Nuclear Security: DOE Needs Better Information to Guide Its Expanded Recovery of Sealed Radiological Sources
Released: 2005-09-22T00:00:00

Letter

Background

The loss of control of sealed radiological sources can arise from their abandonment, misplacement, or theft. In such cases, there is a risk of either the inadvertent or intentional malevolent human exposure to radioactive materials in these sources. Figure 1 shows a graphic representation of the ways in which the loss of control of sealed radiological sources can occur.

Since September 11, 2001, international and U.S. agencies have taken additional steps to increase the safety and security of radioactive materials, particularly sealed radiological sources. Between 2002 and 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) held various meetings and conferences to discuss how the agency’s Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources might be revised in light of new security concerns. One result of these gatherings was the development of a categorization scheme for sealed radiological sources in terms of the potential risks associated with their malevolent uses. The first three of the five source categories identified by IAEA, which are considered to pose the most significant risk to individuals, society, and the environment, are listed in an annex to the Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct recommends that IAEA member states establish a national registry that tracks, at a minimum, the first two source categories. Table 1 contains a listing of the radionuclides and their curie levels that are presented in the IAEA Code of Conduct.

In May 2003, a DOE/NRC interagency working group—which was formed to address security concerns over the radioactive materials that could be used in a radiological dispersal device—issued a report that, among other things, recommended that actions be taken to develop a national threat policy based on vulnerability assessments, a national source tracking system, and an integrated national strategy for disposing of unsecured sealed radiological sources. Following this DOE/NRC report, NRC adopted the nonlegally binding IAEA Code of Conduct as a basis for (1) determining which licensees may need additional protective measures for the sealed radiological sources in their possession and (2) defining the scope of a national source tracking system. NRC found that the curie thresholds for radionuclides in the sources identified by the DOE/NRC interagency working group were similar enough to the Code of Conduct categories to warrant adoption of the IAEA source categorization scheme to better align domestic and international efforts to increase the safety and security of sealed radiological sources.

NRC and DOE have since engaged in separate efforts to (1) assess the vulnerability of facilities that contain sealed radiological sources within their jurisdictions, (2) promulgate new security measures, and (3) begin systematically tracking some of these sources. According to NRC officials, NRC has been working with the Agreement States since January 2002, and with licensees since September 2002, using a risk informed approach to enhance the regulatory requirements applicable to high-risk radioactive material. In June 2003 and January 2004, NRC issued its first set of protective measures to large irradiators and device manufacturers and distributors, respectively. In January 2004, NRC and the Agreement States began to consider the need for additional protective measures for other licensees. This process has involved several iterations of vulnerability assessments of licensee sites that have devices or use applications containing IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources, such as teletherapy, gamma knife, well-logging devices, and self-shielded irradiators. On September 6, 2005, NRC announced that over approximately the next 90 days, affected licensees will receive orders from the agency spelling out increased controls for certain radioactive materials. Over the same period, individual Agreement States will issue their licensees legally binding requirements essentially identical to NRC’s orders. Materials covered by these requirements will be consistent with the IAEA Code of Conduct. Regarding source tracking, in November 2003, NRC, with the assistance of the Agreement States, identified and initially surveyed approximately 2,600 entities licensed to possess IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources. The resulting interim inventory will supplement other information NRC intends to use in developing a national source tracking system. Regarding DOE efforts, DOE officials told us that various department offices have been involved in developing, reviewing, and issuing domestic and international guidance related to the security of sealed radiological sources. Moreover, DOE has established its own source tracking system—that is, the Radioactive Source Registry and Tracking System—which, among other things, includes the unwanted sealed radiological sources that DOE has recovered from licensees.

In addition to securing and tracking sealed radiological sources, IAEA and NRC support the disposal of unwanted sources and other radioactive waste. IAEA contends that although waste may be safely stored for decades, as long as institutional controls are maintained, progress must be made toward permanent disposal. According to the Director General for Energy and Transport, European Commission, “the sources at greatest risk of being lost from regulatory control are disused (unwanted) sources held in local storage at the user’s premises waiting for final disposal or return to manufacturer.” In response to an international joint convention addressing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste management, IAEA set forth the elements of an effective national legal and organizational structure that would provide for the safe and secure management of radioactive waste by appropriate national authorities. One of the key indicators of such a structure is that “the amount of waste in storage awaiting disposal should depend only upon operational considerations…and should not include a backlog due to an inability (technical, financial, organizational, etc.) to reduce the backlog.” NRC also supports the disposal of low-level radioactive waste but has placed no time limits on storage, as long as the radioactive material is safe and secure. NRC contends that it is acceptable to allow some licensees to store a backlog of sources in instances where a disposal option for this waste is not available to them.

In August 2005, the President signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which, among other things, addressed the safe disposal of GTCC waste and nuclear facility and materials security. The act requires DOE to prepare plans for the continued recovery of sealed radiological sources and to report on its efforts to develop a GTCC waste disposal site. Other provisions call for NRC to issue regulations establishing a mandatory tracking system for radiation sources in the United States and to chair a task force on radiation source protection and security. The task force, comprised of NRC, DOE and other federal agencies, in consultation with other groups, is to evaluate and provide recommendations relating to the security of radiation sources in the United States from potential terrorist threats, including acts of sabotage or theft or the use of radiation sources in a radiological dispersal device.

DOE Has Increased Emphasis on Its Source Recovery Project and Begun Assessing Options for Disposing of GTCC Waste

DOE has placed increased emphasis on its source recovery project and has begun to assess disposal options for GTCC waste. DOE has realigned its source recovery project within NNSA to more effectively respond to both domestic and international threats posed by unwanted sealed radiological sources. Further, DOE has accelerated its recovery efforts, surpassing an earlier source recovery goal, and has made progress in resolving a storage space shortage at its facilities that has slowed the recovery of certain unwanted sealed radiological sources. Finally, DOE has begun preparing an environmental impact statement to assess possible disposal options for GTCC waste. However, difficulties in estimating current GTCC waste storage and future waste volumes, especially from sealed radiological sources, will complicate this effort. Further, DOE has not yet determined when a permanent GTCC waste disposal facility will be available.

