectiveness indicators for tracking 

progress in addressing these management weaknesses did not have 

equivalent performance indicators visible in the annunciator panel when it 

was prepared for the last time, using August 2005 data. 

Table 1: Visibility of Management Improvement Initiatives’ Effectiveness Indicators in Annuciator Panel When Last Prepared 

(Using August 2005 Data)

Key area of management 

weakness identified in the 

Initiatives

Effectiveness indicators from 

the Initiatives 

DOE response on coverage of 

the management weakness in 

the panel’s performance 

indicators

GAO comments and 

observations

Roles, responsibilities, 

accountability, authority

An improving trend in quality and 

work schedule performance. 

No integrated analysis of trends 

in quality and schedule 

performance.

No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.

Some indicators measured 

aspects of quality or schedule, 

but provided no integrated 

analysis of these trends.

A consistently decreasing trend 

in quality problems related to 

roles and responsibilities.

No aspect measured. No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.

Quality assurance programs and 

processes

The numbers of high-priority 

(significant) quality problems that 

are self-identified are at least 80 

percent of all significant quality 

problems.

One indicator looked at work 

organizations’ identification of 

problems, including less 

significant ones.

No indicator, focused only on 

significant problems, was visible 

in the panel. 

One fourth-level indicator 

tracked work organizations’ 

identification of significant 

problems. 

A decreasing trend in average 

time to resolve significant quality 

problems and in number of 

delinquent corrective actions for 

significant quality problems.

A new timeliness measure has 

been developed.a

No indicator was visible in panel.

Aspect of fourth-level indicator 

tracked average time of 

resolution. 

Work procedures A decreasing number of quality 

problems related to ineffective 

Procedures.

No aspect measured. No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.

A decreasing trend in time 

needed to revise procedures.

No aspect measured. No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.

A decreasing trend in average 

time of interim procedure 

changes.

No aspect measured. No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.
Page 23 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.

a

New timeliness indicator was not implemented by the time of the final panel using August 2005 data.

Two of the Initiatives’ key areas of concern—(1) roles, responsibilities, 

authority, and accountability; and (2) work procedures—and their 

associated effectiveness indicators were not represented in the panel’s 

visible or underlying indicators. The Initiatives’ effectiveness indicator for 

tracking trends in recurring problems also was not represented. In other 

cases, the Initiatives’ effectiveness indicators were represented in 

underlying lower-level indicators that had very little impact on the rating of 

the visible indicator. An example is the Initiatives’ indicator for timely 

completion of employee concerns. The panel’s related visible indicator was 

work environment, whose rating was based on 4 secondary and 23 tertiary 

indicators. Of the third-level indicators, two were for timeliness of 

completion of employee concerns, and combined they contributed 3 

Corrective Action Program A decreasing trend in number of 

repetitive quality problems.

No aspect measured. No indicator was visible in, or 

underlies, the panel.

A decreasing trend in average 

time to resolve significant quality 

problems. 

A new timeliness measure has 

been developed.a

No indicator was visible in panel.

Aspect of fourth-level indicator 

tracked average time of 

resolution.

Less than 10 percent of quality 

problems are resolved late.

A new timeliness measure has 

been developed.a

No indicator was visible in the 

panel.

A third-level indicator tracked 

percentage of problems with 

timely resolution.

Work environment A decreasing number of 

substantiated employee 

concerns for harassment, 

retaliation, intimidation, and 

discrimination.

Aspects of this issue are 

measured by work environment 

indicators.

No indicator was visible in panel.

A third-level indicator measured 

this performance.

Evaluation of routine employee 

concerns in less than 30 days, or 

90 days for complex employee 

concerns involving harassment 

or intimidation.

Goals have remained at 30 and 

90 days. 

No indicator was visible in panel. 

Third-level indicators measured 

the timely completion of routine 

and other concerns.

External evaluation of work 

environment shows positive 

changes.

External evaluation is 

accomplished through 

independent employee surveys, 

reflected in third-level indicators.

No indicator was visible in panel.

Four third-level indicators were 

based on the employee surveys.

(Continued From Previous Page)

Key area of management 

weakness identified in the 

Initiatives

Effectiveness indicators from 

the Initiatives 

DOE response on coverage of 

the management weakness in 

the panel’s performance 

indicators

GAO comments and 

observations
Page 24 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

percent toward the rating of the work environment indicator. As a result of 

the weighting of these many underlying indicators, ratings for individual 

lower-level indicators could be different from the visible indicator. For 

example, in August 2005, the work environment indicator showed good 

performance. However, the ratings of four underlying indicators from the 

project’s employee survey on the work environment—collectively 

accounting for 25 percent of the work environment indicator’s score—

indicated the need for increased management attention. Moreover, some of 

the Initiatives’ indicators, such as the work organizations’ selfidentification of significant problems, had their impact on visible indicators 

diluted by the inclusion of other indicators that were not focused solely on 

the detection of significant problems.

Another shortcoming of the annunciator panel was that frequent changes 

to the indicators hindered the ability to identify problems for management 

attention and track progress in resolving them. The indicators could 

change in many ways, such as changes in their definition, calculation, or 

data sources used in calculations, or from the deletion or addition of a 

subindicator. When such changes were made to the indicators, progress 

became less clear because changes in reported performance levels may 

have been the result of the indicator changes rather than actual 

performance changes. Some of the indicators for key project processes 

with quality elements changed from one to five times during the 8-month 

period from April 2004 through November 2004. Even after the major 

revision of the panel in early 2005, most of the performance indicators 

tracking quality issues continued to change over the next 6 months—that 

is, from March 2005 through August 2005. As shown in table 2, only one of 

the five relevant indicators did not change during this period. One indicator 

was changed four times during the 6-month period, resulting in it being 

different in more months than it remained the same.
Page 25 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Table 2: Key Indicators for Processes with Quality Elements, Their Intended Focus, and Number of Times They Changed (March 

through August 2005)

Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.

Moreover, the panel was not always available to identify problems and 

track progress. The panel was not created for December 2004, January 

2005, and February 2005 because it was undergoing a major revision. At 

that time, DOE told NRC that the performance indicators for the panel 

were revised to reflect the change in the work as the project moved into the 

engineering, procurement, and construction phase. DOE also reduced the 

total number of visible indicators from 60 to 30 to focus on fewer, more 

critical aspects of project management. Panels with the new indicators 

were then produced for 6 months, starting with March 2005 and ending 

after August 2005. This second interruption of the panels resulted from 

another major revision to the indicators; this time, indicators are being 

made congruent with project work as designated by DOE’s “new path 

forward,” again to focus on fewer, more important activities. In December 

2005, a senior DOE official told us that the project would begin to measure 

key activities, but without use of the panel.

