Report to Congressional Requesters

United States General Accounting Office

GAO

May 2001 NUCLEAR WASTE

Agreement Among

Agencies Responsible

for the West Valley

Site Is Critically

Needed

GAO-01-314
Page i GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Letter 1

Results in Brief 2

Background 5

High-Level Waste Vitrification Is Nearing Completion, but Other

Major Work Remains 12

Several Factors Are Hindering Progress on the West Valley

Cleanup 17

West Valley’s Total Cleanup Costs and Schedule Cannot Be

Estimated With Reasonable Certainty Until the Future of the Site

Is Agreed On 31

West Valley Reflects DOE-Wide Cleanup Dilemmas and Has

Implications for National Decisions on Nuclear Waste Disposal 35

Conclusions 40

Matters for Congressional Consideration 41

Recommendations for Executive Action 41

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 42

Appendix I Scope and Methodology 44

Appendix II West Valley Time Line 46

Appendix III Comments From the Department of Energy 47

Appendix IV Comments From New York State 51

Appendix V Comments From the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 54

Tables

Table 1: Changes in Estimated Total West Valley Cleanup Costs

and Completion Schedule 32

Contents
Page ii GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Figures

Figure 1: Aerial View of the West Valley Site During DOE

Operations 6

Figure 2: A Trench in the State-Licensed Disposal Area During Past

Operations 9

Figure 3: West Valley Nuclear Waste Vitrification and Storage 11

Abbreviations

DOE Department of Energy

EIS environmental impact statement

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

GAO General Accounting Office

NEPA National Environmental Policy Act

NRC National Regulatory Commission

WIPP Waste Isolation Pilot Project
Page 1 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

May 11, 2001

The Honorable Sherwood L. Boehlert

Chairman, Committee on Science

House of Representatives

The Honorable W.J. (Billy) Tauzin

Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce

House of Representatives

The West Valley nuclear facility, in western New York State, was built in

the 1960s to convert spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors into

reusable nuclear fuel—an industrial process referred to as reprocessing.

The facility was part of the nation’s post-World War II effort to harness

nuclear energy for commercial power generation. Specifically, the facility

was intended to reprocess spent fuel in order to help meet expected

commercial demand for nuclear power. New York State, as the owner of

the site, and the Atomic Energy Commission—the predecessor of both the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy

(DOE)—jointly promoted the venture. However, the timing of the venture

was inopportune because the market for reprocessed nuclear fuel was

limited and because new, more restrictive health and safety standards

raised concerns about the facility. These factors contributed to its

permanent shutdown in the 1970s. Also during the 1970s, U.S. policies

intended to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation ran counter to the

concept of commercial reprocessing because reprocessed nuclear fuel can

be used to make nuclear weapons. With West Valley’s shutdown, spent

fuel, liquid high-level wastes, and other nuclear contamination at the

facility had to be cleaned up. To facilitate the cleanup, especially the

solidification of the liquid high-level wastes, the Congress enacted the

West Valley Demonstration Project Act in 1980, which brought DOE to

West Valley to carry out cleanup activities.

DOE originally estimated that the cleanup effort could be completed by

about 1990. Over the years, DOE has developed varied and increasing

estimates of the West Valley cleanup’s total costs and completion time.

Concerned about these changing estimates, you asked us to examine the

overall status of the effort and the causes and implications of any

problems that may be occurring. Specifically, as agreed with your offices,

we examined (1) the status of the cleanup, (2) factors that may be

United States General Accounting Office

Washington, DC 20548
Page 2 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

hindering the cleanup, (3) the degree of certainty in the Department’s

estimates of total cleanup costs and schedule, and (4) the degree to which

the West Valley cleanup may reflect, or have implications for, larger

cleanup challenges facing DOE and the nation. To compare DOE’s cost

estimates, which have been made at different times since 1978, we

converted the estimates to year-2000 present value dollars. See appendix I

for our detailed scope and methodology.

DOE has almost completed solidifying the high-level wastes at West

Valley, but major additional cleanup work remains. Since 1982, DOE has

conducted a technologically challenging, first-of-a-kind industrial process

to stabilize the liquid, high-level wastes left on-site—a process called

vitrification. To date, this process has emptied West Valley’s four on-site,

underground, high-level waste storage tanks of over 99 percent of their

long-lived radioactivity. The vitrification work, which represents the first

phase of the cleanup, is expected to be completed in September 2002, and

has enhanced the site’s environmental, safety, and health status.

Furthermore, as indicated by our examination of environmental and safety

data for West Valley and the views of interested parties, DOE has generally

operated the facility safely. Work on the overall cleanup, however, is not

nearly complete. Major additional cleanup steps that must be taken

include decontaminating and decommissioning structures, remediating

soil and groundwater, and removing nuclear wastes stored and buried onsite. These and other steps could take up to four decades, with West Valley

cleanup costs totaling about $4.5 billion, according to DOE projections.

Several factors are hindering DOE’s attempts to clean up West Valley.

First, and most importantly, the Department and New York State, the

principal parties to the West Valley cleanup, still have not agreed on the

overall future of the site, particularly their future on-site roles and

responsibilities. Their differences reflect the fact that, historically, neither

the federal government nor the state has wanted to take full responsibility

for West Valley’s nuclear wastes. Their relationship is key to facilitating

the site cleanup and has been a factor in delayed environmental planning

milestones for West Valley. For example, in 1996, expecting that interested

parties could soon agree on the site’s future, DOE estimated that a record

of decision on cleaning up West Valley could be reached as early as 1997.

However, the latest estimate is 2005, at the earliest. Since 1999, DOE and

New York State have been attempting to resolve their differences through

confidential negotiations, but this effort broke down in January 2001

without an agreement. Second, NRC cleanup standards for West Valley—

referred to in the West Valley Act as decontamination and

decommissioning requirements—do not exist. These standards, which are

Results in Brief
Page 3 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

important regulatory criteria for determining the overall future of the site,

are expected to be issued in final form in 2001, perhaps in the spring.

However, as drafted, they differ from the Environmental Protection

Agency’s (EPA) guidance and standards implementing the Comprehensive

Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980

(CERCLA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act, which could also apply onsite. This situation could lead to costly, dual federal regulation of the site.

Third, cleanup planning has been limited by uncertainty about where West

Valley’s nuclear wastes are to go. Under the West Valley Act, the site’s

high-level wastes and transuranic wastes are to be removed off-site,1

 but

DOE and the state have not yet obtained access to permanent off-site

disposal for either of these types of waste. Hundreds of millions of dollars

in future costs could be at stake in these disposal questions, depending on

which options are chosen for storing and monitoring these wastes before

disposal. We are raising matters for congressional consideration and

making recommendations to DOE, NRC, and EPA to address these issues.

DOE’s estimates of the total costs and completion date for the West Valley

cleanup are uncertain because there has been no agreement on strategic

issues affecting the site—that is, the extent to which the site is to be

cleaned up and what it will then look like, how the land is to be used, and

what regulatory cleanup standards are to be used. Departmental estimates

in the 1990s have varied by billions of dollars, and the completion schedule

by decades, depending on the programmatic assumptions made. The

Department currently estimates the total cleanup costs at about $4.5

billion, with the effort taking an additional 40 years—including more than

two decades of major additional cleanup work, and additional time for

interim on-site storage of vitrified high-level wastes. This estimate is based

on a better understanding of the cleanup challenge than in 1978, when the

Department generated its initial estimate—$180 million, or $1.1 billion in

year-2000 dollars, with completion in about 10 years.2

 However, DOE’s

current estimate continues to be based on uncertain assumptions, such as

what will be done with various on-site wastes and when the wastes can be

shipped off-site. These uncertainties reflect an overall lack of agreement

 1

 Transuranic wastes are rags, tools, and other miscellaneous waste items containing traces

of radioactive elements with atomic numbers higher than uranium—principally plutonium.

2

 Among a range of cost estimates generated at the time by DOE, most interested parties,

including state and federal officials, considered the $180 million estimate, as well as a

startup date of about 1980, to be reasonable. Using an estimated 10-year cleanup timetable,

a completion date of about 1990 was indicated.
Page 4 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

on strategic issues related to directing the overall cleanup effort, including

cleanup standards, what the site will look like when the cleanup is done,

and how the wastes will be disposed of. Until such issues are resolved, any

estimates of the total costs and schedule for the West Valley cleanup could

change significantly.

The problems at West Valley reflect many of the same dilemmas DOE

faces with its complexwide nuclear cleanup effort. Moreover, DOE’s

planned approach at West Valley to deal with its underground high-level

waste storage tanks has potential implications for other DOE disposal

efforts. Specifically, West Valley is yet another example of how

complicated, uncertain, and subject to cost and schedule changes the

cleanup planning process can be at sites where (1) first-of-a-kind

technological cleanup challenges are being addressed; (2) major decisions

on strategic cleanup issues, including cleanup standards to be used, have

yet to be made; and (3) multiple types of contamination, laws and

regulations, and regulators are involved. As a result, at sites such as West

Valley, planners have difficulty estimating with a reasonable degree of

certainty cleanup projects’ overall costs and schedules. By extension,

because other, larger DOE sites, such as Savannah River, South Carolina,

and Hanford, Washington, also have less than fully defined cleanup goals

and land uses, DOE’s ability to quantify cleanup costs and timetables

across the entire nuclear complex is to some degree in question.

Furthermore, as the first DOE site projected to complete vitrification,

West Valley is a potential test case for a national decision on what do with

the over 200 underground storage tanks across the complex and the traces

of wastes left in them after high-level waste vitrification. Are these tanks

to be dug up, using a technology that is not yet available, and removed to

an as-yet-undetermined disposal location, or can they be safely entombed

in place and subjected to long-term stewardship? The Natural Resources

Defense Council is currently challenging in court DOE’s radioactive waste

management order, under which tank entombment could be implemented

at sites such as West Valley.

We provided a draft of this report to DOE, the New York State Energy

Research and Development Authority, NRC, and EPA for comment. DOE

found the report to be a credible assessment of West Valley issues, and

New York State concurred in the report’s conclusions. However, DOE and

New York State continued to differ on who should assume ultimate

responsibility at West Valley. Furthermore, DOE disagreed with our

recommendation on high-level waste disposal, citing the need for New

York State to enter into a disposal contract with the Department. We have

modified the wording of our recommendation to more clearly recognize
Page 5 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

that resolving the question of responsibility for the high-level wastes at

West Valley is part of any long-term solution regarding their disposal. NRC

and EPA provided technical clarifications only. All four agencies’ technical

clarifications were incorporated into the final report where appropriate.

The West Valley site, about 30 miles southeast of Buffalo, includes an

approximately 200-acre area of nuclear operations within a 3,300-acre area

owned by the state of New York. (See fig. 1.) The facility began

construction in 1963 as the first—and ultimately the only—commercial

spent fuel reprocessing plant to be operated in the United States. A firm

called Nuclear Fuel Services operated the plant, which reprocessed spent

fuel from 1966 to 1972. Regulated by the Atomic Energy Commission

(predecessor to NRC), the plant reprocessed approximately 640 metric

tons of spent nuclear fuel to recover usable uranium and plutonium. In

1972, the plant was shut down to meet regulatory changes, including more

stringent seismic criteria and worker safety requirements. In 1976, facing

rising estimates of the cost to modify the plant to meet the new safety

requirements, the operator announced its withdrawal from the business.

(A time line of historical and projected West Valley milestones is

presented in app. II.)

Background
Page 6 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Figure 1: Aerial View of the West Valley Site During DOE Operations

Source: DOE.