DOE Transferred Responsibility for the Source Recovery Project to NNSA

To better respond to the security threats posed by unwanted sealed radiological sources both within the United States and abroad, in October 2003, DOE realigned management responsibilities for its source recovery project from the Office of Environmental Management to NNSA. This realignment was, in part, a response to a recommendation to the Secretary of Energy that we made in our April 2003 report that the priority given to its Off-Site Source Recovery Project be commensurate with the threat posed by some unwanted sealed radiological sources. Subsequently, NNSA established the Nuclear and Radiological Threat Reduction Task Force, under the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, to unite all of the department’s radiological threat reduction efforts. One of the principal missions of this task force is to identify; secure; and store, on an interim basis, radioactive materials that could be used as a radiological weapon. In May 2004, DOE announced the creation of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which further elevated the importance of the task force and DOE’s recovery of sealed radiological sources. This initiative was later institutionalized in the Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction, with a domestic component, the U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, and an international component, the International Radiological Threat Reduction Program. The Off-Site Source Recovery Project was subsumed under the U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, but the program retained Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel to continue the source recovery effort.

DOE Accelerated Its Efforts to Recover Unwanted Sealed Radiological Sources

DOE accelerated the recovery of unwanted sealed radiological sources beginning in late 2002. As we reported in April 2003, DOE’s ability to meet planned recovery activities was largely facilitated by supplemental congressional funding and by the urging of NRC to accelerate recovery efforts in light of the events of September 11, 2001. In August 2002, the Congress provided an additional $10 million to DOE’s Off-Site Source Recovery Project to recover 5,000 unwanted sealed radiological sources over the following 18 months. Between October 1, 2002, and March 31, 2004, DOE recovered 5,529 of these sources, exceeding its recovery goal and more than doubling the number of sources previously recovered since 1996. As of June 7, 2005, DOE had recovered 10,806 of these sources. According to the source recovery project leader, the bulk of the remaining excess and unwanted sealed radiological sources in the United States should be recovered in the next 2 years. Table 2 contains a summary of DOE-recovered sealed radiological sources, by radionuclide, as of June 7, 2005.

DOE has maintained its source recovery project efforts through annual and supplemental appropriations. In our April 2003 report, we recommended that the Secretary of Energy ensure that adequate resources be devoted to covering the costs of recovering and storing unwanted sealed radiological sources as quickly as possible. In a September 2004 congressional hearing, the director of DOE’s Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction testified that the department had increased funding for the source recovery project and had committed funds for continuing these efforts. The director stated that the fiscal year 2004 program budget was $1.96 million, not including about $3.49 million that was added to the budget to respond in part to unexpected requests from NRC to recover sources of security concern. In fiscal year 2005, the source recovery project budget was increased to $5.6 million; for fiscal year 2006, DOE has requested $12.8 million, in part, to better fund the expanded scope of the U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program. The source recovery project leader has estimated an average recovery cost of $3,000 per source, on the basis of the initial 10,000 sources recovered, not including commercial disposal costs for certain sources.

DOE plans to continue recovering unwanted sealed radiological sources, at least until a GTCC waste disposal site is available. In our April 2003 report, we recommended that the Secretary of Energy develop a plan to ensure the continued recovery and storage of unwanted sealed radiological sources until a GTCC waste disposal site is available. We reported that DOE used several sources of information and made three key assumptions when projecting the anticipated need to recover 14,309 sources between fiscal years 1999 and 2010. The assumptions were that (1) a permanent disposal site for the sources would be available by fiscal year 2007; (2) the Off-Site Source Recovery Project would continue to recover sources from certain holders of sources during a transition period from fiscal years 2007 through 2010; and (3) after fiscal year 2010, all unwanted sealed radiological sources would be shipped by their owners to a disposal site, and the Off- Site Source Recovery Project would cease operations. However, according to the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, these assumptions are no longer used by the department because the lack of a firm date for when a GTCC waste disposal site will be available means that DOE cannot determine when it will cease recovering unwanted sealed radiological sources from licensees. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires DOE to submit a plan to the Congress that ensures the continued recovery and storage of unwanted sealed radiological sources that pose a security threat until a permanent GTCC waste disposal facility is available. Further, this DOE manager told us that source recovery project personnel may still be needed to help some licensees to meet the packaging requirements of any future GTCC waste disposal facility.

DOE Has Made Progress in Resolving a Storage Space Shortage That Has Slowed Recovery of Some Sealed Radiological Sources

DOE has taken actions to address the storage space shortage that has prevented the recovery of certain types of unwanted sealed radiological sources. We reported in April 2003 that DOE had inadequate storage capacity to meet the higher security needs for recovered sealed radiological sources containing plutonium-239, and lacked a means for temporarily storing sources containing strontium-90 and cesium-137. We recommended, among other things, that the Secretary of Energy take immediate action to provide storage space for these sources at a secure DOE facility. According to the director of DOE’s Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction, as of September 2004, DOE had developed sufficient storage space at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada Test Site to recover more than 260 plutonium-239 sealed radiological sources registered by licensees for collection. According to the source recovery project team leader, DOE’s plan has been to recover over 100 remaining plutonium-239 registered sources, representing approximately 60 drums of waste; ship them to the Nevada Test Site; and then incrementally transfer them to the Los Alamos National Laboratory as space is made available from the shipment of the existing stored plutonium-239 sources to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. WIPP will only accept sources that are shipped from Los Alamos. Implementation of this plan, however, has been delayed pending final approvals to ship these sources between locations.