Indicators Intended focus

Number of 

months changed

Performance improvement Effectiveness of self-assessment of quality and other issues, lessons learned, 

and Corrective Action Program

4

Work management Quality of work products and documents 1

Safety-conscious work 

environment

Worker confidence in management support for raising quality and other concerns 

without fear of retaliation; management effectiveness in detecting and preventing 

retaliation for raising concerns; effectiveness of normal and alternative problem 

resolution

0

Human performance Preventing, detecting, and correcting human errors 3

Quality performance Composite of quality indicators, in areas of engineering products, selfassessment, Corrective Action Program, and work products and documents1
Page 26 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Trend Evaluation Reports 

Have Not Specifically 

Tracked the Initiatives’ 

Management Concerns and 

Have Had Weaknesses 

Tracking Significant and 

Recurrent Problems for 

Management Attention

According to DOE, some of the Initiatives’ areas of concern and their 

associated effectiveness indicators—for example, trends in quality 

problems related to roles and responsibilities—were being captured, at 

least partially, in the project’s quarterly trend evaluation reports rather than 

in the performance indicators. However, the trend reports are a 

management tool designed more to identify emerging and unanticipated 

problems than to monitor progress with already identified problems, such 

as those addressed by the Initiatives. In developing these reports, trend 

analysts seek to identify patterns and trends in condition reports (CR), 

which document problematic conditions through the project’s Corrective 

Action Program. The trend reports analyze CRs for more significant 

problems (Levels A and B) and minor problems (Level C), but not at Level 

D (opportunities for improvement). The trend analysis typically separates 

the reported problems into categories such as organizational unit, type of 

problem, and cause. These categories are intended to provide insights into 

the problems. For example, analysis might reveal that most occurrences of 

a particular type of problem are associated with a certain organization. 

In practice, DOE missed opportunities to use trend reports to call attention 

to progress in the Initiatives’ areas of concern. For example, the Initiatives 

sought to clarify roles and responsibilities within and between DOE and 

BSC to ensure clear accountability for project results during the project’s 

transition from scientific studies to the design and engineering activities 

necessary to license a repository. Similar organizational transition 

problems were identified in the November 2004 trend report. While that 

report attributed increases in the number of causal factors associated with 

change management, supervisory methods, and work organization to 

recent BSC reorganizations and changes in the project from science-based 

to design and engineering activities, it did not specifically mention issues of 

roles and responsibilities or that roles and responsibilities was an 

Initiatives’ area of concern. However, an analysis of the cause of the 

problems noted in various significant condition reports, which is 

performed for certain condition reports and outside of the process of 

developing trend reports, found evidence of weaknesses in the 

organizational interfaces among BSC organizations, as well as between 

BSC and DOE. According to this cause analysis, these organizational 

interface weaknesses were associated with some manner of change and 

represented weaknesses in the definition of roles and responsibilities. 

Trend reports are generally based on condition reports, and problems with 

roles and responsibilities seem to be identified in cause analyses rather 

than in the condition reports themselves. 
Page 27 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Similarly, DOE missed an opportunity to use trend reports to discuss the 

Initiatives’ goal that the project’s line or work organizations become more 

accountable for self-identifying significant problems. The August 2005 

trend report briefly cited an evaluation of a CR highlighting the low rate of 

self-identification of significant problems during the previous quarter and 

reported the evaluation’s conclusion that it was not a problem warranting 

management attention. However, the trend report did not mention that 

about 35 percent of significant problems were self-identified during the 

previous quarter, while the Initiatives’ goal was that 80 percent of 

significant problems would be self-identified. Thus, the trend report missed 

an opportunity to either raise a performance problem or pose the question 

of whether the Initiatives’ goal needed to be reassessed.

Beyond whether they effectively tracked the Initiatives’ areas of concern, 

trend reports face important obstacles, in general, to adequately identify 

recurrent and significant problems:

• Recurring or similar conditions can be difficult to clearly identify for 

management’s attention and resolution. A trend report noted that there 

will be few cases where recurrent conditions are obvious because each 

condition slightly differs.

• Trend analysis tends to focus on the number of CRs issued, but the 

number of CRs does not necessarily reflect the significance of a 

problem. For example, the number of CRs involving requirements 

management decreased by over half from the first quarter to the second 

quarter of fiscal year 2005. However, this decrease was not a clear sign 

of progress. Not only did the number rise again in the third quarter, but 

the May 2005 trend report also noted that the number of all condition 

reports had dropped during the second quarter. According to the report, 

the volume of CRs in the first quarter had been high because of reviews 

of various areas, including requirements management. Another example 

is the records management problem. The November 2005 trend report 

stated that a records management problem identified in various CRs, 

despite accounting for about 50 percent of all business administration 

problems, reflected an underlying error rate of less than 1 percent and 

thus was not a significant problem.

• The lack of an increasing trend in the number of reported problems does 

not necessarily mean the lack of a significant problem for management 

attention. Knowing the appropriate level of performance, regardless of 

the trend, is difficult without having clearly appropriate benchmarks 
Page 28 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

from organizations engaged in activities similar to the Yucca Mountain 

project. Such benchmarks would clarify, for example, whether a 

project’s percentages of human performance errors compare favorably, 

regardless of whether the numbers are increasing. Similarly, the trend in 

the number and types of CRs during any period is not necessarily a sign 

of improvement or worsening conditions. Trends can be attributed to 

various factors, including increases in the number of audits or selfassessments, which can lead to more CRs being issued.

• At the time of analysis, some trend data may not be sufficiently reliable 

or complete to ensure sound findings for management’s attention. For 

example, although some actions were taken in December 2004 to ensure 

that cause and other codes were properly assigned, a BSC audit in June 

2005 again raised questions about the consistency of the coding. With 

respect to completeness, the fourth quarter report for 2005 noted that 28 

percent of the Level B CRs did not have a cause code at the time of the 

trend analysis, and one finding was presented even though two-thirds of 

the data was missing. 

Due, in part, to these obstacles and changes to how the analysis is done, 

trend reports have not consistently determined the significance of 

problems or performed well in tracking progress in resolving problems. For 

example, trend reports have questionably identified significant human 

performance problems and ineffectively tracked progress in resolving the 

problem because of no clearly appropriate or precise benchmark for 

performance, inconsistent focus on the problem, and unreliable data on 

cause codes. 

The February 2004 trend report identified a human performance problem 

based on Yucca Mountain project data showing the project’s proportion of 

skill-based errors to all human performance errors was two times higher 

than benchmark data from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations 

(INPO).11 The report used this comparison to suggest that the project 

needed to adopt successful commercial nuclear practices for addressing 

skill-based errors. However, the report cautioned that other comparisons 

with these INPO data may not be appropriate because of differences in the 

nature, complexity, and scope of work performed, but did not explain why 

the report’s comparison of INPO data for skill-based errors to the Yucca 

11Skill-based errors are defined in trend reports as unintentional errors resulting from 

people not paying attention to the task at hand.
Page 29 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Mountain project should be an exception to this caution. The May 2004 

trend report repeated this comparison to INPO, finding skill-based errors 

three times higher than the benchmark data. However, this INPO 

benchmark has not been used in subsequent reports. 

The November 2004 trend report redefined the problem as the 

predominance of human performance errors in general, rather than the 

skill-based component of these errors—but later reports reinterpreted this 

predominance as not a problem. The problem with skill-based errors was 

unclear in the November 2004 report because these errors were showing a 

decreasing trend, a finding that was attributed as likely the result of 

unreliable assignment of cause codes. Instead, the report cited an adverse 

trend based on the fact that the human performance cause category 

accounted for over half of the total number of causes for condition reports 

prepared during the quarter. Under the project’s trend analysis guidelines, 

this large predominance of human performance causes—in contrast to 

management, communication or procedure, and other cause categories—

was designated an adverse trend. Nevertheless, by February 2005, trend 

reports began interpreting this predominance as generally appropriate, 

given the type of work done by the project. That is, the project’s work 

involves mainly human efforts and little equipment, while work at nuclear 

power plants involves more opportunities for errors caused by equipment. 

In our view, this interpretation that a predominance of human performance 

errors would be expected implies an imprecise benchmark for appropriate 

performance. 