The commercial reprocessing era at West Valley left behind major

environmental, safety, and health risks from multiple types of nuclear

contamination at the site, including high-level wastes, radioactive buried
Page 7 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

wastes, and environmental contamination.3 Specific on-site radiation risks

that were generated then and still exist include the following:4

• The reprocessing building—significantly contaminated with strontium-90

and cesium-137 (both potentially carcinogenic radionuclides)—and four

adjacent single-shell underground storage tanks encased in concrete

vaults. These tanks originally contained about 600,000 gallons of liquid,

high-level wastes generated during reprocessing.5

• A 5-acre, NRC-licensed waste disposal area, used from 1966 to 1986. This

area contains several types of buried wastes resulting from the

reprocessing era, such as about a third of a cubic meter of spent fuel from

Hanford’s N-Reactor; this spent fuel was buried instead of being

reprocessed because the outer layer of a fuel assembly was ruptured.6

• A storage pool originally containing several hundred spent nuclear fuel

assemblies, and now containing 125 assemblies.

• Groundwater contamination under the reprocessing building, in the form

of a plume of strontium-90 that first developed during 1968 to 1971 and

was identified in 1994.

 3

 One safety problem noted was that some areas in the reprocessing building were designed

for direct, “contact” maintenance by workers, not for more modern remote-controlled

maintenance. Worker exposures increased significantly overall during 1968 to 1971, though

within standards; at the time, the Atomic Energy Commission questioned the operator’s

efforts to limit workers’ exposure to radiation.

4

 Among these problems, not all require DOE attention pursuant to the West Valley Act of

1980 and the implementing DOE-New York State cooperative agreement; while DOE and

the state agree that the Department is not responsible for decommissioning the statelicensed disposal area or for cleaning up materials buried in the NRC-licensed disposal area

prior to DOE’s presence, they disagree on who is responsible for cleaning up some on-site

contamination.

5

 Of the tanks, two are 70-feet-in-diameter carbon steel tanks, one a spare and the other

originally containing most of the on-site high-level wastes. The two other tanks are 12-feetin-diameter stainless steel tanks, one a spare and the other originally containing 12,000

gallons of acidic high-level wastes from thorium fuels. Both spare tanks have been

contaminated over time. To date, the four tanks are not known to have leaked. However,

the two larger tanks and vaults floated as much as 3 to 4 feet during construction from

accumulated water—a “bathtubbing” problem related to abundant rainfall, and low soil

permeability at the site.

6

 The area also contains low-level wastes, 42 spent fuel elements, and various other

radioactive wastes.
Page 8 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

• Contamination in the form of cesium-137 in surface soils on- and off-site,

resulting from airborne releases, identified as principally occurring in

1968. The releases were caused by ventilation failures in the plant’s main

stack. The cesium contamination levels are only slightly distinguishable

from background radiation levels. The contamination extends about 3.7

miles northwest from the plant stack into heavily wooded off-site areas.

• An inactive 15-acre, state-licensed and -managed commercial low-level

radioactive waste disposal facility. This facility, which operated from 1963

to 1975, contains, among other wastes, highly radioactive wastes from

naval and commercial reactors and nuclear fuel processing facilities that

are buried in trenches, as shown in figure 2.
Page 9 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Figure 2: A Trench in the State-Licensed Disposal Area During Past Operations

Source: Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes.

The West Valley Demonstration Project Act, enacted to assist in the

cleanup of the facility, was signed into law in October 1980. The act

required DOE to, among other things, (1) solidify and develop suitable
Page 10 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

containers for the site’s high-level radioactive wastes; (2) transport the

solidified waste to a permanent repository; and (3) dispose of the low-level

and transuranic wastes created during the project.7

 In cooperation with

the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority, DOE took control

of project operations in 1982. The West Valley Act and an implementing

cooperative agreement divided projected operating costs between DOE

(90 percent) and the state (10 percent). West Valley Nuclear Services, Inc.

(now under Washington Group International, Inc.) was awarded the

solidification project contract and remains the primary contractor. In

carrying out its responsibilities under the act, DOE has constructed the

solidification facility and conducted solidification operations—referred to

as vitrification. These operations have involved (1) chemically treating the

high-level wastes—a step called pretreatment—to separate out

voluminous less-radioactive wastes (which are then stored as low-level

wastes) and (2) mixing the remaining high-level wastes with a form of

molten glass and pouring the mixture into cylindrical stainless steel

storage canisters. (The canisters are shown in fig. 3.) As vitrification nears

completion, DOE and the New York State energy authority are shifting

their focus to the remaining cleanup tasks—decontaminating and

decommissioning structures, remediating soil and groundwater, and

removing nuclear wastes stored and buried on-site, among other activities.

 7

 Prior to enactment, we reported on West Valley issues needing resolution following the

end of commercial operations, including what was to be done with the reprocessing plant

and wastes, how much dealing with these wastes would cost, and who would be

responsible for dealing with them. See Issues Related to the Closing of the Nuclear Fuel

Services, Incorporated, Reprocessing Plant at West Valley, New York (EMD-77-27, Mar. 8,

1977); and Status of Efforts to Clean Up the Shut-Down Western New York Nuclear Service

Center (EMD-80-69, June 6, 1980).
Page 11 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Figure 3: West Valley Nuclear Waste Vitrification and Storage

Source: DOE.

Various entities oversee West Valley under several statutes. The site was

originally licensed to the operator and New York State by the Atomic

Energy Commission and subsequently by NRC. For the duration of DOE’s

presence, the NRC license to the state has been placed in abeyance,

leaving DOE, as authorized by the Atomic Energy Act, to regulate

radioactive materials at West Valley, as it does at other departmental

Thousands of drums of low-level waste resulting from high-level waste 

pretreatment in storage.

Canister of vitrified high-level waste. Canisters of vitrified high-level waste in storage.
Page 12 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

facilities. After DOE concludes its on-site tasks, the site is to be turned

back over to the state and the NRC license is to be reinstated and/or

terminated following decommissioning. Until then, under the terms of the

West Valley Act and a 1981 memorandum of understanding with DOE,

NRC is to provide informal review and consultation and is authorized to

prescribe decontamination and decommissioning criteria for the site. West

Valley must also comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of

1969 (NEPA), which requires integrated environmental planning leading to

the choice of a preferable cleanup alternative, and a 1987 Stipulation of

Compromise Settlement with the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes

and the Radioactive Waste Campaign, which resulted from litigation

concerning DOE’s on-site disposal of wastes generated by the project. The

stipulation required DOE to conduct a full environmental impact study

under NEPA, instead of the less detailed environmental assessment the

Department had considered sufficient. Additionally, EPA and the state’s

Department of Environmental Conservation have oversight

responsibilities at the site. For example, under authorization from EPA,

the state regulates radioactive air emissions under the Clean Air Act and

the hazardous components of radioactive mixed wastes under the

Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA).

DOE has almost completed vitrifying the high-level wastes at West Valley,

overcoming numerous technological challenges along the way.

Vitrification has enhanced the site’s environmental, safety, and health

status, and on the basis of our examination of DOE data and reports, as

well as interviews with interested parties, the Department has generally

operated the facility safely. However, the cleanup could take four more

decades, including more than two decades of major additional cleanup

work that still needs to be performed, and additional time for interim onsite storage of vitrified high-level wastes. In the near term, various wastes

need to be managed and structures need to be decontaminated. In the

longer term, depending on the cleanup level chosen for the site, these

structures need to be torn down and either removed off-site or left in place

and capped, and the site needs to be decommissioned.

DOE’s operations at West Valley began in 1982 and included the

construction of a vitrification facility from 1985 to 1995. From the late

1980s into the mid-1990s, waste pretreatment, sludge washing operations,

and vitrification testing took place. As we reported in 1989 and 1996,

High-Level Waste

Vitrification Is

Nearing Completion,

but Other Major Work

Remains
Page 13 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

construction was subject to delays and cost overruns early on.8,9 During

pretreatment (1988-95), about 1.7 million gallons of low-level waste were

generated and placed into almost 20,000 drums in an on-site storage area.

(See fig. 3.) Pretreatment reduced the waste volume to be vitrified by over

80 percent. Vitrification operations began in 1996. They are now nearing

completion, which is scheduled for September 2002. To date, the four onsite underground high-level waste tanks have been emptied of over 99

percent of their long-lived radioactivity in tank sludge, as well as 95

percent of their cesium-137 activity. To date, 255 stainless steel, cylindrical

waste canisters have been filled with vitrified high-level waste.

Vitrification of the remaining traces of wastes is continuing. Tank sludge,

known as “tank heel,” is being removed from the tank bottoms (which

have an intricate, grid-like internal support structure).

In removing the liquid, high-level wastes from the underground tanks and

vitrifying them, DOE has overcome numerous technological challenges.

Technological successes related to West Valley vitrification have included

(1) developing a separation process for pretreating the wastes (an ion

exchange method, using titanium-treated zeolite for separation, which was

developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory); (2) developing

tank liquid mobilization pumps that would work in a highly radioactive

environment (adapted from a Savannah River Site design); (3)

implementing a glass melter technology developed by the Pacific

Northwest National Laboratory for use at West Valley; and (4) developing

a canister waste-level monitoring system using infrared detection—a

system adopted at Savannah River. The West Valley and Savannah River

melter technologies have subsequently been considered for low-level

waste vitrification efforts being planned at Fernald, Ohio; Savannah River;

Hanford; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

West Valley’s vitrification operations are part of a multibillion-dollar DOE

effort to immobilize its liquid, high-level wastes at other, larger sites—

including Savannah River, Hanford, and the Idaho National Environmental

 8 Nuclear Waste: DOE’s Program to Prepare High-Level Radioactive Waste for Final

Disposal (GAO/RCED-90-46FS, Nov. 9, 1989).

9 Department of Energy: Opportunity to Improve Management of Major System

Acquisitions (GAO/RCED-97-17, Nov. 1996).
Page 14 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

and Engineering Laboratory.10 West Valley and Savannah River are

currently vitrifying their wastes,11 while the efforts at Hanford and the

Idaho Laboratory—whose solid-form wastes, stored in bins, will be

processed differently12—are not as far along. The West Valley, Savannah

River, and Hanford vitrification efforts differ in technical details, including

methods of pretreatment.13 Vitrification at Savannah River could continue

until the mid-2020s, according to DOE. We reported in 1999, however, that

Savannah River was having difficulties with its chosen pretreatment

technology. Pending resolution of this matter, the site has been restricting

its vitrification efforts to the sludge in its tanks.14 At Hanford, DOE’s plans

call for vitrification operations to begin in the late 2000s and continue until

the mid to late 2010s for 10 percent or more of the high-level wastes, and

an undetermined longer period for the rest.

According to the federal and state oversight officials and local officials we

contacted, DOE has generally operated the site safely. In addition,

available DOE environmental and safety monitoring data and oversight

reviews for West Valley (from 1990 to 2000) do not indicate a pattern of

environmental, safety, or health issues. During pretreatment and

vitrification operations, DOE has not reported serious exposures to

radioactivity of on-site workers, although a few incidents DOE judged to

be noncritical have put workers at risk of such exposure, according to

DOE and NRC records. For example, in November 1996, radioactive waste

migrated into a pipe intended for demineralized water at the vitrification

facility; in December 1997, two workers came into contact with

 10 The wastes stored at West Valley (before vitrification) have been less than 1 percent of

the total at Department-operated facilities. As of 1988, Hanford had about 61 percent, in 177

underground tanks, containing about 57 million gallons of wastes; Savannah River had

about 36 percent, in 51 underground tanks, containing about 34 million gallons of wastes;

and the Idaho Laboratory had about 3 percent, in four sets of bins instead of tanks,

containing about 2.9 million gallons of wastes in the form of dry waste granules called

calcines.