Additional progress has been made in addressing the storage issues that relate to unwanted strontium-90, cesium-137, and some cobalt-60 sealed radiological sources. According to the source recovery project team leader, DOE has recovered a strontium-90 radioisotopic thermoelectric generator that was owned by the department and used as a remote power supply and disposed of the generator at the Nevada Test Site. DOE also has recovered six of these devices that were commercially owned and is storing them at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, pending approval for disposal as waste. Regarding the cesium-137 sealed radiological sources, the source recovery project has recycled 5 large cesium-137 irradiators to commercial firms. DOE has also contracted to recover the remaining 14 registered irradiators by the end of fiscal year 2005. Moreover, the team leader told us that the source recovery project plans to collect 221 cobalt-60 sources from a university this summer and to dispose of them at the Nevada Test Site as DOE-owned nuclear material.

DOE Is Preparing an Environmental Impact Statement for GTCC Waste Disposal Options, but Estimating Storage and Future Waste Volumes Will Be Difficult

DOE has begun to take action to identify a suitable location for the disposal of GTCC waste, but producing useful estimates of the current storage and future generation of this waste will be difficult. We reported in April 2003 that DOE had not made progress toward providing for a permanent disposal facility for the nation’s GTCC waste, and that it was unlikely to provide such a facility by fiscal year 2007 because developing a disposal site for this waste was considered a low priority within the department. We recommended that the Secretary of Energy initiate a process to develop a permanent disposal facility for GTCC waste, including empowering an office to take on this responsibility. In September 2004, DOE took a first step in this direction by transferring responsibility for assessing disposal options for GTCC waste from its Office of Environment, Safety, and Health to its Office of Environmental Management. With this authority and the heightened need to take action, on May 11, 2005, the Office of Environmental Management published an advance notice in the Federal Register of its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for GTCC waste disposal. DOE now anticipates that the actual notice of intent to prepare the EIS will be issued in the fall of 2005, followed by public meetings to further define the scope of the EIS and to identify significant issues to be addressed. The DOE document manager for the EIS told us that after the notice of intent is issued, the process of preparing the EIS could take 2 years. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires that, within 1 year, DOE report to the Congress on the estimated costs and a proposed schedule to complete both the EIS and a record of decision for a permanent disposal facility for GTCC waste. Moreover, before DOE makes a final decision on the long-term disposal alternative or alternatives to be implemented, this act requires DOE to prepare a report to the Congress describing all alternatives under consideration, including recommendations for ensuring the safe disposal of GTCC waste, and then to await action by the Congress. Therefore, it is not possible for DOE to determine when a permanent disposal facility will be available for GTCC waste.

In his September 2004 congressional testimony, the director of DOE’s Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction, stated that the EIS for GTCC waste disposal will include an analysis of waste inventories, long- term disposition alternatives, and resource requirements—as well as an assessment of legislative, regulatory, and licensing requirements. According to the director, the broad scope of the EIS should enable DOE to consider any new or existing site, facility, and disposal method for GTCC waste. Possible locations and disposal options include commercial, DOE, or other governmental facilities and private land. The disposal methods examined will range from deep geologic disposal to enhanced near-surface disposal, depending on the type of GTCC waste.

In completing the EIS, DOE plans to inventory the GTCC waste in storage at licensee and DOE facilities as well as estimate the waste expected to be generated in the future. According to the DOE document manager for the EIS, the department will obtain information on nuclear utility and DOE GTCC waste that is currently in storage and will estimate future volumes over the next 30 to 50 years on the basis of a representative sample of some nuclear power plants that are being decommissioned, and from existing DOE databases. For nonutility licensees, the information on the storage and projected generation of GTCC waste will be more speculative. This official said that DOE has selected a contractor to update the estimates made in a 1994 DOE report that the department now considers outdated. DOE asked the contractor to begin with the methodology used in the 1994 report to estimate current GTCC waste storage and to project future generation of these wastes by nonutility licensees, rather than attempt to survey all NRC and Agreement State licensees that might possess these radioactive materials.

Attempting to obtain information on nonutility licensee storage of GTCC waste that can be used to estimate future generation of GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources will be especially difficult. Of the three types of GTCC waste, the second largest volume behind activated metals is from sealed radiological sources. Uncertainties surround producing these estimates, such as (1) how to determine the quantities of unwanted sealed radiological sources in storage and (2) how much waste and what class of waste might be generated once these sources are packaged for disposal. One estimating problem is that there is currently no standard process by which licensees declare their sealed radiological sources as disused (unwanted). According to an NRC official, sealed radiological sources would not be considered waste, even if they are stored unused by a licensee, until the licensee has determined that they are no longer useful. In addition, sealed radiological sources that are no longer useful may be returned to the source manufacturer or allowed to decrease in radioactivity concentration while in storage so that they can be disposed as a lower level waste class. Because licensees typically do not declare their disused (unwanted) sources as waste until they are packaged and ready for shipment to a waste broker or disposal site, it will be difficult for DOE to project when this type of waste might need disposal in a GTCC waste disposal facility.

Another uncertainty in estimating the future quantities of GTCC waste is that the volume of waste generated by a small sealed radiological source is determined by the size of its disposal container and not by the size of the source or number of sources in the container. Disused sources are typically placed in 30-gallon or 55-gallon disposal drums. The number of sources put into one drum and the packing materials used are affected by the acceptance criteria of the disposal site. Figure 2 shows a sequence of photographs depicting source recovery project personnel removing a 5- curie, plutonium-239/beryllium source and repackaging it into a 55-gallon drum especially designed to meet the acceptance criteria at WIPP. Source recovery project personnel told us that these drums cost between $5,000 and $6,000 each. The sealed radiological source held in pliers in the first photograph is clearly a fraction of the size of the 55-gallon disposal drum.

Figures 3 through 5 show photographs that illustrate the scale of sealed radiological sources relative to their devices as well as how the sources or their devices are packaged into more traditional disposal drums.