Although trend reports continued to draw conclusions about human 

performance problems, the February 2005 report indicated that any 

conclusions were hard to justify because of data reliability problems with 

cause coding. For example, the majority of problems attributed to human 

performance causes are minor, or Level C, problems that receive less 

rigorous cause analysis, such as not completing a form. This less rigorous 

analysis tends to reveal only individual human errors—that is, human 

performance problems—whereas more rigorous analysis tends to reveal 

less immediately obvious problems with management and procedures. 

Trend reports have also inconsistently tracked progress in resolving the 

problem associated with the “flow-down” of requirements into the project’s 

procedures—that is, with ensuring that program, regulatory, and statutory 

requirements are identified, allocated, and assigned to the project 

organizations that are responsible for applicable activities. Such 

requirements management problems can result in inadequate control over 
Page 30 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

design inputs and, possibly, inputs to scientific models. Progress with this 

problem was less clear because of inconsistent methods of categorizing 

requirements management problems over time. Initially, based on reviews 

of annual trends in condition reports, the September 2004 and November 

2004 trend reports observed a systemic and continuing problem in the flowdown of requirements from BSC’s Project Requirements Document and 

identified this as an adverse trend. In subsequent reports, the requirements 

flow-down problem was variously treated as an aspect of requirements 

management or records management, or as a latent management weakness 

or weak change management. When treated as an aspect of these broader 

problems, the significance of the original flow-down problem and any 

progress in resolving it became diluted and less clear. The primary focus 

eventually became requirements management, which the February 2005 

trend report designated as a potential trend, whereas the flow-down 

problem had earlier been designated an adverse trend. Consequently, as a 

result of this change, the flow-down of requirements got less direct 

attention and analysis—for example, receiving only a footnote in the 

August 2005 trend report stating that the April 2004 condition report issued 

to address the adverse trend was still overseeing implementation of 

corrective actions. 

In addition, because trend reports examine only condition reports issued to 

BSC, they do not always assess the projectwide significance of problems 

such as requirements management.12 When analyzing one category of 

issues associated with requirements management, the November 2005 

report stated that BSC and DOE shared the process problems, which 

cannot be adequately addressed by just one of the organizations. However, 

for a second category of these issues, the report did not analyze most of the 

condition reports because 6 of the 10 relevant reports were assigned to 

DOE. For a third category of issues, no analysis or recommendation was 

provided because all of the reports were assigned to DOE and therefore did 

not fall within the scope of the trend report. 

12DOE prepares a separate trend report for CRs issued to DOE, but that report’s findings are 

not integrated with those of BSC to provide a projectwide analysis. 
Page 31 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

DOE Has Not Adequately 

Tracked Problems Being 

Addressed by Ongoing 

Management Actions 

The tracking of problems for which corrective actions are already being 

taken appeared at times to be overly influenced by judgments, rather than 

the problems’ significance, about whether additional management action is 

warranted. As a result, problems might be rated as less significant, or not 

tracked further.

The situation of assigning a lower rating to a problem’s significance was 

apparently caused by the fact that ratings were simultaneously an 

assessment of a problem’s significance and of the need for management 

action. In its current formulation, DOE’s rating categories cannot 

accurately represent both the assessment of a problem’s significance and a 

judgment that additional actions are not needed because the designated 

rating category will distort one or the other. For instance, the November 

2005 trend report analyzed the four categories of requirements 

management issues and designated one category that included problems 

with requirements flow-down as a “monitoring trend”—defined as a small 

perturbation in numbers that does not warrant action but needs to be 

monitored closely. Describing this trend as a small perturbation, or a 

disturbance in numbers, did not accurately describe the report’s 

simultaneous recognition that significant process problems spanned both 

BSC and DOE and the fact that the numbers and types of problems were 

consistently identified over the previous three quarters. A more 

understandable explanation for the low rating is that designating the 

problem at any higher level of significance would have triggered guidelines 

involving the issuance of a condition report, which, according to the 

judgment expressed in the report, was not needed. Specifically, the report 

indicated that existing condition reports have already identified and were 

evaluating and resolving the problem, thereby eliminating the need to issue 

a new condition report.

By rating the problem at the lowest level of significance and not calling for 

additional actions, the trend report did not sufficiently draw management’s 

attention to the problem. The trend report’s assessment did not convey that 

other serious problems might have been raised by the additional condition 

reports. At about the same time that the trend report judged that no new 

condition reports were necessary, an Employee Concerns Program’s 

investigation of requirements management resulted in 14 new condition 

reports—3 at the highest level of significance and 8 at the second-highest 
Page 32 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

level of significance.13 For example, the Employee Concerns Program’s 

investigation resulted in condition reports calling for an analysis of the 

collective significance of the numerous existing condition reports and an 

assessment of whether the quality assurance requirement for complete and 

prompt remedial action had been met.14 As a result of the investigation and 

a concurrent DOE root cause analysis, during the December 2005 Quarterly 

Management Meeting with NRC, DOE stated that strong actions were 

required to address the problems with its requirements management 

system and any resulting uncertainty about the adequacy of its design 

products.15

Trend reports identified significant problems in the February 2005 report 

but did not continue to track the problems after a separate analysis 

identified ongoing improvement actions. According to the trend report, 

Level B condition reports collectively indicated organizational weaknesses 

associated with change management involving cross-departmental 

interfaces. The trend report recommended that management focus on 

these problems, and cited a condition report that would further investigate 

them. The cause analysis for that condition report and a related condition 

report found that the problems were well-known, in part through a BSC 

review, and related to a variety of ongoing BSC improvement actions. Since 

this was a broad category of problems with many initiatives under way, the 

cause analysis recommended no new actions other than for management to 

remain aware of the problems. However, the trend reports that followed 

provided no further analyses to focus management’s awareness on these 

problems or to assess progress in resolving them.

13The difference in number of CRs issued also reflects the fact that the scope of the 

investigations was broader than the trending report’s scope, which focused only on CRs 

assigned to BSC. The investigation resulted in CRs assigned to DOE as well as BSC.

14Appendix II offers a detailed description of the employee concerns program and the 

variety of employee submitted concerns, which are often not related to quality assurance, 

and our examination of concerns submitted since 2004 that did not find concerns similar to 

those raised about the potential falsification of records by USGS employees.

15A root cause analysis in such reports involves methods for determining the root cause of a 

problem, which is the underlying cause that must change in order to prevent the problem 

from reoccurring. A root cause analysis is required for the most significant CRs—those 

determined to be at Level A in the Corrective Action Program.
Page 33 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

DOE’s ‘New Path 

Forward’ for Preparing 

to Submit Its License 

Application Faces 

Substantial Quality 

Assurance and Other 

Challenges

In October 2005, DOE announced an aggressive series of proposed changes 

to the design, organization, and management of the Yucca Mountain 

project, but this effort—known as the “new path forward”—will face 

substantial challenges. Some key challenges facing DOE are (1) 

determining the extent of problems and restoring confidence in the 

documents supporting the license application after the discovery of e-mails 

raising the potential of falsified records, (2) settling design issues and 

associated problems with requirements management, and (3) replacing key 

personnel and managing the transition of new managers and other 

organizational challenges. The current Acting Director of the Office of 

Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) stated that DOE will 

not announce a schedule for submitting a license application until DOE 

addresses these important quality assurance and other challenges. Since 

DOE is still formulating its plans, it is too early to determine whether the 

new path will resolve these challenges.