11 As of Feb. 2000, 775 canisters containing vitrified wastes were in storage at Savannah

River.

12 At the Idaho Laboratory, the solid wastes (or calcines) are to be immobilized into a glassceramic waste form for placement in canisters. Waste immobilization could take until 2035

under current plans.

13 Pretreatment varies among the three sites because of differences in their spent fuels and

the reprocessing techniques used to generate the wastes.

14 Nuclear Waste: Process to Remove Radioactive Waste From Savannah River Tanks Fails

to Work (GAO/RCED-99-69, Apr. 30, 1999).
Page 15 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

radioactive waste that went onto the ground in the area of the waste tanks;

and in August 1999, radioactive liquids entered pipes intended to indicate

fluid levels. As reported, and according to DOE officials, none of these

incidents caused a significant loss in work time, and all were aggressively

investigated. The site was given a departmental award in February 2000 for

excellence in occupational safety and health protection. Off-site

contamination at West Valley was generally within regulatory limits in the

1980s and 1990s, according to DOE. Surface water and sediment

downstream from the site in Buttermilk and Cattaraugus Creeks have not

shown elevated contamination from DOE activities, according to the

Department. These creeks carry groundwater and surface water from the

site, through nearby Seneca Nation of Indians lands to Lake Erie (about 35

miles distant), and eventually over Niagara Falls.

Despite the progress made, decades of major cleanup work remain at West

Valley, including waste management, decontamination, and

decommissioning. In the near term, structures previously used for

reprocessing operations and currently used for vitrification operations

need to be decontaminated. In the longer term, into the mid-2020s,

depending on the agreed-upon cleanup level for the site, these structures

need to be torn down and either removed off-site or left in place as

radioactive rubble—prospectively encased in a long-lasting protective cap.

As currently projected by DOE, on-site storage of vitrified high-level

wastes is to continue for another decade beyond the mid-2020s, after

which the site is to be decommissioned according to NRC criteria and

closed. Under current DOE plans, specific actions include the following:

• Shutting down the vitrification facility. This process includes

melter deactivation, equipment and piping removal, and

decontamination, and may extend to about 2017.

• Placing into on-site storage and maintaining the high-level

waste canisters pending permanent disposal. On-site canister

storage could extend to 2036 through 2040 (followed by site closure in

2041).

• Decontamination and decommissioning, shipping waste, and

completing various on-site tasks required by the West Valley

Act. For example, low-level wastes are being shipped off-site, possibly

until 2022, and on-site transuranic wastes are to be addressed

(including potentially shipping the wastes to a receiver site) from 2003

to 2021.
Page 16 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

• Removal of spent fuel elements stored on-site. The fuel, in the

form of 125 assemblies, is to be shipped to the Idaho Laboratory in

2001 so that deactivating the storage facility at West Valley can occur

during 2001 to 2005.15

Some of these cleanup actions cannot be implemented without further

technological advances. According to DOE, at least 50 innovative

technologies are being pursued in connection with the West Valley

cleanup in the following five areas:

• cleaning up vitrification equipment, including the melter;

• detecting and characterizing radioactive constituents—for example, in

waste containers and wastewater discharge;

• treating and disposing of waste, including, for example, developing

alternate transportation systems for transuranic wastes;

• remediating subsurface contamination, including, for example,

developing a permeable barrier and construction techniques to address

the on-site groundwater plume;16 and

• decontaminating and decommissioning facilities, including, for

example, reducing massive metal structures to a smaller size.

Specific needs related to cleaning up the vitrification facility have included

a remote-handled tooling system to segregate, reduce in size, characterize,

and package radioactively contaminated metal materials that have been

removed from the facility. A system to perform this task has been in

operation since July 1999 and is a first step toward a larger, remotehandled waste facility for the site. This larger facility will be needed to

 15 Of an original 750 spent fuel assemblies, by 1985, DOE returned 625 to the utilities that

generated them. DOE had taken title to the remaining 125 assemblies in 1984 and plans to

ship them to the Idaho Laboratory, under a 1996 settlement agreement with the state that

permits shipment there after 2000.

16 Strontium-90-contaminated groundwater, which emanated from the original reprocessing

building and migrated on-site, has existed since the late 1960s to early 1970s, according to

DOE, but was not identified and characterized until the mid-1990s. The plume now covers

an area that is approximately 300 feet by 900 feet. The water is being pumped and treated,

and a permeable subterranean wall intended to prevent further migration is being tested on

an arm of the plume.
Page 17 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

conduct comparable tasks for larger equipment and materials in the

vitrification facility and in the tank area. A West Valley official said that

additional technologies would need to be developed if the agreed-upon

cleanup level and end state for West Valley were to require that the

underground tanks, buried highly radioactive wastes, and spent fuel onsite are to be dug up and removed from the site.

Attempts to clean up West Valley are being hindered by several factors.

First, and most importantly, DOE and New York State continue to disagree

on which entity is principally responsible for exercising long-term

operational stewardship of the site under the West Valley Act, which entity

should pay the site’s prospective high-level waste disposal fees, and what

the site should look like in the future. Their differences are key to

facilitating long-term progress and are contributing to delays in

environmental planning milestones for the site. Specifically, because the

parties to the cleanup have not yet agreed on strategic issues affecting the

site’s cleanup—that is, what the site is to look like after the cleanup is

completed, how the land is to be used, and what regulatory cleanup

standards are to be used—a final environmental impact statement (EIS)

for decommissioning and closing the site has not yet been issued and the

scheduled date for a record of decision on a cleanup level has been

extended. An early scheduled date was 1997 but is now 2005 and could be

extended further. Until recently, DOE and the state had been formally

negotiating in an attempt to resolve their differences. As an incentive for

agreement, DOE had included a proposal addressing the issue of the

payment of prospective multimillion-dollar fees for disposal of West

Valley’s high-level wastes at a permanent repository. However, these

confidential negotiations broke down in January 2001 without an

agreement. Second, prospective NRC cleanup standards—referred to as

decontamination and decommissioning criteria—for the cleanup effort are

to be issued in 2001, perhaps in the spring. However, these standards as

drafted differ from the EPA environmental guidance and standards under

CERCLA and the Safe Drinking Water Act (as well as New York State

radiation protection guidance) that could be applied on-site. Third, it is

uncertain where West Valley’s nuclear wastes are to go, including both

high-level and transuranic wastes. Hundreds of millions of dollars in future

costs could be at stake in addressing these disposal questions.

Several Factors Are

Hindering Progress on

the West Valley

Cleanup
Page 18 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The principal parties to the West Valley cleanup—DOE as site operator

and New York State as site owner—have been attempting to reach an

agreement on strategic issues affecting the site’s future in order to

facilitate cleanup planning and the timely and cost-effective cleanup and

closure of the site. However, to date, they have not reached such an

agreement. Their current relationship reflects the fact that, historically, the

federal government and the state have continuously differed on who

should assume responsibility for the wastes generated by commercial

reprocessing at West Valley. For example, in 1980, we reported that

interested parties at West Valley were influenced more by their desire to

minimize their own responsibilities than by attempting to arrive at the

most practical solution. The issue of who will take on-site responsibility is

likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Although the West Valley Act does not require that DOE and New York

State reach agreement on the site’s future or how DOE will complete the

cleanup effort, NEPA encourages interested parties to cooperate in

environmental decisionmaking regarding sites such as West Valley.

Consequently, it has been DOE’s stated policy to work closely with the

state on the West Valley cleanup. Since mid-1999, the two entities have

been conducting confidential negotiations on their future roles and

responsibilities, particularly in the areas of (1) on-site operational

stewardship, (2) future cost-sharing, and (3) an appropriate cleanup level

and eventual use for the site. However, in mid-January 2001, these

negotiations broke down without an agreement. Afterward,

representatives of the two sides agreed that prospective long-term

operational stewardship of West Valley’s wastes was a major unresolved

issue. In this regard, DOE, as the site operator, prefers a cleanup level that

would involve significant remedial efforts but not require removal of all

the nuclear wastes off-site in order to achieve unrestricted site use. DOE

also foresees a limited operational presence on-site, although one which

could still last for decades. Conversely, New York State, as the site owner,

appears to prefer that DOE stay on-site operationally as long as nuclear

wastes are there (possibly for many more decades). To date, the state has

not put forward a preferred cleanup alternative for the site. It has not

ruled out the idea of leaving some nuclear wastes on-site, as DOE favors,

but has not yet agreed to DOE’s preferred approach. New York State

believes (1) the Department needs to do further analysis to demonstrate

the adequacy of its favored approach and (2) reaching an agreement is

contingent on DOE and the state agreeing on long-term on-site

stewardship.

DOE and New York State

Have Not Resolved Issues

Concerning the Site’s

Future, Including Their

Roles and Responsibilities

and Cost-Sharing
Page 19 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The two parties disagree in large part because they interpret the West

Valley Act differently and because they have clearly different interests to

protect. Specifically at issue is the extent of cleanup activities DOE is

required to conduct under the act, as well as the duration of DOE’s

obligation to conduct operations on-site to deal with the radioactive

contamination in buildings and burial areas resulting from commercial

reprocessing operations that preceded the Department’s presence.

According to DOE, under the act, New York State, as the site owner, is

responsible for the preexisting contamination, and ultimately responsible

for addressing land use issues there. DOE plans to limit its on-site

decontamination and decommissioning efforts to areas, facilities, and

materials used in conducting the waste vitrification project. The

Department states that after cleaning up West Valley, it does not become

owner of the site. In this regard, DOE foresees a long-term, but ultimately

limited, departmental operating role at West Valley, after which it expects

to leave the site.17 In recent years, DOE’s estimates for completing its onsite role have ranged from 2005 to 2041, depending on programmatic and

waste disposal assumptions.

On the other hand, New York State interprets the West Valley Act to

require a more extensive cleanup role for DOE and a longer-term

departmental operating presence—that is, as long as any nuclear waste

remains on-site. According to the state, DOE is responsible for

decontaminating and decommissioning all facilities and wastes in the 200-

acre operations area, except for the state disposal area and the materials

buried in the NRC-licensed disposal area prior to DOE’s presence. The

state asserts that if DOE’s cleanup efforts result in the need for long-term

institutional controls on-site, the Department should provide such

controls. New York State estimates the federal government is responsible

for about 75 percent of the spent fuel reprocessed at West Valley and

therefore should rightly stay on-site as a long-term caretaker—if one is

needed—for any remaining wastes generated from reprocessing.18 New

York State officials have also said the state does not want responsibility

for ensuring the long-term performance of the high-level waste tanks or

 17 According to DOE, after the Department leaves West Valley, in order to help protect

public health and the environment, it would bear at least a part of the financial

responsibility for monitoring and maintaining—and revisiting where necessary—any onsite cleanup remedies it had put in place there.

18 New York State further asserts that DOE has additional responsibilities for the waste in

the state-licensed and NRC-licensed disposal areas under CERCLA.
Page 20 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

other DOE-engineered barriers. As in the past, New York State believes

that the federal government, in addition to its legal responsibilities, has the

necessary technical and financial resources to fully clean up West Valley.