Yet another uncertainty in projecting the future volume of GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources is that different types of radionuclides can comprise the sources used in a device, and, depending on the radionuclide used, the age of the source, and how the source is packaged for disposal, the device can fall into different classes of waste. For example, as shown in table 4 in appendix II, six different radionuclides can be used as the source in an industrial radiography device. Further, the sources that can be used in this industrial radiography device can produce non-GTCC and GTCC waste, depending in part on how much radioactivity remains in the source when it is disposed of and how the source is packaged. For example, a 5- curie, cesium-137 sealed radiological source that is used in a device might fall into a GTCC waste class when packaged if little of the source is depleted; but once it becomes unwanted and then packaged in a 55-gallon disposal drum with nonradioactive filler material, it might fall into the non- GTCC waste class because its radioactivity, as averaged over the entire volume of the drum, would be lower.

DOE Expanded the Scope of Its Source Recovery Project to Include Non-GTCC Waste, Which Could Increase Project Expenditures

DOE has expanded its source recovery efforts to include all sealed radiological sources that could present a threat, a change that could increase project expenditures. DOE’s source recovery project now includes, among other activities, the recovery and commercial disposal of non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources that pose a health, safety, security, or environmental threat. The recovery and commercial disposal of more of these types of sealed radiological sources from licensees that cannot afford to dispose of them today, in addition to the recovery of higher radioactive sources, is likely to increase DOE project expenditures. Further, DOE may need to recover even more non- GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources in the future if licensees in many states lose access to the only commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal site where they can currently dispose of higher radioactive non-GTCC waste (classes B and C waste). This increased recovery of non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources will place greater demands on source recovery project expenditures because of impediments to DOE’s recouping recovery costs from licensees that could otherwise cover their source disposal costs if there were disposal availability. In the absence of access to commercial disposal, DOE anticipates the need to indefinitely store the recovered non-GTCC waste until a commercial disposal option becomes available. DOE’s current policy does not include using DOE sites to permanently dispose of this waste because, among other reasons, it does not want to undermine the authority the Congress gave to the states to provide disposal availability for non-GTCC waste.

DOE Has Recovered and Commercially Disposed of Some Non-GTCC Waste

The expanded scope of the source recovery project now includes, among other activities, the collection and commercial disposal of non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources that pose a health, safety, security, or environmental threat. Responsibility for the safe management and disposal of these radioactive materials is normally held by those entities that NRC or the Agreement States license to possess and use these materials. However, in some cases, licensees are unable to (1) ensure the safe and secure use of these materials or (2) cover the disposal costs of their unwanted sealed radiological sources. For example, according to the source recovery project leader, at the request of NRC, DOE commercially disposed of its first significant quantities of non-GTCC waste during fiscal year 2004. Source recovery project personnel collected 443 unwanted sealed radiological sources (containing cesium-137, cobalt-60, or radium- 226) from a bankrupt firm in Pennsylvania and commercially disposed of most of them at the Barnwell, South Carolina, disposal site. In commenting on a draft of this report, DOE provided examples of other non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources that it had recovered.

Under the expanded scope of the source recovery project, DOE has developed a priority scheme for deciding which sources to recover and when to do so. According to the director of DOE’s Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction, DOE has been working with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, in addition to NRC, to determine the sources that should receive the highest priority for recovery, including those that when disposed of would not be considered GTCC waste. In addition, the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program told us that DOE and NRC are also in the process of revising the 1999 memorandum of understanding that defined the responsibilities of each agency with respect to the problem of unwanted and uncontrolled sealed radiological sources to better reflect current DOE recovery practices. The source recovery project leader provided us with an initial priority ranking scheme for recovering sources that is used by DOE, as well as some other factors that DOE considers. The initial ranking involves combining three factors into an overall risk ranking for each licensee site that contains sealed radiological sources. These factors include the level of security over the source at a licensee site, the total quantity of radioactive material present, and the quantity of radioactive material in any single sealed radiological source to a licensee site. Other factors that DOE considers when prioritizing sources at recover include the opportunity of recovering additional unwanted sealed radiological sources that source recovery personnel may discover during their visit at a licensee site. For example, the source recovery project leader told us that if team members come across vulnerable sealed radiological sources of lesser radioactivity at a location where they are recovering higher radioactive sources, they will collect them as well.

Recovery of More Non- GTCC Waste from Sealed Radiological Sources Could Increase Project Expenditures Because DOE Cannot Recoup Recovery Costs

DOE has already incurred additional expenses to recover and commercially dispose of non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources. It cost DOE approximately $581,000 to recover hundreds of these sources that had accumulated at a bankrupt firm in Pennsylvania and to commercially dispose of them. The Barnwell disposal site received 15 of the 16, 55-gallon and 30-gallon drums of this non-GTCC waste and charged DOE a $1,650 per-cubic-foot disposal fee. For example, the disposal fee and container cost for just 1, 55-gallon disposal drum holding 130 of the recovered cesium-137 sealed radiological sources cost DOE about $21,000, not including labor, transport, and other costs. Additional DOE recovery of non-GTCC waste from licensees that currently need to store their sources and other waste because they do not want to or cannot pay these high disposal fees may be necessary in the future. According to the deputy director of DOE’s Office of Global Radiological Threat Reduction, because of the cost involved, encouraging those licensees that have sealed radiological sources to dispose of them properly has proven difficult, particularly with entities that only have a few sources. NRC can impose fines as high as three times the cost of commercial disposal on a licensee that fails to properly dispose of radioactive material. However, a senior NRC official has publicly acknowledged the difficulty that licensees with only a few unwanted sources have in finding a cost-effective means for disposing of them.