Determining the Extent of 

Problems with Relevant 

Documents Will Delay 

DOE’s Submission of the 

License Application 

In March 2005, after announcing the discovery of USGS e-mails suggesting 

the possible violation of quality assurance requirements, including the 

falsification of records, DOE has taken steps to address lingering concerns 

about the adequacy of the scientific work related to the flow of water into 

the repository and whether similar quality assurance problems are evident 

in other e-mails relevant to the licensing application. Specifically, DOE is 

(1) conducting an extensive review of approximately 14 million e-mails to 

determine whether these e-mails raise additional quality assurance 

concerns and whether they might be relevant to the licensing process, and 

(2) reworking the technical documents created by USGS personnel to 

ensure that the science underlying the conclusions on water infiltration are 

correct and supportable in the license application. The Acting Director of 

OCRWM has stated that DOE will not submit a license application until 

these efforts are complete. Consequently, given the early planning stage of 

these efforts, it is unknown how long this will delay the submission of a 

license application.

As part of the licensing process, DOE is required to publicly disclose all 

documents relevant to the licensing application, including e-mails, by 

posting them on DOE’s public Web site, which is accessible through the 

NRC-sponsored, Internet-based Licensing Support Network (LSN). To 

satisfy schedule requirements, DOE must certify that relevant documents 

have been posted to the network and made available for public review 6 

months before the submission of the license application. In preparation for 
Page 34 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

submitting the license application by December 2004, in June of that year, 

DOE submitted almost 700,000 e-mails to the LSN that had been reviewed 

by their original authors and determined to be relevant to the licensing 

process. They were part of a group of approximately 6 million archived emails authored by individuals still associated with the project. However, in 

August 2004, NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruled that DOE had 

not met its regulatory obligation to make all relevant documentary material 

available. Specifically, DOE had not reviewed a group of approximately 4 

million archived e-mails authored by individuals no longer affiliated with 

the project to determine whether the e-mails were relevant to the licensing 

process. As part of its effort to address the board’s ruling, BSC began a 

review of e-mails authored by employees who were not currently working 

at the project. During this review, the contractor discovered and brought 

forward e-mails between USGS scientists working on water infiltration 

models that raised questions of the potential falsification of technical 

information in order to sidestep quality assurance requirements. 

Following the discovery of the e-mails, DOE conducted a search to 

determine if there were similar e-mails in the approximately 1 million emails previously determined relevant for licensing. However, the DOE 

Inspector General reported in November 200516 that there was no evidence 

that the project requirements for identifying and addressing conditions 

adverse to quality, such as those contained in the USGS e-mails, were 

considered during the initial review of e-mails. Further, among the 

approximately 10 million e-mails that had already been reviewed for the 

licensing process, they found additional e-mails that identified possible 

conditions adverse to quality that had not been identified by project 

personnel as requiring further review. The DOE Inspector General 

recommended, among other things, that DOE (1) expand the review of 

archived e-mails to include both those deemed relevant and those deemed 

not relevant to the licensing process, and ensure that conditions adverse to 

quality are appropriately identified, investigated, reported, and resolved; 

and (2) ensure that current and future e-mails are reviewed for possible 

conditions adverse to quality and that such conditions are appropriately 

addressed under the Corrective Action Program (CAP) system. DOE 

accepted the Inspector General’s recommendations. Specifically, DOE 

16U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General, Office of Inspections and Special 

Inquiries, Quality Assurance Weaknesses in the Review of Yucca Mountain Electronic 

Mail for Relevancy to the Licensing Process, DOE/IG-0708 (Washington, D.C., November 

2005).
Page 35 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

agreed to develop a corrective action plan to expand the review of archived 

e-mails to ensure that conditions adverse to quality are appropriately 

identified and processed under the CAP system. In addition to this review, 

the DOE Inspector General opened a criminal investigation into the USGS 

e-mails in March 2005. As of December 2005, the investigation was still in 

progress. 

According to NRC on-site representatives, completing these e-mail reviews 

will be challenging because DOE now has to screen millions of e-mails to 

ensure that records were not falsified. Further, many of these e-mails were 

written by employees who no longer work at the project or may be 

deceased, making it difficult to learn their true meaning and context. 

Moreover, if additional e-mails are found that raise quality assurance 

concerns, DOE may have to initiate further review, inspections, or rework 

to address the newfound problems. NRC officials stated that it takes the 

issue of potentially falsified documents by USGS employees very seriously, 

wants a full understanding of the situation regarding the USGS e-mails, and 

will conduct follow-up in this area. Because NRC wants DOE to submit a 

high-quality license application, it has encouraged DOE to take the time 

and actions necessary to fully and adequately resolve these and other 

quality assurance issues.

Immediately following the discovery of the USGS e-mails, DOE undertook 

a scientific investigation into the technical documents created by USGS 

personnel. In October 2005, DOE began developing an action plan for 

reviewing, validating, augmenting, and replacing USGS work products that 

had come under scrutiny. Although the plan is not yet complete, the Acting 

Director told us that the license application would not be submitted until 

the USGS work is replaced and there is confidence that all requirements 

have been met. In an effort to ensure that the scientific work underlying 

water infiltration modeling is accurate, DOE is working to corroborate the 

original work by engaging multiple agencies and organizations to rework 

the models. For example, DOE has (1) had its lead project contractor work 

with the Idaho National Laboratories to extensively review the software 

and data used in the original science work, (2) engaged Sandia National 

Laboratories to rework the model and calculations using different software 

than was used originally, and (3) also asked USGS to rework the models. 

Consequently, when this additional rework is completed, DOE will have 

four sets of analysis (including the original scientific work) with which they 

can evaluate, compare, and corroborate results. DOE will then pick one set 

of scientific analysis for inclusion in the license application, and work to 

explain and defend its choice.
Page 36 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Ongoing Design and 

Requirements Management 

Issues Could Delay DOE’s 

Submission of the License 

Application 

In October 2005, DOE announced significant changes to the design of the 

Yucca Mountain repository to simplify the project and improve its safety 

and operation. However, these changes will also require additional design 

and engineering work that will add uncertainty about the timing of the 

submission of a license application. DOE had been considering a design 

where radioactive waste would be shipped to the Yucca Mountain site, 

removed from its shipping container, placed and sealed in a special 

disposal container, and finally moved into the underground repository. As a 

result, DOE contemplated handling the waste up to four separate times. In 

late 2003, DOE engineers began identifying potential safety problems with 

this approach. First, possible fissures or holes in the cladding surrounding 

the spent nuclear fuel accidentally caused during the handling of the waste 

could cause air to mix with the fuel and oxidize. Consequently, this 

radioactive oxidized material could then leak and be dispersed into the air. 

Second, DOE engineers determined that the original facility design would 

not be able to adequately control the levels of radioactivity in the buildings 

where the waste would be repackaged before being moved in the 

repository. To address these problems, DOE researched a series of options, 

including only accepting radioactive waste that had already decayed to the 

point where oxidization would not be problematic, and testing the waste 

shipments for oxidization and treating them at another site before they 

arrived at the repository. In addition, DOE also considered changing the 

design by filling the processing buildings with inert gas to prevent 

oxidization and revising the electrical and ventilation systems. According 

to a DOE official, these options were impractical or added complexity to 

the design.

However, in October 2005, DOE proposed a new design that relies on 

uniform canisters that would be filled and sealed before being shipped, 

eliminating the need for direct handling of the waste prior to being placed 

in the repository. As a result, DOE will not have to construct several 

extremely large buildings costing millions of dollars for handling 

radioactive waste. DOE believes this change will improve the safety, 

operation, and long-term performance of the repository. However, this 

change will also pose a challenge to the project because of the widespread 

implications and the unknown time and effort required to implement it. For 

example, to implement the new design, DOE will need to, among other 

things,
Page 37 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

• get approval from the Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board17 for 

a new project plan, which, among other things, includes details on the 

conceptual design, cost estimates, risk management efforts, and 

acquisition strategies;

• plan, design, and produce standardized canisters for the transportation 

of waste;

• coordinate this new approach with commercial nuclear power plants, 

NRC, and government organizations that plan on shipping waste to the 

project; and

• revise procurement and contracting plans to support the new design.