DOE and New York State also have historically disagreed on who is

responsible for paying the fees that are due if West Valley’s high-level

wastes are to be disposed of in a permanent repository. The disagreement

is not about who owns the wastes—the two sides agree that they are state

owned. At issue is who should pay for disposal and under which laws.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, nuclear facilities seeking

access to a prospective permanent repository must sign a contract for

disposal and pay a fee into the nuclear waste fund that was set up to cover

the disposal costs. Notwithstanding the provisions of the West Valley Act

and its implementing cooperative agreement between the Department and

New York State, DOE officials said that, under the Nuclear Waste Policy

Act, West Valley’s owner, like the owners of other nuclear facilities, must

pay this fee, which covers full disposal costs, prior to having the site’s

wastes disposed of in the repository. On the other hand, the state argues

that the provisions of the West Valley Act and its implementing

cooperative agreement make the signing of a disposal contract under the

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 both inappropriate and redundant.19 In

the state’s view, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires payment from a

nonfederal party only for the disposal of spent fuel or high-level waste

from a civilian nuclear power reactor. According to the state, the West

Valley high-level wastes are a unique federal-civilian mixture not covered

under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (or, if covered, are “wastes from

atomic energy defense activities” for which DOE is liable).

DOE has unsuccessfully pursued the resolution of this matter for many

years. In the recent confidential negotiations, the Department offered a

proposal concerning the degree to which DOE and New York State would

be responsible for paying the fee, in order to give the state an incentive to

reach a timely agreement on a proposed cleanup level for the site and to

resolve other important issues at the site. According to DOE, under its

proposal, (1) to settle all outstanding issues between the Department and

 19 Under an agreement between New York State and the original site operator and the 1980

cooperative agreement between DOE and New York, the state has been managing a

perpetual care fund for West Valley that was intended to be paid to the Department upon

delivery of the solidified high-level wastes to a repository. Currently, this fund contains

about $21.9 million. This amount, according to DOE, does not begin to cover the site’s total

prospective costs for high-level waste disposal.
Page 21 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

the state, the Department would agree to assume a portion of New York

State’s responsibility to pay for the disposal of the high-level waste in

return for monetary and other valuable considerations from the state and

(2) DOE would still have no obligation to take title to and dispose of West

Valley’s high-level waste unless New York State enters into a disposal

contract under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and pays the disposal fee.

According to DOE officials, the proposal would achieve long-term,

multimillion-dollar overall cleanup cost savings for both DOE and the

state. Following the recent breakdown of the DOE-New York State

negotiations, DOE withdrew the proposal, and it is unclear whether it

could be revived. According to DOE, the Department and New York State

are exchanging information to help determine when negotiations should

appropriately be resumed.

The DOE-New York State relationship is key to facilitating the cleanup of

West Valley and has been a factor in delaying environmental planning

milestones for the site. The differences between the two parties were less

important in the past, when on-site cleanup efforts were focused almost

entirely on vitrification—a cleanup step favored by all interested parties.

However, the parties’ differences have become more prominent in recent

years as cleanup planning has turned increasingly toward long-term

decommissioning and closure of the facility. Facility decommissioning will

require decisionmaking on controversial, unresolved issues, such as

prospective off-site high-level waste tank removal versus entombment onsite.

The differences between DOE and the state, including their lack of

agreement on the site’s future, are affecting the pace of the West Valley

environmental planning process under NEPA. Under NEPA, the

Department is required to integrate environmental considerations into its

planning, and the Department has historically included the state as a joint

participant in the environmental analysis for the site. DOE has conducted

NEPA compliance efforts for West Valley since the 1980s,20 but this

 20 An environmental impact statement (EIS) for the vitrification phase at West Valley was

completed in 1982. In 1987, a U.S. district court in New York State approved a Stipulation

of Compromise that outlined NEPA compliance requirements for DOE to follow, directing

the Department to include its on-site waste disposal practices in a full EIS for West Valley,

instead of addressing these wastes in a less extensive environmental assessment that the

Department had regarded as sufficient. The stipulation resulted from a suit brought by the

Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes and Radioactive Waste Campaign, local

environmental interests that were concerned about DOE’s waste disposal practices at the

site.
Page 22 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

process still has not resulted in a final EIS for the site or a record of

decision on a cleanup level.21 Specifically, because of a lack of agreement

among the parties, including DOE and the state, the draft EIS for cleaning

up the site was issued in 1996 without including a preferred cleanup

alternative. Instead, it laid out five cleanup alternatives that ranged widely,

from limited remedial actions, referred to as “in place stabilization” of the

contamination (at costs ranging from about $400 million to about $1.1

billion, depending on the specific option chosen), to more extensive

actions, ranging from “on premises storage” of the contamination in new

facilities (at a cost of about $3.7 billion) to full cleanup of the site to an

unrestricted end state—referred to as the “removal” option (at a cost of

about $8.3 billion). To date, none of these alternatives has been selected as

preferred, and no final EIS has been issued.

The continuing inability of the parties, especially DOE and New York

State, to choose among cleanup alternatives for West Valley limits

progress with NEPA compliance, as well as overall cleanup planning, and

has resulted in changing DOE estimates of when—following issuance of a

final EIS—a record of decision for the site could be issued. The estimated

date for a record of decision has been extended several times, from

October 1997, to May 2000, to the latest estimate of 2005.22 In retrospect,

according to DOE officials at West Valley, the changing estimates indicate

overly optimistic past assessments of how difficult it might be for

interested parties to decide on a preferred cleanup alternative for the site.

They said the 2005 date is a reasonable current estimate, and while it could

be marginally accelerated, if at all, it could also be extended if there is no

agreement soon on the site’s future. Concerned about potential cleanup

delays, DOE has recently chosen to split the EIS development process into

 21 NEPA requires agencies, prior to major programmatic actions such as the West Valley

cleanup, to consider whether these actions will significantly affect the quality of the human

environment. Under NEPA, similar to the cleanup process required by CERCLA, interested

parties work toward an agreed end-state for a site cleanup, which they develop through (1)

issuing a draft EIS, (2) choosing a preferred cleanup alternative, (3) issuing a final EIS, and

(4) issuing a record of decision formally detailing the cleanup agreement.

22 If met, this date will conclude a roughly two-decade West Valley cleanup decisionmaking

process under NEPA.
Page 23 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

two phases, so that near-term post-vitrification cleanup work will not be

delayed by NEPA compliance considerations.23

DOE and New York State officials maintain that their negotiating

differences have not yet seriously affected the pace of environmental

planning for West Valley or the overall progress of the cleanup. According

to DOE headquarters and field officials, this is because, until recently, the

Department has been more focused on vitrification than on later phases of

the cleanup and is only now turning more attention to decontamination

and subsequent decommissioning. Also, according to the Department, its

environmental planning for West Valley does not depend on its negotiating

efforts with the state, and therefore if no agreement is reached with the

state, the Department can proceed with its NEPA compliance efforts

without the state’s participation. A DOE official said that difficulties in

developing a preferred alternative and the desire to give the public an

ample opportunity to comment have been reasons for not including a

preferred alternative in the 1996 draft EIS and for not having made it final

since then. Departmental officials said that despite the lack of a preferred

alternative for West Valley, day-to-day cleanup work is continuing,

focusing on nearer-term work steps (such as decontamination of

structures) that will be necessary regardless of which alternative is

eventually chosen.

According to DOE, the Department can complete all of its responsibilities

under the West Valley Act even if negotiations with New York State never

resume, but a DOE official said that if differences with the state continue

in coming years, there could be more serious effects on the overall costs

and schedule of the cleanup. In our view, the Department underestimates

the degree to which the continuing lack of agreement among the parties—

especially DOE and New York State—concerning the site’s long-term

future is already limiting the precision and pace of DOE’s cleanup planning

for West Valley, as evidenced in lengthy NEPA compliance efforts,

frequently changing planning milestones, and uncertain, varying cleanup

cost and schedule estimates.

 23 In September 2000, DOE announced that it would continue its environmental impact

analysis for West Valley in two phases, with two separate final EISs—the first phase

covering agreed-upon cleanup steps (over the next year or 2), and the second phase

covering more controversial cleanup steps that have not yet been agreed upon (over the

next few years).
Page 24 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Under the West Valley Act, DOE’s cleanup of the facility is to occur in

accordance with cleanup standards to be issued by NRC.24 However, these

standards, which are important regulatory criteria for decontaminating

and decommissioning the site, have been lacking since the act was passed

in 1980. NRC first developed cleanup standards for its licensees, such as

commercial nuclear power plants, in 1997. However, these standards

(referred to as NRC’s license termination rule) were not designed

specifically for West Valley. Prospective standards for West Valley were

issued in draft form in December 1999 and are based substantially on the

1997 standards. Following a period of public comment, NRC is now

reviewing the draft standards, and NRC officials expect them to be issued

in 2001, perhaps in the spring.25 Such standards—principally including

numerical limits on public exposure to any remaining on-site nuclear

radiation after the site is cleaned up—are a necessary component of any

nuclear cleanup effort. Commonly expressed as millirem of exposure to an

individual annually, these limits help to quantify “how clean is clean” at a

cleanup site.26

Like NRC’s 1997 standards, the prospective West Valley standards are to

include an exposure limit of 25 millirem a year to an individual from all

means of exposure (or “pathways”)—through air, water, and soil on-site at

West Valley. Also, according to NRC officials, the standards will likely

include higher limits for on-site locations where the level of 25 millirem a

year for unrestricted access is not attainable. In such locations, such as

burial areas for high-activity wastes, higher limits (100 or 500 millirem a

year, depending on the situation) would be applicable, combined with

restrictions on public access to these areas. Such a regulatory approach

would recognize the need for long-term institutional controls at some

locations at West Valley.

The timing of the issuance for, and the prospective content of, the West

Valley standards have been of concern to interested parties. Such

 24 NRC is not currently an on-site regulator but will be in the future when its license to New

York State is reinstated.

25 NRC is authorized under the West Valley Act to prescribe the standards, which it

published in the Federal Register in the form of a Draft Policy Statement on

Decommissioning Criteria for the West Valley Demonstration Project and the West Valley

Site

26 A millirem is a commonly used unit of measurement of the biological effect of radiation.

The radiation from a routine chest X-ray is equivalent to about 6 millirem.

NRC Has Drafted Cleanup

Standards for West Valley,

but EPA’s Guidance and

Standards Could Also

Apply at the Site
Page 25 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

standards were arguably less needed in the 1980s, when the first phase of

the cleanup—the high-level waste vitrification project at West Valley—was

gearing up. According to the 1981 DOE-NRC memorandum of

understanding accompanying the West Valley Act, NRC was to issue the

standards after DOE analyzed environmental options for the site. In this

regard, DOE’s analyses have been ongoing for at least a decade (including

the development of the 1996 draft EIS), and are still under way. The

Department has been concerned that NRC may issue final cleanup

standards prematurely, before West Valley’s environmental analyses are

completed. Specifically, DOE has said that the issued standards could

contain restrictions developed on the basis of incomplete environmental

analysis that could prevent consideration of potentially cost-effective

cleanup alternatives. On the other hand, some observers, such as the

Natural Resources Defense Council, have argued that issuance of the NRC

standards is long overdue and should not be further delayed because they

are needed to help guide cleanup planning and analysis. Some have said

the standards should adhere closely to the 1997 decommissioning

standards and not include provisions, or “exceptions,” that could

circumvent the standards’ protective intent. According to NRC officials, a

few years after the final standards for West Valley are issued, prior to a

prospective record of decision for the site, the agency plans to (1) review

whether DOE applied the standards in developing a decommissioning EIS

for the facility and (2) decide whether DOE’s preferred cleanup approach

in the EIS meets NRC’s standards. The officials said the evaluation would

take into account lessons learned from any further environmental analysis

that DOE may conduct in the meantime.