DOE is currently impeded from recouping more of its recovery and storage costs for GTCC waste as well as any non-GTCC wastes that it may need to recover. Regarding GTCC waste, since DOE issued its 1987 report on how it planned to address its responsibilities under the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, as amended, no specific action has been taken to identify a different method of funding the source recovery project, other than through the appropriations process. According to the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, DOE has been unable to establish a standard fee for recovering unwanted sealed radiological sources from licensees because existing cost recovery mechanisms require the department to know both the number of years that these sources will be stored and the cost of their disposal before setting a fee, which is not currently possible. Regarding non-GTCC waste, the sources recovered to date were primarily from a commercial firm that had gone bankrupt and did not have the necessary funds to cover the cost of disposing of its sources. DOE had to cover the recovery and commercial disposal costs because there was no other source of funding. One of the reporting requirements for the task force on radiation source protection and security, required under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, is to provide recommendations for appropriate regulatory and legislative changes for the establishment of, or modification to, a national system (including user fees and other methods) to provide for the proper disposal of sealed radiological sources under the act.

DOE May Need to Recover and Dispose of More Non- GTCC Waste If Licensees Have No Disposal Option, Further Increasing Demands on Project Expenditures

In the future, DOE may have to recover more non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources if licensees that are forced to store their unwanted sources because they have no access to a disposal site. As we reported in June 2004, if South Carolina follows through with plans to restrict access to the Barnwell disposal site to only the three member states of the Atlantic Compact by mid-2008, and if no disposal alternative for the more highly radioactive non-GTCC waste (classes B and C waste) is developed, licensees in 36 states that are presently allowed to use this site will need to store more of their unwanted radioactive materials. Although NRC does not place time limits on the storage of radioactive materials as long as they are safe and secure, greater quantities and longer periods of storage, particularly of unwanted sealed radiological sources, will likely increase safety and security risks. In January 2002, NRC sent a letter to DOE requesting that the source recovery project take actions to recover registered unwanted sealed radiological sources because the possession and storage of these sources with no GTCC waste disposal outlet represented a potential health and safety threat. Regarding non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources, the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program told us that DOE will likely need to increase the recovery of these sources if licensees have no commercial disposal option for this waste. Domestic and international experts contend that the lack of disposal availability for unwanted sealed radiological sources can increase their risk of abandonment, misplacement, and theft. For example, the Health Physics Society stated that the lack of a GTCC and non-GTCC waste disposal option for unwanted sealed radiological sources that pose security and public health concerns will continue to increase the number of orphan sources. Further, IAEA has reported that disused (unwanted) sources represent the largest pool of vulnerable and potential orphan sources. If DOE were to begin recovering more non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources, even greater demands will be placed on DOE recovery project resources if DOE cannot recoup some of its recovery costs from licensees. While DOE is justified in covering the recovery and commercially disposal cost of the non-GTCC waste it has collected from licensees that could not afford to dispose of it themselves, the department may be able to recoup some of its costs in the future from licensees that could afford the cost of disposal if it were commercially available.

It is difficult to estimate the budgetary impact on DOE if there were a need to increase the recovery of unwanted sealed radiological sources from licensees that have no access to a commercial disposal site for their higher radioactive non-GTCC waste. One reason for this situation is the lack of information on the number of sources in storage that might need DOE recovery. As we reported August 2003, there is no national database on the quantities of sealed radiological sources in storage. Moreover, there is no national database that tracks the storage of any low-level radioactive waste. Given the lack of national data on how much waste is generated annually, the disposal data from low-level radioactive waste disposal operators can only provide an indication of the quantity of disused or unwanted sealed radiological sources and other waste that might need storage each year in the absence of disposal availability. Nevertheless, we found that between 2001 and 2004, the Barnwell disposal site disposed of, on average, 31,150 cubic feet of the higher radioactive non-GTCC waste (classes B and C waste), of which about 588 cubic feet, or about 2 percent of the total, was derived from disused sealed radiological sources. Approximately one-half of the sealed radiological source waste (about 56 percent) came from private industry, followed by government agencies (about 25 percent), colleges and universities (about 11 percent), and medical waste (about 4 percent). If DOE recovered, took title of, and commercially disposed of all non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources that are sent to the Barnwell disposal site annually, it might cost DOE approximately $1 million a year just to cover the disposal cost at the current $1,700 cubic foot disposal fee rate. However, until DOE has better information on the number of sources that may need to be recovered and future disposal costs, including recovery, packaging, transport, and other costs, it will be difficult to accurately estimate future costs of recovering non-GTCC waste.

Lack of Commercial Disposal Availability Could Heighten Interest in Using DOE Sites for Disposal

If licensees lose access to commercial disposal sites for their higher radioactive non-GTCC waste in the future, DOE will likely have to recover more of this waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources, which could heighten interest in using DOE sites for disposal of these wastes. The manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program told us that although DOE is not legally prohibited from permanently disposing of, at DOE sites, the recovered non-GTCC waste for which it has taken title, it would not want to do so. This DOE manager said that on the basis of current policy, DOE would indefinitely store any recovered non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources at its sites until commercial disposal is available or DOE receives other congressional guidance. The DOE manager provided three reasons to justify this current policy. First, DOE does not want to undermine the responsibility given by the Congress to the states to provide disposal availability for non-GTCC waste under the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, as amended. Second, DOE is not allowed to compete with commercial waste companies for the disposal of non-GTCC waste. Finally, DOE does not want to dispose of the relatively small quantity of recovered non-GTCC waste at its sites because this might set a precedent for disposing of all non-GTCC waste that does not have a commercial disposal pathway. However, in lieu of storing this non-GTCC waste, this DOE manager suggested that DOE could, under emergency access provisions, approach the regulatory bodies that have jurisdiction over commercial disposal sites to obtain disposal access. Despite DOE’s current policy regarding what it would do in the future with recovered non-GTCC waste if there were no commercial disposal availability, there have been calls to consider using DOE sites for the disposal of this waste. Our June 2004 report discussed some issues that would need to be resolved to use DOE sites for this waste, including the feasibility of DOE’s accepting all non-GTCC waste, the responsibility for paying for the disposal of this waste, and the licensing and regulatory responsibilities covering its disposal.