Finally, DOE will need to perform the detailed design and engineering work 

required to implement the new design, and create new technical 

documents to support the license application. However, before it can 

present its new plans and perform this design and engineering work, DOE 

officials have stated that it will need to resolve long-standing quality 

assurance problems involving requirements management. Requirements 

management is the process that ensures the broad plans and regulatory 

requirements affecting the project are tracked and incorporated into 

specific engineering details. According to DOE’s root cause analyses, lowlevel documents were appropriately updated and revised to reflect highlevel design changes through fiscal year 1995. However, from 1995 through 

2002, many of these design documents were not adequately maintained and 

updated to reflect current designs and requirements. Further, a document 

that is a major component of the project’s requirements management 

process was revised in July 2002, but has never been finalized or approved. 

Instead, the project envisioned a transition to a new requirements 

management system after the planned submission of the license 

application in December 2004. However, for various reasons, the license 

application was not submitted at that time, and the transition to a new 

requirements management system was never implemented. As a result, the 

document refers to the out-of-date NRC regulations contained in 10 CFR 

part 60, and not the regulations in 10 CFR part 63 that were finalized in 

October 2002.

17The Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board is a special organization within DOE that 

advises the Secretary in approving and revising plans for major acquisition projects.
Page 38 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

The scope and cause of requirements management problems have been 

identified in multiple DOE and NRC reviews. 

• Multiple condition reports issued in 2004 and 2005 have identified 

problems with requirements management. Due to these condition 

reports and NRC concerns that repetitive deficiencies and the failure to 

implement timely corrective actions could have direct implications on 

the quality of the planned license application, NRC performed a review 

of Corrective Action Program documents related to the requirements 

management program in the late summer of 2005. NRC determined that 

these reports identified approximately 35 deficiencies related to 

requirements management. Because the requirements management 

documents are not current and the new requirements management 

system has not been implemented, NRC concluded that there does not 

appear to be a requirements management mechanism in place. Further, 

based on the number of reports and other issues identified by DOE 

audits, NRC concluded that the project’s Corrective Action Program was 

not effective in, among other things, eliminating the repeated 

identification of deficiencies relating to requirements management or 

initiating the actions to identify and appropriately address the root 

cause of these problems.

• In September 2005, DOE began reviewing the root causes associated 

with CR-6278, a condition report identifying problems with 

requirements management. As part of the review, DOE personnel 

analyzed 135 condition reports and other events and allegations. Among 

other things, this review found that DOE expectations for requirements 

management were diluted and eventually neglected, that DOE reduced 

funding for requirements management due to reductions in its annual 

budget, and that these and other events caused the requirements 

management process to become “completely dysfunctional” from July 

2002 to the time of the review in the fall of 2005. The analysis identified 

the root causes of these conditions as DOE’s failure to fund, maintain, 

and rigidly apply a requirements management system.

• In November 2005, a team of DOE personnel concluded an investigation 

into an employee’s concerns regarding requirements management. The 

team substantiated all of the concerns they investigated and found 

instances of failures and breakdowns in the requirements management 

process. For example, among other things, the team found that no 

procedure was developed to describe how requirements management 

was to occur; some existing requirements management procedures were 
Page 39 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

not implemented; and project management was aware of these 

conditions but corrective actions were deferred because the planned 

requirements management system was expected to address the 

problem. As a contributing factor, the team also observed that the 

project’s lead contractor had not implemented a “traditional systems 

engineering approach” as it did not have, among other things, typical 

engineering management plans or a separate systems engineering 

organization responsible for requirements management. As a result of 

the investigation, the team initiated 14 condition reports, 13 of which 

identified quality-related problems. 

To address these problems, on December 19, 2005, DOE issued a stop-work 

order on design and engineering for the surface facility and certain other 

technical work. DOE stated that the root cause analysis for CR 6278 and 

the investigation into employee concerns revealed that the project has not 

maintained or properly implemented its requirements management system, 

resulting in inadequacies in the design control process. This stop-work 

order will be in effect until, among other things, the project’s lead 

contractor improves the requirements management system; validates that 

processes exist and are being followed; and requirements are appropriately 

traced to implementing mechanisms and products. Further, DOE will 

establish a team to take other actions necessary to prevent inadequacies in 

requirements management and other management systems from recurring.

An example of the potential risks of a breakdown with requirements 

management was noted during a BSC audit on the design process in March 

2005. NRC on-site representatives observing this audit reported that the 

audit team noted problems with inconsistencies between the design 

documents of the planned fuel-handing facility that would be receiving, 

preparing, and packaging the waste before it is placed in the repository. 

The original set of requirements specified that no water from a fire 

protection system was to be used in the fuel-handling areas of the facility 

because under certain scenarios, water used for fire suppression could 

facilitate an accidental nuclear reaction, a condition known as criticality. 

Later, as the project began to review the design of the fuel-handling facility, 

the design was changed to allow the use of water sprinklers in the fuelhandling areas of the facility to suppress possible fires. NRC noted that 

personnel working on the design knew of the inconsistencies between 

older and newer design documents, but no formal tracking mechanism had 

been provided to ensure that those issues were rectified. According to an 

NRC on-site representative in December 2005, this was an example of a 

concern with requirements management, and that repetitive and 
Page 40 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

uncorrected issues associated with the requirements management process 

could have direct implications on the quality of the license application.

While the project may be able to resolve these inconsistencies through an 

informal process, the lack of a formal design control and requirements 

management process increases the risk that not all such problems will be 

addressed. These requirements management problems are potentially 

significant because if the high-level engineering needs of the project are not 

accurately or completely reflected in the detailed design, then the quality of 

the license application may be compromised and cause delays in the 

license application review process. For example, according to a 1989 

speech prepared by NRC’s Office of General Counsel stressing the 

importance of quality assurance, a West Coast nuclear power plant 

experienced similar quality assurance problems with requirements 

management. After a license was issued by NRC, power plant personnel 

discovered that the wrong diagrams were used to develop design 

requirements. As a result of this and other quality assurance weaknesses 

identified by NRC, the license was suspended and the power plant was 

required to initiate an independent program to verify the correctness of the 

design. Further, NRC reopened hearings on the issue of the adequacy of the 

power plant’s quality assurance program related to the plant’s design. 

DOE Faces Challenges in 

Managing the Transition, 

Complexity, and Continuity 

of Its ‘New Path Forward’

In October 2005, DOE announced a “new path forward” that would create a 

new project schedule and financial plan to address the completion of 

scientific and engineering work in support of a license application. 

However, DOE faces challenges to successfully implementing the new 

path, in terms of managing the transition, program and organizational 

complexities, and the continuity of management. According to DOE 

managers involved with planning the new path forward, the organizational 

transition could take several months to complete. It is too early to 

determine whether DOE’s new effort will resolve quality assurance issues 

and move the project forward to the submission of a license application.