Although NRC has standard-setting authority under the West Valley Act,

EPA’s environmental guidance and standards—which apply to both

chemicals and radionuclides, versus NRC’s radiation-specific standards—

could also apply on-site. In this regard, implementation of the West Valley

Act does not preclude EPA from exercising its own, potentially more

restrictive cleanup authority at West Valley under CERCLA and the Safe

Drinking Water Act.27 While NRC’s standards could be applied on-site

 27 While NRC’s standards are radiation-dose-based, CERCLA is risk based (a lifetime cancer

risk range of 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 1 million from both chemicals and radionuclides). Also,

under EPA’s CERCLA guidance, radiation exposure to individuals is limited to 15 millirem

a year from all exposure means. Further, under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA’s

approach includes separate, additional groundwater protection to meet drinking water

standards (which originally were roughly equivalent to 4 millirem a year, but now vary in

dose equivalency, depending on the radionuclide).
Page 26 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

during decommissioning, CERCLA could be separately enforced—for

example, in response to a citizen’s petition, according to EPA and NRC

officials. In regard to groundwater protection, an area of special EPA

protective concern, EPA’s approach may be more restrictive than NRC’s

and therefore potentially significantly more costly to comply with. In

addition, New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation

has issued cleanup guidance that could apply to West Valley.28

On the basis of its 1987 and 1995 assessments, EPA does not plan to take

future remedial actions at West Valley under CERCLA. However, in a May

1999 letter to DOE’s West Valley office, EPA cautioned that cleaning up

the site to prospective NRC standards of 25 millirem a year might not

adequately protect human health or the environment. In addition, in

commenting in January 2000 on NRC’s developing standards for West

Valley, EPA called for West Valley’s groundwater to be protected to

drinking water standards and for additional site-specific analysis to ensure

such protection in the long term. NRC, EPA, and New York State officials

have had discussions during 2000 on their different standards and

guidance. They have agreed that they need to further explain to DOE how

their various criteria and guidance may apply to different locations and

activities at West Valley. However, to date, they have not said how their

different standards and guidance are to be implemented on-site so as to

avoid potential dual regulation.

As we reported in 1994 and in June 2000, NRC and EPA have had ongoing

differences on cleanup standards.29 They have recently attempted to

resolve the differences through a memorandum of understanding. Their

history of disagreement at other NRC-licensed sites indicates that cleanup

standards for West Valley could also be disputed, especially with respect

to groundwater protection. According to EPA, the two agencies have

generally coordinated their regulatory activities effectively at NRClicensed sites where their standards both apply. However, NRC and EPA

 28 New York State guidance calls for 10-millirem-a-year protection to an individual, plus 4

millirem a year for groundwater. New York State officials have spoken in favor of one set

of sitewide standards for West Valley.

29 Nuclear Health and Safety: Consensus on Acceptable Radiation Risk to the Public Is

Lacking (GAO/RCED-94-190, Sept. 19, 1994); Radiation Standards: Scientific Basis

Inconclusive, and EPA and NRC Disagreement Continues (GAO/RCED-00-152, June 30,

2000). In the latter report, we recommended that the congressional committees of

jurisdiction may wish to clarify the two agencies’ regulatory responsibilities relating to

decommissioning NRC-licensed sites.
Page 27 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

have disagreed for many years on this matter and have been attempting for

over a year to issue a final memorandum of understanding clarifying their

regulatory roles. Such a memorandum could likewise apply to West Valley

(an NRC-licensed site whose license is currently in abeyance). As of March

2001, the two agencies were keeping the Congress informed of their efforts

but had not completed a final memorandum.

Unresolved issues concerning the disposal of West Valley’s high-level and

transuranic nuclear wastes may also hinder cleaning up the site in a more

timely manner. The vitrified high-level wastes are being temporarily stored

in a work room or “cell” in the current vitrification facility (which is part

of the former spent fuel reprocessing facility), awaiting further disposition.

(See fig. 3.) The transuranic wastes are currently stored at two locations—

a building for so-called “lag” storage and the chemical process cell waste

storage area (and some were buried in the NRC-licensed disposal area

during commercial reprocessing operations).30 Questions of where these

wastes will eventually go, when, and at what cost are still to be addressed.

Under the West Valley Act, both types of waste are to be disposed of

before the cleanup is completed. If disposal does not happen in a timely

manner, their care and maintenance could add substantially to the overall

costs and schedule for the West Valley cleanup—potentially hundreds of

millions of dollars, with schedule extensions of up to two decades. In 1997,

DOE issued a policy—in the form of a programmatic EIS and two records

of decision—stating that high-level and transuranic wastes are to remain

stored at sites where they have been generated for the foreseeable future,

pending a decision on final disposition. Thus, any options for interim offsite storage of West Valley’s high-level and transuranic wastes would

require the Department to make an exception to this policy. 31

Off-site removal of West Valley’s high-level wastes could result in

hundreds of millions of dollars in potential savings, in part through not

having to construct an interim storage facility for the canisters at West

Valley. This could be accomplished by removing the wastes to another

DOE site for interim storage, followed by later disposal in a permanent

repository. Other DOE sites, such as Savannah River, the Idaho

 30 About 521 cubic meters of transuranic wastes are in the inventory, and 24 cubic meters

more are expected to be generated during the cleanup.

31 In regard to on-site low-level waste, substantial quantities (over 61,000 cubic feet) have

been shipped off-site to the Envirocare facility in Utah since 1997.

The Future Location of

West Valley’s Nuclear

Wastes Is Unresolved
Page 28 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Laboratory, Hanford, and the Nevada Test Site, could feasibly accept the

West Valley wastes for interim storage, according to DOE officials. They

said such a step could result in net cost savings from the elimination of

years of storage and maintenance costs at West Valley. Sites such as

Savannah River are expected to spend substantial amounts for storage of

their own vitrified high-level wastes, beyond which the added costs of

storing a relatively few canisters from West Valley are likely to be

marginal. Furthermore, a 1997 DOE headquarters analysis estimated cost

avoidance of about $770 million over the next 10 years through interim offsite storage of West Valley’s high-level wastes.32 The analysis assumed that

early deployment of a high-level waste shipping system and off-site interim

storage of the West Valley wastes would occur as part of an integrated,

DOE-wide nuclear waste management effort. However, DOE officials

recognized that state compliance agreements, other legal constraints, and

political equity considerations among states could preclude taking such an

action.

DOE’s plans in the 1990s to ship the West Valley canisters to the Savannah

River Site at the beginning of the 2000s are a case in point. The canisters

could have been added to the larger inventory there on an interim basis,

pending removal to a permanent repository. According to various DOE

West Valley analyses, shipment would have begun anywhere from 2001 to

2007. The Department presented the option to the Savannah River citizens’

advisory board, which recommended the option be implemented (with

some dissenters on equity grounds). In 1999, however, the state of South

Carolina halted the plan. According to DOE officials, state officials said

DOE had not properly informed them of the plan and the governor

opposed it. DOE officials said that on the basis of the recent experience

with the state of South Carolina, they have no current plans for interim offsite storage of West Valley’s high-level wastes.

With regard to permanent disposal, DOE currently plans to remove the

West Valley canisters to a permanent repository. Yucca Mountain, Nevada,

is the prospective repository and, if approved, is projected to open in 2010.

However, meeting this target date will depend on many technological and

political factors. As discussed earlier, not the least of these factors is a

timely decision on who—New York State or DOE—should pay the fee for

 32 Contractor Report to DOE on Opportunities for Integration of Environmental

Management Activities Across the Complex (pre-decisional draft), INEL/EXT-97-00065,

Mar. 1997. In the report, cost avoidance represented money that would not have to be

added to departmental 10-year plans to fill program gaps.
Page 29 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

disposal of West Valley’s wastes. Because DOE assumes a pessimistic

scenario for prospective disposal of West Valley’s wastes at Yucca

Mountain, the Department currently projects that the high-level waste

canisters would not be shipped to the prospective Nevada repository until

2036 to 2040, at the end of the time frame projected for disposal there.

Current DOE estimates indicate that if the wastes could instead be

shipped to permanent off-site disposal in the mid 2020s, up to $100 million

in West Valley cleanup costs could be saved.33

With respect to West Valley’s transuranic wastes. millions of dollars could

be saved in disposal costs, depending on which disposal option is chosen.34

Under the West Valley Act, the transuranic wastes generated as part of

project activities are to be disposed of prior to site closure. DOE’s recent

plans do not specify a destination, but the latest plans have projected offsite removal of these wastes between 2007 and 2021. Both interim off-site

storage and direct shipment to permanent disposal may be options,

depending on technological, legal, and political factors, and any of several

larger DOE sites could be candidates for interim storage.

An existing transuranic waste disposal facility—the Waste Isolation Pilot

Project (WIPP) in New Mexico, which has been in operation since 1999—

appears to be a feasible permanent destination for West Valley’s

transuranic wastes. However, under the authorizing legislation for WIPP,

the facility is to receive only transuranic wastes generated in connection

with defense-related activities. According to DOE officials, West Valley’s

transuranic wastes do not meet this criterion and are considered

commercial wastes. Departmental officials said options for gaining access

for these wastes to WIPP include seeking an amendment to the WIPP Land

Withdrawal Act or an administrative change to recategorize West Valley’s

transuranic wastes as defense-related. The basis for such an administrative

change would be the fact that the site’s transuranic wastes consist of

 33 Beyond off-site disposal of West Valley nuclear wastes, DOE-wide consolidation of

nuclear wastes now located at multiple sites around the country could save many billions

of dollars. For example, DOE’s Mar. 1997 study on integration opportunities estimated total

savings for high-level waste storage at over $18 billion over 10 years, and for transuranic

waste storage at over $3 billion. The study took legal and regulatory constraints into

account but did not attempt to fully account for equity considerations and political

acceptability.

34 These wastes come in two forms: Some are more highly radioactive, requiring remote

handling by machinery for worker safety; others are less radioactive and can be handled by

personnel wearing protective clothing.
Page 30 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

commingled wastes resulting from spent fuel generated in both

commercial and defense nuclear reactors. According to a DOE official, the

Department currently favors obtaining a legislative change to gain access

to WIPP for West Valley’s wastes, but officials said that seeking an

immediate amendment to the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act may be

inopportune since implementation of disposal operations at WIPP has only

recently begun.

The 1997 DOE study on integration opportunities estimated that $13

million in cost avoidance could be achieved over 10 years at West Valley if

a significant portion of the site’s remote-handled transuranic wastes could

be shipped to off-site locations for interim storage, pending potential WIPP

access. This estimate assumed appropriate packaging in large containers

for shipment to alternate sites and the implementation of a new

transportation package to handle the containers.35 The same analysis

estimated that disposing of all of West Valley’s transuranic wastes at WIPP

(assuming access was obtained) could avoid about $4 million in storage

and maintenance costs at West Valley.36 As with high-level waste disposal,

state compliance agreements, other legal constraints, and equity issues

among states could be factors in any effort to implement an interim

storage approach for West Valley’s transuranic wastes. States with

facilities that could readily accept such wastes—such as South Carolina

and Washington State, for example—do not wish to be perceived as

continually receiving transuranic and other nuclear wastes from other

states, particularly from states that may have historically carried an

arguably lesser share of the overall national burden for disposing of

nuclear waste. In states that host DOE’s nuclear facilities, the Department

has already invested substantial time and resources in negotiating

acceptable arrangements for nuclear waste management, in response to

the requirements of the Federal Facility Compliance Act and commitments

made to governors.