DOE Lacks Information to Better Identify Unwanted Sealed Radiological Sources That May Need Recovery

DOE lacks information that would assist in its efforts to identify and recover unwanted sealed radiological sources that pose a safety or security risk. Although DOE maintains an inventory of recovered sealed radiological sources and sources registered for future recovery, neither DOE nor any other government agency has centrally tracked the number of sources in the United States or the number of unwanted sources in storage at licensee sites across the country. Under the current regulatory structure, NRC and Agreement states only know the authorized uses and maximum quantities allowed for each licensee, not what they actually possess. As a result, DOE has no means of determining the actual number of sealed radiological sources that may require recovery in the future. NRC is currently developing a national source tracking system to, among other things, identify the possession and movement of some high-risk sealed radiological sources. However, as presently designed, this tracking system lacks information that DOE might find useful in planning and budgeting for the recovery of unwanted sealed radiological sources and their eventual disposal.

DOE Has Information on Sealed Radiological Sources Already Recovered and Limited Information on Those to Be Recovered

The source recovery project maintains its own inventory of sealed radiological sources that have been recovered and are in storage, and those that licensees or NRC have asked DOE to recover. According to the source recovery project team leader, the accuracy of the information on a sealed radiological source in this inventory improves from when a licensee initially registers the source; to when source recovery personnel have follow-up conversations with the licensee to clarify the recovery request for the source; to when the source recovery project team actually visits the site to physically inspect the source, record its serial number, and package it for disposal. The source recovery project team leader told us that the information on sources initially registered is less accurate because the licensee may not know anything about their source, or a licensee might inadvertently provide incorrect information about the source, such as its radionuclide and radioactivity concentration. Once recovered, the information in the source recovery project inventory includes the type of radionuclide, serial number, size, radioactivity concentration, and method of packaging for storage or disposal. The source recovery project team leader told us that this inventory is designed to assist in administrative planning, scheduling and prioritizing recoveries, tracking shipments, and documenting storage or disposal locations.

Information on the recovered sealed radiological sources in DOE’s possession is then integrated into DOE’s Radiological Source Registry and Tracking System. This departmentwide inventory system was established in November 2003, in response to a recommendation of the DOE/NRC Interagency Working Group on Radiological Dispersal Devices. The tracking system is managed by DOE’s Office of Plutonium, Uranium, and Special Materials Inventory and maintained at Sandia National Laboratories. DOE designed its system to help (1) monitor the safety and security of all DOE-owned sealed radiological sources that meet a certain threshold size and radioactivity concentration and (2) provide information on the potential threat they pose. In addition to descriptive information on the type of sealed radioactive source and its location within the DOE complex, this tracking system also records data on the source’s status— such as whether the source is in active use; is inaccessible and, thus, not being used; is in storage for potential future use; or is packaged and awaiting final disposal.

DOE Cannot Determine How Many Unwanted Sealed Sources May Need Recovery

Because neither DOE nor any other government agency has centrally tracked the number of sealed radiological sources in the United States at any given time or the number of unwanted sources held by NRC and Agreement States licensees, DOE has few available means of estimating the quantities of sources that may need recovery in the future. Under the current regulatory structure, NRC and the Agreement States only have information on the authorized uses and maximum quantities of radioactive materials licensees are allowed to possess, although each licensee is responsible for maintaining inventories of its individual sources. Further, the source recovery project inventory contains only information that licensees have voluntarily provided to DOE on their unwanted sealed radiological sources and more limited voluntary registration of sources that may require recovery in the future. The information on sealed radiological sources that NRC provides to DOE for scheduling recovery only captures those sources that NRC or Agreement States are aware of that need recovery and does not include sources that licensees may possess that are unwanted. Consequently, neither of these methods for obtaining information provides the kind of data that DOE can use to estimate future quantities of sealed radiological sources that may need recovery. According to the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, because the source recovery project has no information on the number of sources in current use or in storage, DOE is limited in its ability to provide useful estimates of the quantities of sealed radiological sources that DOE might need to recover in the future.

The Proposed National Source Tracking System Is Not Designed to Collect Some Information That Could Be Useful to DOE

NRC plans to develop a national source tracking system that will register certain sealed radiological sources possessed by licensees and/or DOE. In November 2003, NRC, in cooperation with the Agreement States, contacted 2,600 entities licensed to possess IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources in an effort to capture for the first time national data on the actual type, quantities, and current ownership of these sources. Over 99 percent of these licensees voluntarily reported information back to NRC, but only about one-half of them reported that they possessed these sources. NRC has already conducted a follow-up survey of a portion of these licensees, and other surveys are planned leading up to an implementation of the national source tracking system in 2007. Although licensees are requested to volunteer information for these interim surveys, NRC issued a proposed rule in July 2005 that would, among other things, require licensees to provide an inventory of their sealed radiological sources; annually verify and reconcile their actual inventory with the information registered in the system; and report certain transactions, such as the date of manufacture, transfer, or disposal of their sealed radiological sources. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires that NRC issue regulations, within 1 year, establishing this mandatory tracking system that shall be coordinated with systems established by the Department of Transportation to track the shipment of radiation sources. Such a tracking system must, among other things, provide for the reporting of required information through a secure Internet connection.

As presently designed, NRC’s national source tracking system will inventory and monitor primarily IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources—the minimum required under the 2004 IAEA Code of Conduct—despite support from IAEA and DOE for tracking additional source categories and other information. In its July 2003 technical document detailing the methodology behind the IAEA source categorization scheme, IAEA suggested that member states consider the combined radioactivity of aggregated sealed radiological sources in one location for the purpose of categorizing these sources on the basis of their potential to cause harm to human health. Using this methodology, the accumulation of enough individual IAEA category 3 sources in close proximity to one another would yield concentrations of radioactive material equivalent to a single IAEA category 2 source. For example, storing 15 well-logging devices in close proximity (each well-logging device typically contains a 2-curie, cesium-137 source, which is an IAEA category 3 source) would be equivalent to having a 30-curie, cesium-137 source in this location, which is an IAEA category 2 source.