Accountability for quality and results, which was identified as a significant 

transition issue in the Initiatives, will likely pose a challenge for managing 

the transition to the new path forward. The Initiatives sought to clarify 

roles and responsibilities within and between DOE and contractor 

organizations to ensure clear accountability for results and quality during 

the transition from OCRWM’s organization, processes, procedures, and 

skills supporting scientific studies to those supporting the activities 

necessary to license a repository. As the project realigns organizations, 
Page 41 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

processes, procedures, and skills to support the new path forward, it will 

also be faced with the challenge of ensuring that accountability is not 

undermined during the transition. For instance, according one DOE 

manager, transitioning project work to a lead laboratory under a direct 

contract with DOE could pose a significant challenge for quality assurance 

because the laboratories are currently working under BSC quality 

assurance procedures and will now have to develop their own procedures.

Implicitly recognizing the importance of accountability issues, elements of 

the new path forward seek to address issues that can negatively affect 

quality assurance and project management in general. For instance, the 

new path includes plans for developing and transmitting requirements to 

USGS for the certification of scientific work. In addition, a senior project 

official told us that the lead laboratory would provide a single point of 

accountability that will enhance the quality of the science work. The Acting 

Director indicated that OCRWM’s management structure may have to be 

reorganized to have a single manager clearly accountable for each of the 

new path’s major tasks in science, engineering, and licensing. Moreover, the 

project is developing new performance indicators to allow the project to 

assess important activities under the new path forward. Outside of the new 

path, as the result of a September 2005 DOE Inspector General report18 on 

accountability problems with managing contract incentives, OCRWM 

agreed to develop a comprehensive corrective action plan to provide 

clearer and more objective performance standards in the BSC contract. 

Program complexity and other project characteristics are also likely to 

pose challenges to managing quality assurance. Based on its experience 

with licensing and regulating nuclear power plants, NRC observed in the 

mid-1980s that the Yucca Mountain project’s characteristics, such as a large 

and complicated program, increased the likelihood of major quality-related 

problems. Although the new path is intended to simplify design, licensing, 

and construction, the project remains a complicated program that seeks to 

both restore confidence in its scientific studies and pursue new design and 

engineering activities. As a result, the project has to manage quality 

assurance issues simultaneously in both areas. Moreover, the project 

involves a complicated organizational structure. The project will continue 

contracting work with BSC, USGS, and the Sandia National Laboratory, 

18U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Inspector General, Office of Audit Services, DOE/IG0702, Use of Performance Based Incentives by the Office of Civilian Waste Management

(Washington, D.C., September 2005).
Page 42 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

which involves working with organizations in various locations. In our 1988 

report, we noted that the geographic distance between the various 

organizations may hamper OCRWM’s quality assurance communication 

and oversight objectives.

The project also faces management challenges related to ensuring 

management continuity at the project, since DOE has experienced turnover 

in 9 of 17 key management positions since 2001. To ensure the right 

managers move the project forward to licensing, the project has a 

recruitment effort for replacing key departing managers. In the past year, 

the project has lost key managers through the departures of the director of 

Project Management and Engineering, the director of the License 

Application and Strategy, the director of Quality Assurance, and the 

contractor’s general manager. According to NRC on-site representatives in 

August and October 2005, management turnover is a concern for NRC 

because it would like to see continuity of qualified managers rather than a 

series of acting managers. Recruiting replacement managers can impact 

project continuity, and newly acting managers may not take full rein of 

project tasks. However, the Acting Director told us that the recruitment 

process is an opportunity to improve project managers and staff, but 

recruiting the right people is challenging for various reasons—for example, 

government salaries are less than those in industry, and employment 

clauses restrict subsequent employment in related industries.

Finally, since new directors sometimes give new direction to the project, a 

critical issue for sustaining the current new path forward is continuity with 

OCRWM’s director. This position was occupied by three individuals 

between late 1999 and early 2005. The last OCRWM director assumed the 

position in April 2002, started the Management Improvement Initiatives in 

2002, and left the position in February 2005. The current Acting Director 

began functioning in his position in the summer of 2005, and initiated the 

new path forward in October 2005. DOE is currently awaiting 

congressional confirmation of a nominee to take the director position. 

However, the Acting Director told us he expects that the new path forward 

will be sustained because it has been endorsed by the Secretary of Energy.

Conclusions DOE’s Yucca Mountain project has been wrestling with quality assurance 

problems for a long time. Now, after more than 20 years of project work, 

DOE is again faced with substantial quality assurance and other challenges 

to submit a fully defensible license application to NRC. Unless these 

challenges are effectively addressed, further delays on the project are 
Page 43 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

likely. Furthermore, even as DOE faces new quality assurance challenges, it 

cannot be certain it has resolved past problems, largely because the 

department has not been well served by management tools—specifically, 

its performance indicators and trend evaluation reports—that have not 

effectively identified and tracked progress on significant and recurring 

problems. First, the management tools have provided limited coverage of 

the areas of concern identified in the Management Improvement Initiatives 

and thus have not enabled DOE managers to effectively monitor progress 

in these important areas. Second, the tools have often not reflected the full 

extent or significance of problems because their scope has been limited 

and not based on projectwide analysis. Third, the trend evaluation reports 

have, at times, not accurately characterized problems because reliable and 

complete data and appropriate performance benchmarks were not 

available at the time of analysis. Fourth, frequent changes in performance 

indicators and the way analysis is done have made it difficult to accurately 

identify trends over time. Fifth, the tools’ rating categories have sometimes 

been misleading as to the significance of problems because the ratings tend 

to be skewed by the fact that corrective actions were already being taken, 

without considering their effectiveness or considering the significance of 

the problem on its own terms. These shortcomings with the tools limit 

project managers’ ability to direct and oversee such a large and complex 

undertaking as constructing an underground repository for nuclear wastes. 

Further complicating DOE’s ability to manage the project are the vacancies 

in key managerial positions for the quality assurance program and 

elsewhere on the project. The tools become even more important for new 

managers who need to quickly understand project management issues. 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

To improve the effectiveness of DOE’s efforts to monitor performance in 

key areas at the Yucca Mountain project, including quality assurance, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Energy direct the Director, Office of 

Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, to take the following five actions 

to strengthen the project’s management tools: 

• Reassess the coverage that the management tools provide for the areas 

of concern identified in the Management Improvement Initiatives and 

ensure that performance in these important areas is effectively 

monitored, especially in light of the more recent condition reports and 

associated cause analyses, trend reports, and other reviews indicating 

continuing problems. 
Page 44 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

• Base future management tools, such as the trend evaluation reports, on 

projectwide analysis of problems, unless there are compelling reasons 

for a lesser scope.

• Establish quality guidelines for trend evaluation reports to ensure sound 

analysis when reporting problems for management’s attention. Such 

guidelines should address, among other things, having reliable and 

complete data and appropriate benchmarks.

• To the extent practicable, make analyses and indicators of performance 

consistent over time so that trends or progress can be accurately 

identified and, where changes to analyses or indicators are made for 

compelling reasons, provide a clear history of the changes and their 

impact on measuring progress.

• Focus the management tools’ rating categories on the significance of the 

monitored condition, not on a judgment of the need for management 

action.

Agency Comments We provided DOE and NRC with draft copies of this report for their review 

and comment. In oral comments, DOE agreed with our recommendations 

and provided technical and editorial comments that we have incorporated 

in the report, as appropriate. We also incorporated, as appropriate, NRC’s 

oral editorial comments, which primarily served to clarify its role.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of 

this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the 

report date. At that time, we will send copies to interested congressional 

committees and Members of Congress, the Secretary of Energy, and the 

Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We will also make copies 

available to others upon request. In addition, the report will be available at 

no charge on the GAO Web site at www.gao.gov.
Page 45 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me 

at (202) 512-3841 or wellsj@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of 

Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page 

of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are 

listed in appendix III. 