 35 This analysis also assumed that these efforts would be part of an overall departmental

waste management integration effort.

36 Moreover, the analysis estimated that implementing mobile packaging systems for use at

multiple sites where transuranic wastes were located—and using such a system to package

466 cubic meters of remotely handled transuranic wastes at West Valley—could potentially

avoid $250 million in costs.
Page 31 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

DOE’s estimates of West Valley’s total cleanup costs and a date for

completing the cleanup have been uncertain and will remain so until

strategic issues are agreed upon, including the extent to which the site is

to be cleaned up and what it will then look like, how the land is to be used,

what regulatory cleanup standards are to be used, and where the site’s

nuclear wastes are to go. DOE’s estimates have shown large cost increases

and schedule extensions—as well as variations—since DOE first reported

them to the Congress in 1978, as part of congressional deliberations

leading to enactment of the 1980 West Valley Act. In 1978, the estimated

cleanup cost was $180 million, or about $1.1 billion in year-2000 dollars,

with cleanup completion in 1990.37 These were preliminary estimates,

made before the cleanup challenge at the site was fully understood.

Estimates in the 1990s have shown considerably greater costs. These cost

estimates also have varied by billions of dollars, and the completion

schedule by decades, depending on the programmatic assumptions made.

DOE’s current estimate of total cleanup costs is about $4.5 billion, with

site closure by 2041. The various estimates are listed in table 1.

 37 In 1978, the Department estimated initial costs could range between $41.6 million and

$1.1 billion (in 1978 dollars) depending on the cleanup option chosen. As we stated in our

report, Status of Efforts to Clean Up the Shut-Down Western New York Nuclear Service

Center (EMD-80-69, June 6, 1980), most parties, at that time, agreed that a more reasonable

initial cost estimate would be about $180 million (in 1978 dollars). The Department also

estimated in the 1978 report that the cleanup could begin as early as October 1980 and,

depending on the cleanup option chosen, be completed within about 10 years, or by about

1990.

West Valley’s Total

Cleanup Costs and

Schedule Cannot Be

Estimated With

Reasonable Certainty

Until the Future of the

Site Is Agreed On
Page 32 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Table 1: Changes in Estimated Total West Valley Cleanup Costs and Completion Schedule

Dollars in billions (Present Value 2000)

Date and source of DOE

estimate

Estimated total

cleanup cost

Estimated

completion date

Cost above

1978 estimate

Years more than

1978 estimate

Nov. 1978: Study supporting the

West Valley Acta

$1.1 1990

June 1996: Baseline Reportb 5.8 2025 $4.7 35

July 1996: Ten- Year Planc 3.8 2005 2.7 15

Dec. 1997: Draft 2006 Pland 3.8 2005 2.7 15

Feb. 1998: Paths to Closure

Updatee

3.8 2006 2.8 16

July 1999: Paths to Closure

Updatef

4.3 2015 3.3 25

May 2000: Current plang4.5 2041h3.5 51

a

The estimates were contained in the study, Western New York Nuclear Services Center Study, TID28905-2, made before the West Valley Act was enacted. The estimates were preliminary, based on a

study that assumed cleanup could begin as early as October 1980. The estimates used available

information and experience rather than detailed designs. In the study, DOE identified technical

options for cleaning up the facilities and nuclear waste at the site. Included in the study were cost and

schedule estimates associated with these options. We examined these options closely, focusing on

the cost estimates in the study that were most consistent with the Department’s currently preferred

cleanup approach—a degree of aggressive on-site cleanup, with some radioactive contamination left

in place under long-term stewardship. We converted the 1978 estimates to present value 2000

dollars, resulting in estimated cleanup costs of about $1.1 billion. Similarly, we focused on schedule

estimates in the study that were most consistent with DOE’s currently planned cleanup approach,

resulting in an approximate cleanup start date of October 1980 and an approximate completion date

of September 1990.

b

Baseline Environmental Management Report. The report, called BEMR, averaged the cost of several

cleanup alternatives reported in the West Valley Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Jan. 1996,

DOE/EIS-0226-D.

c

Ten-Year Plan. The plan was used to support DOE’s fiscal year 1998 budget formulation.

d

Fiscal year 1997-98 Draft 2006 Plan. The plan was used to support DOE’s fiscal year 1999 budget

formulation and became known as the Accelerated Clean-up: Paths to Closure report.

e

Fiscal year 1998 Accelerated Clean-up: Paths to Closure (ACPC) Update. The plan was used to

support DOE’s fiscal year 2000 budget formulation.

f

Fiscal year 1999 ACPC Update. The plan was an internal DOE document used to support DOE’s

fiscal year 2001 budget formulation. Estimated completion date based on funding at a higher, more

efficient level. Funding at a level closer to actual current appropriations was estimated to extend the

completion date to 2023.

g

Fiscal year 2000 Integrated Planning Accountability and Budgeting System (IPABS) Planning Module

Update. The plan was an internal document used to support the fiscal year 2002 budget formulation

and is consistent with implementation of DOE’s currently envisioned action alternative for site closure.

We did not include in the table a publicly released DOE estimate, in the report entitled Status Report

on Paths to Closure, March 2000, which was based on 1999 data.

h

Estimated completion date, based on the most likely funding level, is 2023 for all tasks except

disposition of high-level waste canisters. DOE’s plan is to ship the canisters to an off-site federal

repository from 2036 to 2040, with site closure in 2041.
Page 33 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

As shown in table 1, the initial cost estimate has more than quadrupled,

from about $1.1 billion to about $4.5 billion in the latest estimate, while the

initial time estimated to complete the cleanup has increased by about 50

years (from 1990 to 2041). Several factors contributed to these changes.

The initial 1978 DOE estimates were preliminary, using available

information and experience rather than detailed designs. Furthermore,

according to DOE officials, when the initial estimate was made of project

costs and cleanup duration, it did not adequately consider the changing

environmental landscape for this first-of-a-kind project and did not

anticipate the complex regulatory environment and laws that have since

come into existence. In addition, as we previously reported, DOE

management problems occurred at West Valley in the 1980s, resulting in

cost and schedule overruns.

As also shown in the table, during the 1990s, the estimated costs for West

Valley varied, with totals ranging from $3.8 billion to $5.8 billion.

Moreover, different estimates both extended and shortened the estimated

schedule, with the estimated increase in the duration of the cleanup

ranging from 15 to 51 years. These different totals reflect different,

evolving departmental initiatives to quantify the total costs and schedule

of the Department’s cleanup effort across the nuclear complex. Causes of

variations in the estimates have included different estimation methods and

varying major assumptions related to cleanup and nuclear waste disposal.

For example, DOE officials said the June 1996 Baseline Report estimates

for West Valley were part of a first departmental attempt to quantify the

extent of the cleanup problem complexwide, and these estimates were not

precise. They were taken from data supporting the site’s 1996 draft EIS

and simply averaged the cost of several cleanup alternatives shown in the

draft.

The July 1996, 1997, and 1998 estimates for West Valley were lower than

the Baseline Report estimates, in part because they were based on

departmental guidance that called upon DOE’s sites, including West

Valley, to use ambitious assumptions aimed at accelerating the cleanup

and reducing costs within current budget trends. For example, these

estimates assumed an accelerated period of about 10 years to complete

the cleanup, off-site interim storage of the high-level waste canisters, and

generally flat funding of $123 million annually. Accelerating the cleanup

schedule at West Valley without funding adjustments created a substantial

planning gap between funding needs and availability within the given time

frame. The Department proposed closing the gap through cost savings

generated by conducting cleanup projects more efficiently. However,

according to DOE West Valley officials, the idea of accelerating the
Page 34 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

cleanup of West Valley to achieve completion in 2005 was not realistic and

could not be implemented.

The current estimate of about $4.5 billion with completion in 2041 is based

on DOE’s latest cleanup plans for West Valley. DOE officials said this

estimate is reasonable, solidly grounded, and the best available based on

known information. The estimate, according to these officials, includes

opportunities to lower the cost as well as areas that could end up costing

more. For example, the current estimate indicates completion of major

cleanup tasks by the mid-2020s, and assumes that the high-level waste

canisters cannot be shipped to a permanent off-site repository until 2036

through 2040 (with site closure in 2041). According to DOE, although this

time frame assumes a lack of earlier access to a prospective permanent

repository, such as Yucca Mountain, earlier shipment is a possibility if a

valid contract assigning disposal costs can be signed with New York State.

Shipping them earlier, such as in the mid-2020s, would lower the total cost

of the cleanup. Conversely, some cleanup tasks, such as dealing with the

melter used in vitrification, might cost much more than currently

estimated because of uncertainty about how to conduct these tasks. DOE

officials recognize that the current estimate is uncertain, in part because it

does not reflect an agreed-upon cleanup level and site end use. Depending

on the cleanup level, on-site cleanup costs could vary widely, as illustrated

in the analysis done for DOE’s 1996 draft EIS for West Valley. In the draft

EIS, DOE outlined action alternatives ranging from limited remedial

actions, referred to as “in place stabilization” of the contamination (at

costs ranging from about $400 million to about $1.1 billion, depending on

specific options), to more extensive actions such as “on premises storage”

of the contamination in new facilities (at a cost of about $3.7 billion), to

full cleanup of the site to an unrestricted end state—referred to as the

“removal” option (at a cost of about $8.3 billion).38 A DOE official said that

until an appropriate end state for the site is agreed upon, any estimates of

total West Valley cleanup costs and completion date will not be entirely

credible.

 38 In 1996 dollars.
Page 35 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The problems DOE faces at West Valley reflect many of the same

dilemmas it faces elsewhere in the nuclear complex. West Valley is yet

another example of how complicated, uncertain, and subject to cost and

schedule changes the cleanup process can be, especially at technologically

difficult cleanup sites where an appropriate cleanup level and land use

have not been agreed upon and multiple types of contamination are

involved. In such circumstances, planners find it difficult to estimate with

a reasonable degree of certainty an individual cleanup project’s overall

costs and schedule. By extension, DOE’s ability to quantify with a degree

of certainty the costs and timetables for the cleanup across the entire

complex is to some degree in question—especially at other, larger DOE

sites that also lack fully agreed-upon cleanup levels and/or end states.

With regard to nuclear waste disposal, West Valley is part of an

approaching national decision on what to do with the over 200

underground tanks across the DOE complex and the traces of high-level

wastes left in them after vitrification. Are the tanks to be dug up, using

technologies that are still to be developed and that potentially require

significant expenditures, and removed to an as-yet-undetermined disposal

location, or can they be safely left in place and under long-term

stewardship? The Natural Resources Defense Council is currently

challenging in court DOE’s waste management order that could permit a

tank “entombment” strategy to be implemented at West Valley and

elsewhere.

Since the late 1980s, DOE has been committed to estimating total cleanup

costs and schedules complexwide. Such estimates are potentially useful to

the Department in planning for over 300 cleanup projects at its over 100

nuclear sites. The estimates are also useful to the Congress in fulfilling its

oversight responsibilities, and they help to inform the public about the

status of the cleanup program. These estimates have grown over time as

more is learned about the number of sites contaminated and the types of

contamination. However, as we have previously reported, these estimates

have varied considerably, and their reliability has been questioned. In April

1999, we reported that the uncertainty of DOE’s estimates of the cost and

schedule for the complexwide cleanup was a matter of concern and

depended on various programmatic assumptions.39 Such assumptions may

include funding levels, the facilities and wastes that are to be included in

 39 Nuclear Waste: DOE’s Accelerated Cleanup Strategy Has Benefits but Faces

Uncertainties (GAO/RCED-99-129, Apr. 30, 1999).