Almost all of the unwanted sealed radiological sources recovered by DOE would fall into categories below IAEA categories 1 and 2 and, therefore, would not have been registered in the national source tracking system as presently designed. According to the manager of DOE’s U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, over 90 percent of the sites where DOE has recovered sealed radiological sources had quantities of lesser radioactive sources that when aggregated were equivalent to an individual IAEA category 2 source and, thus, posed enough of a safety and security risk to warrant their recovery. This recovery has been justified despite the fact that the total curie level of all the recovered IAEA category 3 sources was only about 15 percent of the curie level of the relatively few recovered categories 1 and 2 sources, and without regard to whether the sources might or might not have been located in close proximity at each of the licensee sites. In a 2004 technical document, IAEA suggested that it would be beneficial from both a safety and security viewpoint for all disused or unwanted sealed radiological sources to be identified and to undergo proper disposition. According to IAEA, the quality of a country’s national registry of radioactive sources will be a prime indicator of the probability of there being vulnerable and orphan sources. History has shown that many accidents involving orphan sources come about because sources that are no longer in use are eventually forgotten, with subsequent loss of control years later. Table 3 shows a breakdown of the sealed radiological sources that DOE has recovered, by their IAEA source category, as of June 7, 2005. As shown in the table, about 98.5 percent of these sources fall below category 2 and, therefore, would not have been tracked in the proposed national source tracking system.

In the proposed rule to implement a national source tracking system, NRC states that it does not plan to include IAEA category 3 sources in the registry at this time, but that it may consider doing so in the future because licensees possessing a large quantity of IAEA category 3 sources could present a security concern. Although NRC contends that reliable tracking of the accumulation of IAEA category 3 sources will be difficult and might pose a potential burden on licensees, NRC is seeking comments on the inclusion of these sources in its tracking system. NRC stated in its notice of intent that one way to address the accumulation of sources of concern would be to lower the threshold for source tracking to include all IAEA category 3 sources, since a source level tracking system cannot include aggregation of sources because the sources may move in and out of the tracking system with the change of ownership. However, in commenting on a draft of this report, NRC stated that in lieu of the inclusion of category 3 sources in the proposed national source tracking system at this time, its new security orders for licensees possessing IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources do, where appropriate, address aggregation of any sources below these two categories, such that the net result could reach the category 2 threshold in a given physical location. Nevertheless, it does not appear that these new security orders would apply to licensees that do not possess IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources but still have large accumulations of IAEA category 3 or lesser source categories.

The national source tracking system, as designed, also would not collect other information that DOE might find useful in budgeting and planning for source recovery and future disposal needs for GTCC waste. Recent IAEA technical guidance states that it is important to capture information on the frequency of use of the source in a national registry of sealed radiological sources—for example, whether the source is actually being used or whether it is being stored securely. DOE already inventories such information on sources in its possession in its Radioactive Source Registry and Tracking System. DOE initially requested that NRC collect information on licensees’ disposal plans in its interim survey, including whether the licensees were planning to have DOE recover their sources. NRC included this question in its first survey of licensees but has decided to drop it in subsequent surveys and in the design of the tracking system, because of the low response rate to this question and because its security regulations currently do not require licensees to report this information. However, NRC is contemplating adding a feature to the design of its anticipated national source tracking system that would capture information on the long-term storage of some sealed radiological sources, although it would be voluntary for licensees to provide this information.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires NRC to chair an interagency task force on radiation source protection and security. Within 1 year of its creation, the task is to prepare a report to the Congress and the President providing recommendations for a list of additional radiation sources that should be required to be secured as well as any necessary modifications to the national source tracking system. In addition, the task force is also charged with making recommendations in this report regarding the creation of, or modification to, procedures for improving, among other things, the security of stored sources, including periodic audits or investigations by NRC to ensure that these sources are properly secured and can be fully accounted for.

Conclusions

DOE and NRC have important roles and responsibilities in ensuring the safety and security of radiological sealed sources. The recently enacted Energy Policy Act of 2005, among other things, adds new requirements for both agencies, including the creation of a task force on radiation source protection and security, chaired by NRC, and continued recovery by DOE of unwanted sources until it provides a disposal site for GTCC waste. The responsibilities for DOE may expand further if licensees in most states lose access to the only disposal site for their higher radioactive non-GTCC waste by mid-2008. Specifically: Loss of access would increase the quantities of non-GTCC waste in storage that could necessitate more recovery of this waste by DOE. This, in turn, might lead to increased costs for DOE’s source recovery efforts. However, how much additional funding will be necessary for this effort would be difficult to ascertain for several reasons, including uncertainties regarding the quantity of non-GTCC waste that might need collection.

These increased recovery and disposal costs will be incurred by DOE unless other mechanisms are adopted to recoup these costs, especially from those licensees that would be able to cover them if commercial disposal were available.

The increasing quantities of non-GTCC waste that will not have a commercial disposal pathway could heighten interest in using DOE sites for the disposal of this waste.

The lack of information to track the number and status of sealed radiological sources that may require recovery and disposal in the future, limits DOE’s ability to effectively plan and budget for its recovery and disposal efforts and to monitor the performance of its source recovery project.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We recommend that the Secretary of Energy and the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in collaboration with the Task Force on Radiation Source Protection and Security, evaluate and report on the cost implications of a potential expansion of DOE’s recovery and disposal of non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources, options for DOE to recoup these costs from licensees that may have no commercial waste disposal options, the feasibility of disposing of this waste at DOE sites, and how a national source tracking system can be designed and implemented to improve DOE’s ability to identify and track sealed radiological sources that may need DOE recovery and disposal.