Sincerely yours,

Jim Wells

Director, Natural Resources

and Environment
Page 46 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Appendix I

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology AAppenednxidexiIs

The objectives of this review were to determine (1) the history of the Yucca 

Mountain project’s quality assurance problems since the project’s start in 

the 1980s, (2) the Department of Energy’s (DOE) tracking of quality 

problems and progress implementing quality assurance requirements since 

our April 2004 report, and (3) challenges that DOE faces as it continues to 

address quality assurance issues within the project. In addition, we were 

asked to provide information about implementation of the project’s 

Employee Concerns Program and the types of concerns raised in recent 

years through the program. 

To determine the history of the project’s quality assurance problems, we 

reviewed our prior reports and those of DOE’s Office of the Inspector 

General concerning the Yucca Mountain project. We also reviewed internal 

DOE evaluations and audit reports written about the quality assurance 

program and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reports and NRCprepared summaries of NRC and DOE quarterly management meetings, 

technical exchange meetings, and quality assurance meetings dating to 

early 2004. In addition, we reviewed letters and communications between 

DOE and NRC regarding quality assurance from the NRC Web archives 

from the late 1980s. Furthermore, we reviewed plans for the Regulatory 

Integration Team (RIT) and subsequent correspondence between 

Bechtel/SAIC Company, LLC (BSC), DOE’s management contractor for the 

Yucca Mountain project, and DOE. Moreover, we discussed quality 

assurance issues with officials of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive 

Waste Management (OCRWM), including the Acting Director and Deputy 

Director, at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at its field office in 

Las Vegas. In addition, we interviewed representatives of Navarro Quality 

Services, a DOE subcontractor, as well as BSC, and NRC officials in the 

agency’s field office in Las Vegas, Nevada, and at its headquarters in 

Rockville, Maryland. 

To determine DOE’s tracking of quality problems and progress 

implementing quality assurance requirements since our April 2004 report, 

we interviewed OCRWM, BSC, and NRC officials about the status of these 

efforts since the issuance of our prior report. We also reviewed DOE’s 

Management Improvement Initiatives (2002), DOE’s Management 

Improvement Initiatives Transition Approach (2003), and our 2004 report to 

understand the history of the improvement efforts. To understand DOE’s 

management tools to monitor problems and progress, we reviewed the 

available performance indicators panels from April 2004 through August 

2005, when it was last produced; the documentation on the individual 

indicators applied to August 2005 data; and the quarterly trend reports from 
Appendix I

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Page 47 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2003 through the fourth quarter of fiscal 

year 2005. We also reviewed information from condition reports and 

examined documentation on DOE’s Quality Assurance Requirements and 

Description (issued in August 2004), BSC’s Trend Evaluation and 

Reporting, and DOE’s Procedure: Condition Reporting and Resolution 

(issued in November 2005). 

To determine challenges that DOE faces as it continues to address quality 

assurance issues within the project, we reviewed information from 

condition reports, NRC on-site representative reports, DOE Inspector 

General reports, and an OCRWM Office of Concerns Program’s 

investigative report on past quality assurance problems and DOE’s efforts 

to address them. We obtained information on turnover in key management 

positions at DOE and BSC since 2000. In addition, we discussed with DOE 

and NRC officials DOE’s difficulties in addressing recurring quality 

assurance problems and the quality assurance implications of the Yucca 

Mountain project moving from the site characterization phase to design 

and licensing. Also, to better understand issues and challenges, we 

attended quarterly meetings held between DOE and NRC in Rockville in 

September 2005 and Las Vegas in December 2005. 

To identify recent employee concerns related to quality assurance, such as 

falsification of records and a safety-conscious work environment, as well 

as to identify the actions taken to address those concerns, we reviewed all 

concerns received by the OCRWM and BSC Employee Concerns Programs 

from January through November 2005. For the OCRWM program, we 

reviewed all employee concerns files to identify concerns related to quality 

assurance. For the BSC program, we first read summary descriptions of 

each concerns file, and reviewed the concerns files for only those we 

identified as related to quality assurance. We then conducted a content 

analysis of all concerns files that we reviewed. Next, our three team 

members reached consensus about the correct classification of a concern 

as a quality assurance problem, such as potential falsification of records. 

Finally, through a second review of concerns files, we verified our recorded 

information for those concerns that seemed to be important illustrations of 

problems. In addition, we also spot-checked a sample of OCRWM and BSC 

concerns received in 2005 to verify the accuracy of their placement in 

various concerns categories. We found that the concerns were generally 

categorized accurately.

We performed our work from July 2005 through January 2006 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Page 48 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs ApendxiI

NRC expects licensees to establish a safety conscious work environment—

that is, one in which (1) employees are encouraged to raise concerns either 

to their own management or to NRC without fear of retaliation and (2) 

employees’ concerns are resolved in a timely and appropriate manner 

according to their importance. NRC encourages but does not require 

licensees to establish employee concerns programs to help achieve such a 

work environment, and both DOE and BSC have established such 

programs.1

 DOE’s Employee Concerns Program is currently operated under 

the requirements of DOE Order 442.1A, but the department, in anticipation 

of becoming a licensee, is in the process of establishing the program to 

meet NRC expectations. 

DOE and contractor employees at the Yucca Mountain project may raise 

concerns about quality, safety, or other work environment issues—such as 

harassment, intimidation, retaliation, and discrimination—through various 

means. Employees are encouraged to resolve concerns at the lowest 

possible level in the organization, in the following order:

• Use normal supervisory channels, such as by raising an issue to a 

manager for resolution.

• Initiate a condition report through the Corrective Action Program—a 

process in which any employee can formally identify a problem on the 

project, such as with policies, procedures, or the work environment, and 

have the issue investigated and, if necessary, fixed through corrective 

actions. 

• Submit a concern via e-mail, telephone, or in person to one of the 

project’s two Employee Concerns Programs—a BSC program for BSC 

employees and other subcontractors and another run by DOE for either 

DOE or BSC employees. 

• Contact NRC directly.

The DOE and BSC concerns programs are intended to supplement rather 

than replace the resolution of problems through managers or the 

Corrective Action Program.

1

The discussion in this report involves the DOE OCRWM office in Las Vegas, Nevada and not 

the separately operated office in OCRWM headquarters in Washington, D.C. The DOE 

employee concerns program oversees BSC’s program.
Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs

Page 49 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

DOE and BSC Employee Concerns Programs have each established a 

communication network to allow employees to register concerns. These 

networks include brochures and regular newsletters on the programs and 

numerous links to the program on the project’s intranet, where employees 

can obtain concerns forms. Both the DOE and BSC concerns programs of 

the Yucca Mountain project have four main steps:

1. Employees notify the concerns program staff about issues that they feel 

should be corrected, such as safety or health issues; harassment, 

intimidation, retaliation, or discrimination; concerns raised through the 

Corrective Action Program; and quality assurance problems.

2. The concerns program staff document and handle the concern in 

accordance with the requirements of DOE Order 442.1A.

3. The concerns program notifies the employees of the results of the 

investigation and notifies management of any deficiencies. 

4. Project management develops corrective actions for deficiencies, and 

the program validates that the concerns have been effectively 

addressed by the actions.

Under DOE Order 442.1A, concerns may be addressed through an 

investigation by the concerns program staff, an independent investigation, 

a referral, a transfer, or a dismissal of the concern. Employees can request 

or waive confidentiality. If a concern is submitted anonymously, 

interpreting the main issues and problems is left up to the concerns 

program staff, and action on the concern may be limited if the submitted 

information does not clearly or sufficiently define the concern.