West Valley Reflects

DOE-Wide Cleanup

Dilemmas and Has

Implications for

National Decisions on

Nuclear Waste

Disposal

West Valley Reflects

Dilemmas in DOE’s

Complexwide Cleanup

Planning
Page 36 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

the scope of the analysis, the availability of waste disposal options, or

other factors.

West Valley’s recent widely varying cost and schedule estimates call into

question DOE’s estimates at other sites, especially those that lack agreedupon cleanup levels and land uses. Many sites across the complex lack a

final agreement with their regulators, such as EPA and the state, on the

cleanup levels that must be achieved—that is, “how clean is clean.”

Furthermore, two of the largest cleanup sites in the complex, Savannah

River and Hanford, have long-term cleanup goals that have been less than

completely defined. Hanford has a land use plan, but cleanup levels and

disposal standards remain to be established, and Savannah River has a

comprehensive site use plan, but land uses could change significantly as

they are further considered by interested parties. Moreover, like West

Valley, both sites face decisions on high-level waste disposal and the

disposition of their on-site underground storage tanks. The disposition of

these tanks—51 at Savannah River and 177 at Hanford—remains a

multibillion-dollar cost uncertainty. The estimated total costs at these two

sites alone will likely dominate DOE’s cleanup program for the foreseeable

future because they account for a major part of the cost of the entire

program. (In 1998, Hanford’s total costs were estimated at about $50

billion and Savannah River’s at about $30 billion, compared with a thenestimated complexwide cost of $147 billion.)

On a complexwide basis, DOE’s cleanup cost and schedule estimates are

likely to be revised as more becomes known at many sites about the levels

of cleanup that must be reached and the technologies to be used. In this

regard, the Department has made some recent strides in improving the

quality of its annual estimates of the costs and schedule for cleaning up

the complex. As we reported in 1998, DOE has called upon field offices to

provide more information on (1) the range of potential site cleanup

options for sites whose cleanup levels are uncertain and (2) long-term

maintenance and surveillance costs for sites that have been cleaned up.

The latest estimate, about $198 billion, is based on a range of from $184

billion to $212 billion. According to DOE, the range reflects uncertainties

recognized in the estimate and better communicates the uncertainties of

projects that are innovative and complex.40

 40 To obtain the estimates, DOE’s environmental management office analyzed field office

data to estimate projects’ base, high, and low costs, using a Monte Carlo model to find the

cost uncertainty range.
Page 37 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

West Valley also illustrates some of the dilemmas created by DOE’s

approach to funding the cleanup across the nuclear complex. DOE’s

current estimate for total West Valley cleanup costs is based on

maintaining funding for the foreseeable future at current levels—about

$107 million a year. This planning approach is referred to as “flat” funding.

According to DOE officials, DOE’s Ohio Area Office has implemented the

flat funding approach for West Valley and four other nuclear cleanup sites

in the region that it oversees.41 DOE Ohio and West Valley officials said

they do not consider the flat funding approach appropriate for West

Valley, but they said it is the policy direction of DOE headquarters, on the

basis of Office of Management and Budget direction. DOE Ohio and West

Valley officials said the Ohio office receives an annual cleanup funding

allocation for the five cleanup sites combined, including West Valley. In

recent years, these offices have worked within the current “flat” budget

estimates while at the same time working to accelerate the cleanup—an

ambitious undertaking.

Flat funding may not always be cost-effective. In fact, according to DOE

officials, the cost profile of cleanup projects is generally not flat: Often,

annual costs increase early in the project and are followed by declining

costs in later years. As a result, flat funding can add to overall costs and

extend the time needed for project completion. Ohio and West Valley DOE

officials agreed that flat funding may be a factor in the costs and time

required to complete the West Valley cleanup, but they said any extra

funds directed to West Valley could reduce the amount of funds directed

to one or more of the other sites overseen by the Ohio office. In 2000, a

departmental analysis done at West Valley showed that incrementally

higher funding for West Valley could help to complete the cleanup faster

and with substantial cost savings. Specifically, if the West Valley cleanup

could be funded at about $130 million annually from 2006 through 2013,

and at $135 million in 2014 and 2015, instead of $107 million for those

years, West Valley’s total cleanup costs could decrease by about $509

 41 During 1996-98, West Valley’s funding actually decreased, from $119 million a year, to

$118 million, to $114 million, and has been flat at $107 million for 1999 and 2000. It is

projected to be flat at $107 million for 2001 and 2002.

West Valley Illustrates

DOE-wide Cleanup

Funding Dilemmas
Page 38 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

million and essential cleanup tasks could be completed about 8 years

earlier.42

Funding constraints at West Valley are not unique. They reflect DOE’s

funding dilemma across the nuclear complex. Complexwide, the

Department has assumed that cleanup work will be funded annually at the

same level. This assumption is based on recent appropriations and Office

of Management and Budget guidance to promote balanced federal

budgets, according to DOE officials. For DOE’s nuclear cleanup program,

such an approach can result in a significant gap between the funds needed

for the complex cleanup versus the funds available, leading to cleanup

delays and cost growth. To illustrate, as we testified in June 2000,

projected annual cleanup needs for 2001 through 2010 at DOE’s Paducah,

Kentucky, uranium enrichment plant could exceed average annual funding

by many millions of dollars.43 This gap could delay the Paducah cleanup

and add to its overall costs. Extended across the complex, the costs

multiply. In 1998, DOE estimated a complexwide gap of $3.9 billion from

1999 to 2006 (in 1998 dollars), assuming flat funding of the Department’s

cleanup program at $5.75 billion a year. Our 1999 report on DOE’s

accelerated cleanup strategy questioned whether DOE sites could achieve

the assumed cleanup goals and schedule, given the flat funding

assumption. On the other hand, according to DOE, fiscal realities are likely

to prevent fully closing the gap between funding needs and available

funds.

As the first DOE location likely to have all of its on-site high-level waste

vitrified, West Valley is a potential early test case on the important issue of

tank entombment versus removal. According to DOE plans, a record of

decision on the disposition of the site’s high-level waste tanks could be

issued in 2005. At West Valley, four tanks are involved, but Hanford and

Savannah River, which are also involved in making tank disposition

decisions, have a combined total of over 200 tanks. At issue is whether

these tanks are to be dug up, at great potential expense, and removed to

 42 The estimated time saved excludes disposition of the high-level waste canisters. The

canisters are assumed to remain on-site in interim storage until shipment to a federal

repository between 2036 and 2040. Thus, final site closure would occur in 2041, even with

funding at a level somewhat above flat funding.

43 Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE’s Cleanup Plan for the Paducah, Kentucky, Site Faces

Uncertainties and Excludes Costly Activities (GAO/T-RCED-00-225, June 27, 2000).

West Valley Has

Implications for National

Decisionmaking on HighLevel Waste Disposal
Page 39 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

locations not yet chosen, or whether they can safely be left in place and

subjected to long-term stewardship.

Tank closure is addressed in DOE orders, as well as in NRC

decommissioning requirements and EPA and state of New York RCRA

closure requirements. A DOE radioactive waste management order

(O435.1) and accompanying manual provide a process that can result in

reclassification of high-level wastes, allowing for the possibility of

managing the wastes as low-level wastes. This could allow traces of the

high-level wastes to remain in place, entombed in the tanks. In the waste

management manual, these traces are referred to as “wastes incidental to

reprocessing.” With regard to Savannah River and Hanford, NRC has been

advising DOE on its methodology for classification and stabilization of

incidental waste. In the case of Hanford, NRC recommended three criteria

for categorizing the wastes as incidental. Under these criteria, first, the

wastes must be processed to remove key radionuclides to the maximum

extent technically and economically practical; second, it must be shown

that the wastes will be incorporated in a solid form at a concentration that

does not exceed applicable concentration limits in applicable regulations

(10 C.F.R., part 61); and third, the wastes must be managed pursuant to the

Atomic Energy Act to meet safety requirements comparable to the

performance objectives in the regulations (10 C.F.R., part 61, subpart C).

In the case of Savannah River, NRC in June 2000 approved a more riskinformed and performance-based approach in analyzing DOE’s

methodology, principally aimed at satisfying the first and third criteria. For

West Valley, NRC is considering whether to deal with the incidental waste

issue in its cleanup standards.

Dealing with the tanks at West Valley and elsewhere will be costly and

challenging. If West Valley follows these criteria and empties the site’s four

tanks as completely as technically feasible and at “economically practical”

costs, and leaves them in place, such a decision would preclude anything

approaching an unrestricted future use for the site. Conversely, according

to DOE estimates, if the wastes are removed off-site so that future use of

the site can be unrestricted, total cleanup costs for the site could roughly

double, to over $8 billion. Moreover, this estimate is very uncertain

because technologies for cutting the tanks up and removing them from the

ground have yet to be developed. By extension, at Savannah River and

Hanford, more extensive technological challenges and broader decisions

costing many more billions of dollars are at stake.

Any decision on what to do with the tanks will be controversial. Some

local interested parties appear to support to some degree DOE’s idea of
Page 40 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

entombing the West Valley tanks, recognizing that digging them up would

be costly, may not be technologically feasible, and would put workers and

the public at greater risk of radiation exposure. There is some indication

that New York State could agree to a form of tank entombment that would

involve something less than an unrestricted land use for the site. However,

the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority has said that if

incidental waste is to be left at West Valley, DOE should remain on-site to

administer long-term institutional controls. Some, including New York

State officials, have spoken in favor of the idea of monitored retrievable

storage of the tanks.44 On the other hand, according to the Natural

Resources Defense Council, the West Valley Act makes no provision for

incidental quantities of high-level wastes to be exempted from permanent

off-site disposal. The matter may be resolved in the courts. Currently, the

Natural Resources Defense Council is challenging in court DOE’s

radioactive waste management order that could permit a tank

“entombment” strategy to be implemented at Savannah River and other

DOE sites.45 In addition, according to a DOE official, there could be a legal

challenge to any record of decision at West Valley to entomb the site’s

high-level waste tanks.

Substantial cleanup progress has been made at West Valley, particularly

the successful vitrification of the site’s high-level wastes. However, several

factors are affecting the costs and pace of the remaining cleanup, and need

resolution. In particular, if the differences between DOE and New York

State on strategic issues affecting the site’s future continue, including

disagreements over their respective roles and responsibilities, they will

likely further limit the precision of cleanup planning and potentially add to

the costs and schedule for the West Valley cleanup. DOE and the state

have spent several years trying to resolve their differing views on their

long-term stewardship responsibilities at West Valley, particularly who will

pay for permanent disposal of the site’s vitrified wastes, and the extent to

 44 The local citizens’ task force has recommended that all wastes remaining at the site be

stored so they can be monitored and retrieved if the containment system and/or

institutional controls fail. The group does not want a permanent “monolith” built at the site.

DOE has supported this retrievable storage concept by developing a special grout (referred

to as “reversible”) with which the tanks would be filled. A DOE official at West Valley said

the grout is considered suitable for removal from the tanks, should they be dug up in the

future.

45 Also, the Natural Resources Defense Council has petitioned NRC to exercise what the

council interprets to be NRC licensing authority over the 51 tanks at Savannah River,

although NRC does not agree that it has such authority, as stated in the Federal Register on

Oct. 18, 2000.

Conclusions
Page 41 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

which the site is to be cleaned up. The recent breakdown in negotiations,

along with the historical federal-state conflict on who should take

responsibility for West Valley’s wastes, indicates to us that the two parties

simply may not be able to resolve these issues on their own. In addition,

the long-standing NRC-EPA disagreement on cleanup levels for NRClicensed sites could have ramifications for West Valley’s cleanup levels and

costs. In June 2000, we raised as a matter for congressional consideration

the need to clarify the two agencies’ regulatory responsibilities relating to

decommissioning NRC-licensed sites. In this context, specific steps by

EPA and NRC to avoid dually regulating West Valley are warranted.

Finally, a timely decision about the final disposition of West Valley’s highlevel and transuranic wastes could save hundreds of millions of dollars.

Because DOE and New York State appear to be unable to reach an

agreement on their future responsibilities under the West Valley Act, the

Congress should consider amending the act to clarify their

responsibilities—especially their respective stewardship responsibilities

for historical radioactive contamination left on-site and their financial

liabilities for fees that are to be paid for permanent disposal of high-level

waste in an off-site repository.

To help address NRC’s and EPA’s regulatory responsibilities at NRClicensed sites, we recommend that, specifically for West Valley, the

Chairman, NRC, and the Administrator, EPA, in coordination with New

York State, agree on how their different regulatory cleanup criteria should

apply to the site.

To resolve where West Valley’s high-level wastes should go, once DOE’s

and New York State’s stewardship and cost-sharing responsibilities have

been clarified, and potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars, we

recommend that the Secretary of Energy pursue the timely removal of onsite vitrified high-level wastes, where feasible, either directly to a

permanent repository, or to an interim site until a permanent repository is

available.

To clarify where West Valley’s transuranic wastes should go and

potentially save millions of dollars, we recommend that the Secretary of

Energy pursue timely removal of the site’s transuranic wastes to an

interim off-site storage location, or to WIPP for permanent disposal, as

appropriate, either through administrative action or by seeking an

amendment to the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act.

Matters for

Congressional

Consideration

Recommendations for

Executive Action
Page 42 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

We provided DOE, the New York State Energy Research and Development

Authority, NRC, and EPA with a draft of this report for their review and

comment. DOE found the report to be a credible synopsis and assessment

of the issues West Valley faces, while New York State concurred with the

report’s conclusions that clear radiological requirements, an agreed-upon

preferred cleanup alternative, and resolution of nuclear waste disposal

issues are critical to the success of the cleanup. However, in their

comments, DOE and New York State continued to differ on who should

assume ultimate responsibility for the wastes generated by past

commercial reprocessing at West Valley. For example, DOE stated that,

under the West Valley Act, it does not become the owner of the site and

that after site decommissioning it does not envision a continuous on-site

presence or long-term operational control there. DOE did say that in the

event it leaves wastes behind, in the interest of public health and

environmental protection, it would bear at least part of the financial

responsibility for monitoring any remedies it had put in place. In contrast,

New York State commented that one of the complicating factors at West

Valley has been the conflicting interests of the state as site owner and

DOE as site operator, and stated that one way to resolve conflicting

jurisdictions on-site would be for DOE to agree to assume title and

custody of the site pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.

Finally, the Department supported our recommendations concerning

regulatory cleanup standards and the disposal of transuranic wastes, but

disagreed with the recommendation on high-level waste disposal, stating

that the Department has no disposal obligation until New York State

enters into a disposal contract under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In this

regard, we have modified the wording of our recommendation to more

clearly recognize that resolving the question of responsibility for the highlevel wastes is part of any long-term solution regarding their disposal.

DOE and New York State also provided technical clarifications on the

draft report. NRC’s and EPA’s comments were limited to technical

clarifications—NRC’s by letter and EPA’s by e-mail. We incorporated all

four agencies’ clarifications in the final report where appropriate. (The

DOE, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and

NRC comment letters are included in apps. III, IV, and V.)

As arranged with your offices, unless you publicly announce its contents

earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days after the

Agency Comments

and Our Evaluation
Page 43 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies to the Honorable

Spencer Abraham, Secretary of Energy; the Honorable Richard Meserve,

Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Honorable Christine

Todd Whitman, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency. We will

also make copies available to others upon request.

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me on (202)

512-3841. Major contributors to this report were James Noel, Dave Brack,

Michael Sagalow, and Ginger Tierney.

(Ms.) Gary L. Jones,

Director, Natural Resources

and Environment
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

Page 44 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

As requested, we examined (1) the status of the cleanup, (2) factors that

may be hindering the cleanup, (3) the degree of certainty in the

Department of Energy’s (DOE) estimates of total cleanup costs and

schedule, and (4) the degree to which the West Valley cleanup may reflect,

or have implications for, larger cleanup challenges facing DOE and the

nation. Specifically, to address the status of the cleanup, we interviewed

and obtained documents from several federal, New York State, and local

area officials associated with West Valley. Specifically, we spoke with

representatives of, and/or obtained documents from, the following

agencies:

• DOE, including the headquarters Offices of Environmental

Management, Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Environment,

Safety, and Health, General Counsel, and Inspector General; and the

DOE Ohio and West Valley field offices;

• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA), including headquarters and regional officials

of both agencies; and

• New York State’s Energy Research and Development Authority and

Department of Environmental Conservation.

In addition, we interviewed representatives of, and/or obtained documents

from, the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes, the Citizen’s Task

Force on West Valley, the Seneca Nation of Indians, and the Natural

Resources Defense Council. To obtain information on past site status, we

examined several GAO reports issued since 1977, as well as historical DOE

reports. In addition, in order to independently assess DOE’s

environmental, safety, and health performance at West Valley, we talked to

a range of federal, state, and local officials and examined DOE and NRC

safety and oversight reports. In addition, we examined DOE data on West

Valley in several departmental databases related to environmental, safety,

and health matters.

To address factors that may be hindering the cleanup, we interviewed

and/or obtained documentation from representatives of many of the

above-listed federal, state, and local agencies and other interested parties.

Using this documentary and testimonial evidence, we examined in

particular the pace of the National Environmental Policy Act’s compliance

process at West Valley, as well as matters at issue in negotiations between

DOE and the state of New York on their responsibilities for the site. Our

review was limited in that these negotiations were and continue to be

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology

Page 45 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

considered confidential between the two parties. As a result, while we had

access to various details of the negotiations, this report does not fully

describe the negotiating positions of the two parties. Additionally, we

documented the status of NRC’s development of cleanup standards for the

site, as well as the current status and potential future disposition of the

site’s high-level and transuranic wastes.

To address the degree of certainty in DOE’s cleanup cost and schedule

estimates, we interviewed DOE headquarters, Ohio, and West Valley

officials and obtained documentation from them. To compare DOE’s cost

estimates to clean up the West Valley site that were made at different

times since 1978, we converted the estimates of future costs to year-2000,

present value dollars, using a 5.5-percent discount rate (i.e., the U.S. 30-

year Treasury bond rate at the time of our conversion). For all cost

estimates except the 1978 estimate, we used annual cost data (annual cost

data for the 1978 estimate was not given) to make the conversion process

more precise. To further obtain meaningful comparisons, we added

historical annual costs to any DOE estimate that did not already include

these costs, and future valued (i.e., escalated) all historical costs to year

2000 dollars using the actual U.S. 30-year Treasury bond rate for the

respective year of each estimate. For the 1978 estimate, we future-valued

the lump-sum amount to year-2000 dollars, using an 8.5-percent rate (i.e.,

the actual 1978 30-year U.S. Treasury bond rate). Because the 1978

estimate was a lump sum, its conversion to year-2000 dollars slightly

biases upward the resulting year-2000 cost estimate, thereby reducing the

estimated increase of the other cost estimates above the 1978 estimate.

To address the degree to which the West Valley cleanup may reflect, or

have implications for, larger cleanup challenges facing DOE and the

nation, we compared our analysis of West Valley with analyses we and

others have performed of DOE’s environmental management and nuclear

waste disposal programs. We used this comparison to develop

observations about West Valley’s cleanup in context with the cleanup

challenges at other DOE sites.

We performed our review from June 2000 through April 2001 in

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Appendix II: West Valley Time Line

Page 46 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Appendix II: West Valley Time Line
Appendix III: Comments From the

Department of Energy

Page 47 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Appendix III: Comments From the

Department of Energy

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in

the report text appear at

the end of this letter.

See comment 1.
Appendix III: Comments From the

Department of Energy

Page 48 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

See comment 4.

See comment 3.

See comment 2.
Appendix III: Comments From the

Department of Energy

Page 49 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste
Appendix III: Comments From the

Department of Energy

Page 50 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The following are GAO’s comments on the letter dated April 13, 2001, from

the Acting Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management,

Department of Energy.

1. We agree that the West Valley Act does not require DOE and New York

State to reach an agreement on the overall future of the site or how DOE

should complete its responsibilities there. We also agree that the National

Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) encourages DOE and the state to

cooperate on environmental decisionmaking. Accordingly, wording in the

final report has been clarified. Furthermore, we believe DOE’s stated

policy of cooperation with the state in addressing strategic issues related

to the West Valley cleanup—and its specific pursuit of negotiations with

the state—is a preferable course of action as well as key to progress with

the cleanup. Nevertheless, because DOE and the state appear to be unable

to reach agreement on these strategic issues, we have raised the matter of

clarifying their on-site responsibilities for congressional attention.

2. We agree that DOE does not become the site owner after the cleanup is

completed, and wording has been clarified in the final report to reflect

DOE’s views. However, we believe DOE’s ongoing and prospective

cleanup tasks, as the Department views them under NEPA and the West

Valley Act, are inevitably related to West Valley’s overall future—its

ultimate end state and land use. For example, if DOE’s mandated tasks are

to involve leaving the high-level waste tanks in place, this could preclude

achieving an end state for the site that would permit unrestricted land use.

Considering this, we believe it was appropriate that DOE and New York

State, in their recent unsuccessful negotiations, attempted to reach

agreement on the site’s overall future—in the form of a preferred cleanup

alternative or “vision” for the site.

3. We have clarified wording in the final report to reflect DOE’s views.

Nevertheless, from reading both DOE’s and the New York State Energy

Research and Development Authority’s comments on our draft report, it

remains unclear to us if or when the proposal will be revived and/or formal

negotiations resumed.

4. We have modified the wording of our recommendation on high-level

wastes to more clearly recognize that resolving the question of ultimate

responsibility for the wastes is part of any long-term solution regarding

their disposal.
Appendix IV: Comments From New York State

Page 51 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Appendix IV: Comments From New York

State

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in

the report text appear at

the end of this letter.
Appendix IV: Comments From New York State

Page 52 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

See comment 1.
Appendix IV: Comments From New York State

Page 53 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The following are GAO’s comments on the letter dated April 11, 2001, from

the Program Director, West Valley Site Management Program, New York

State Energy Research and Development Authority.

1. We agree with this comment about the use of the term “cleanup level”

and have changed the title of the final report and selected language

throughout the report.
Appendix V: Comments From the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission

Page 54 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

Appendix V: Comments From the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission

See comment 1.

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in

the report text appear at

the end of this letter.
Appendix V: Comments From the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission

Page 55 GAO-01-314 Nuclear Waste

The following are GAO’s comments on the letter dated April 13, 2001, from

the Executive Director for Operations, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

1. Where appropriate, wording reflecting NRC’s clarifications has been

added to the final report.

(141462)

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