The concerns program may conduct its own investigation of the concern. 

Alternatively, it may refer the concern to another project organization for 

investigation or resolution. After the results of the investigation or 

resolution are reported to the concerns program within a specified period, 

the concerns program accepts the results or requires additional actions. In 

other cases, concerns may be transferred to another organization with the 

appropriate subject matter responsibility or expertise, such as the Office of 

Human Relations, Office of General Counsel, or Office of the Inspector 

General.

After investigating a concern, the concerns programs determines whether 

the concern is substantiated, partially substantiated, unsubstantiated, or 
Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs

Page 50 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

indeterminate. If a concern is substantiated or partially substantiated, the 

investigation results are presented to the responsible senior managers. A 

concern is considered indeterminate when evidence is insufficient to 

substantiate a concern or allow for a conclusion to be drawn. Some 

concerns can be resolved through a noninvestigative resolution, a method 

to address concerns promptly when minimal effort is required for 

resolution. Some resolutions involve the development of management 

corrective action plans that are tracked until they are closed. In addition, 

for deficiencies that identify systemic problems, the concerns programs 

may file a condition report through the Corrective Action Program. 

Moreover, DOE and contractor employees are required to report certain 

conditions or alleged conditions to DOE’s Office of the Inspector General 

under DOE Order 221.1, which covers waste, fraud, and abuse. The 

concerns program handles some employee concerns in this way. 

From January through November 2005, DOE’s concerns program opened 

139 employee concerns for investigation, and the BSC concerns program 

opened 112 concerns for investigation.2

 DOE’s concerns program places 

concerns into 14 categories, while the BSC program uses 20 categories.3

For both DOE and BSC, the category receiving by far the most concerns for 

calendar year 2005 was management: “management/mismanagement” for 

DOE and “management practices” for BSC. According to DOE, 

management concerns generally involved conditions related to 

management behavior, policy practice, budget allocation, or use of 

resources. According to the manager of BSC’s program, about half of the 

concerns in the management practices category involve hiring and human 

relations issues and the other half involve organizational policies and other 

issues. The “quality” category accounts for a relatively small portion of 

total concerns—18 percent of concerns for the DOE program and 4 percent 

for the BSC program. Tables 3 and 4 show the concerns received by the 

DOE and BSC programs for January through November 2005. 

2

The number of concerns opened for investigation by BSC includes referrals from DOE. 

Both organizations track disposition of these concerns and include them in their totals. 

According to the manager of the BSC Employee Concerns Program, about one-fourth of 

BSC’s concerns are DOE referrals. 

3

We reviewed all of the concerns submitted to DOE and BSC from January 2004 through 

November 2005 for their relevance to quality assurance issues. Although we did not verify 

the accuracy of DOE’s and BSC’s placement of all concerns into the above categories, we 

spot-checked a sample of DOE and BSC concerns and found that they were generally 

categorized accurately. 
Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs

Page 51 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Table 3: Employee Concerns Opened for Investigation under DOE’s Employee 

Concerns Program by Category of Concern, January through November 2005

Source: DOE. 

Note: Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding.

Table 4: Employee Concerns Opened for Investigation under BSC’s Employee 

Concerns Program by Category of Concern, January through November 2005

Concern category Percentage of total concerns

Management/mismanagement 42

Workplace violence 0

Harassment, intimidation, retaliation, and 

discrimination 6

Reprisal 0

Chilling effect 5

Security 0

Health 0

Safety 4

Environment 0

Fraud, waste and abuse 4

Human resources 12

Equal Employment Opportunity 2

Quality 18

Other 8

Total 100

Concern category Percentage of total concerns

Management practices 48

Industrial 1

Health 4

Fraud 3

Fitness for duty 1

Ethics 5

Cyber 0

Access authorization 0

Environmental 1

Employee relations 5

Intimidation 1
Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs

Page 52 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Source: BSC.

Note: Percentages may not add to 100 because of rounding. 

The Employee Concerns Programs, which are designed to provide an 

alternative to raising issues through the Corrective Action Program and 

issuing condition reports, have been playing an active and sometimes key 

role in identifying and addressing quality assurance problems, as can be 

seen in the following examples: 

• As part of an effort to identify e-mails relevant to the licensing process 

and that therefore should be included in the Licensing Support Network, 

BSC employees in late 2004 discovered e-mails suggesting potential 

falsification of technical records. The e-mails were submitted to the 

Employee Concerns Program in March 2005 and were eventually 

reported to the DOE Inspector General for investigation. The quality 

assurance issues raised by the e-mails have resulted in a substantial 

effort by DOE to restore confidence in the quality of technical 

documents that will support its license application to construct the 

repository.

• In mid-2005, the DOE concerns program referred to the project’s senior 

management an employee’s allegation that the project’s schedule was 

taking priority over quality in the review of technical documents. In this 

instance, the Office of Concerns Program Manager negotiated with 

senior management to address the time and resource needs for ensuring 

quality assurance, rather than simply communicating to the organization 

that quality should take priority over the schedule.

• As the result of an employee’s concerns referred to DOE by NRC in mid2005, the Employee Concerns Program initiated an extensive 

Harassment 0

Discrimination 4

Chilling effect 4

Abuse 4

Training 1

Safety-conscious work environment 3

Retaliation 4

Quality 4

Other 6

Total 100

(Continued From Previous Page)

Concern category Percentage of total concerns
Appendix II

Yucca Mountain Project Employee Concerns 

Programs

Page 53 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

investigation of issues related to requirements management. That 

investigation substantiated the employee’s concerns and led to the 

issuance of 14 condition reports for problem resolution. Signifying the 

importance of this issue, DOE discussed problems with requirements 

management with NRC at their quarterly meeting in December 2005. 

The Employee Concerns Programs’ role in identifying and addressing 

quality assurance and other issues is dependent upon employees’ 

willingness to submit concerns, but the employees’ willingness has 

sometimes been in doubt. A late 2004 DOE survey of project employees 

indicated, for example, that less than two-thirds of employees were 

confident that submitted concerns would be thoroughly investigated and 

appropriately resolved. DOE recognizes the need to improve employee 

trust and willingness to use the concerns program, and both the DOE and 

BSC program are engaged in outreach efforts. However, employees’ 

willingness to submit concerns may be affected by factors outside the 

programs’ control. According to a DOE manager, the project’s recent and 

pending workforce reductions may account for a decreasing number of 

concerns submitted to the DOE program in late 2005. Based on OCRWM 

Employee Concerns Program data, the program averaged about 13 

concerns a month from January through November 2005. However, the 

number of monthly concerns dropped to 5 in October and 3 in November 

2005. 

During our review of concerns opened for investigation from January 2004 

through November 2005, we did not identify any concerns alleging 

problems similar to the falsification of technical records suggested by the 

USGS e-mails. Although we found records of an early 2004 concern about 

an instance of inappropriate management of a technical document, this 

instance was resolved and did not appear to be an intentional or systematic 

effort to falsify records. The manager of the BSC program told us of a 

concern raised about another set of e-mails, but this concern was not about 

record falsification. The manager of the DOE program told us that she had 

not seen any reportable allegations of falsification of technical records 

since she took her position in July 2004. 
Page 54 GAO-06-313 Yucca Mountain Project

Appendix III

GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments ApendxiI

GAO Contact Jim Wells, (202) 512-3841 or wellsj@gao.gov

Staff 

Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact named above, Raymond Smith (Assistant 

Director), Casey Brown, John Delicath, James Espinoza, and Terry Hanford 

made key contributions to this report.

(360611)
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