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation

We provided a draft of this report to DOE and NRC for their review and comment. DOE’s written comments are reproduced in appendix III. DOE stated that it generally supports the recommendations contained in this report. More specifically, DOE commented that we had correctly reported the department’s position with respect to recouping recovery and disposal costs; however, the department expressed some concern that charging fees or recouping costs from licensees may inhibit them from registering sources, leaving these excess sources at risk. We acknowledge in the report that DOE should cover the recovery, storage, and disposal costs of unwanted sealed radiological sources that were previously owned by DOE. We also acknowledge the need for DOE to cover these costs in cases where sources posing a health, safety, security, or environmental threat are recovered from licensees that do not have the financial means to ensure their proper disposal. Nevertheless, given the possibility that, in most states, there may not be a commercial disposal option available to licensees for their higher radioactive non-GTCC waste after mid-2008, we continue to believe that DOE and NRC should evaluate approaches to recoup recovery and disposal costs from licensees that could otherwise afford to cover these costs if a commercial disposal option were available. DOE also stated that, in addition to the non-GTCC sealed source waste that we stated it recovered and disposed, it had also recovered other sources that fall into this waste class. We added a reference to these other sources in the report. Regarding using DOE sites for non-GTCC waste disposal, the department commented that we appropriately noted its current policy and statutory responsibilities that prohibit the use of department facilities for this purpose. DOE stated that it would continue to identify potential commercial treatments or disposal options for any additional non-GTCC waste that is recovered. Finally, DOE concurred with our assessment that the proposed national source tracking system should be improved to assist the department in identifying and recovering unwanted sources from outside the department that pose a potential safety and security risk. DOE stated that its Office of Security is working with other elements of the department and NRC in developing requirements to ensure that these unwanted sources are adequately tracked.

NRC also provided written comments to a draft of this report, which are reproduced in appendix IV. NRC stated that overall our report was well written and balanced. While NRC did not specifically agree or disagree with our four recommendations, its letter raised seven issues regarding the proposed national source tracking system. 1. NRC stated that its tracking system would provide some information useful to DOE. We agree that the national source tracking system might provide some information useful to DOE in its recovery of IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources. However, since we found that only 1.5 percent of the sources recovered by DOE as of June 7, 2005, were in these two categories, it appears that the national source tracking system would yield little, if any, practical benefits to DOE. 2. NRC stated that requiring the reporting of certain information that our report asserts DOE would find useful, such as frequency of source use, could be extremely burdensome on licensees and NRC and would yield little, if any, practical benefits. NRC provided no support for this contention or for why it cannot overcome these burdens as it has done in justifying the reporting requirements proposed for licensees possessing IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources. In addition, NRC stated in its notice of proposed rulemaking for the national source tracking system that most licensees already have systems in which information on sources is maintained, and that NRC’s tracking system is designed to ease the reporting burden for these licensees. As to the comment on the practical benefit of tracking the use of high-risk radioactive materials, our report notes that the most vulnerable sources to abandonment, misplacement, and theft are those that are unwanted and in storage. Therefore, it seems reasonable to attempt to collect some information on frequency of source use, particularly if the storage of sources were to increase in the future in the absence of a commercial disposal option for the higher radioactive non-GTCC waste. 3. NRC commented that our report did not accurately characterize some issues involving IAEA category 3 sources, mainly regarding our claim that IAEA-TECDOC-1388 suggested that category 3 sources be tracked. NRC claimed that the IAEA document did not make this suggestion and provided some passages from the document to support its position. We believe that NRC’s comments in this regard reflect a narrow view of the guidance provided by IAEA. For example, in IAEA’s discussion of disused (unwanted) sources in this technical document, it clearly suggests a need to identify these sources and to gather information on their frequency of use. “Disused sources represent the largest pool of vulnerable and potential orphan sources. History has shown that many accidents involving orphan sources come about because sources that are no longer in use are eventually forgotten, with subsequent loss of control years later. To this end, it is beneficial from both a safety and security viewpoint for all disused sources to be identified and to undergo proper disposition…. Licensees are discouraged from proper disposal of disused sources by the cost involved, by the bureaucracy of doing so, or by the lack of an available disposal option…. It is clear that information needs to be gathered by those developing a national strategy regarding the status of at least all Category 1, 2 and 3 sources on the licensee’s inventory or national registry so that appropriate decisions can be made regarding them. Generally, this will involve asking the licensee or owner of the source about its frequency of use .”

4.

In support of its decision not to track IAEA category 3 sources at this time, NRC drew attention to its other regulatory efforts, especially its new security orders for some licensees that possess IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources. NRC stated that, where appropriate, these security orders address aggregation of any sources (IAEA category 3 sources and below) such that the net result could reach the category 2 source threshold in a given physical location. Despite these security orders, NRC’s source tracking system would not include IAEA category 3 sources and below. However, NRC stated in its notice of proposed rulemaking for the national source tracking system, that it is seeking comments on the inclusion of IAEA category 3 sources in the registry because licensees possessing large quantities of these sources could present a security concern. 5. NRC pointed out that, as we reported, the actions it is taking to track IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources are consistent with the IAEA Code of Conduct and the Energy Policy Act of 2005. However, NRC failed to mention, as we do in our report, that this legislation also directs NRC to chair an interagency task force to provide a report, within 1 year, to the Congress and the President with recommendations for, among other things, additional radiation sources that should be required to be secured as well as any modifications necessary to the national source tracking system. We believe that our report provides ample support for areas where NRC, in collaboration with DOE and other federal agencies, might consider modifying the design of the national source tracking system to better assist DOE in planning and budgeting for the recovery and disposal of unwanted sealed radiological sources. 6. NRC commented that it does not matter that almost all of the sources that DOE has recovered are below IAEA categories 1 and 2 sources because, according to NRC, the greatest risk from a source is its radioactivity level. The radioactivity of an individual source is clearly one measure of its potential safety and security risk. However, as our report notes, DOE’s recovery efforts, often at the request of NRC, are not solely dictated by the radioactivity of an individual source, but more broadly the health, safety, security, or environmental threat posed by the aggregated radioactivity of many unwanted sources that are typically in storage at licensee sites around the country. Our report also notes that unwanted sources in storage tend to be the most vulnerable to abandonment, misplacement, and theft despite requirements that licensees keep track of the radioactive materials they possess. Some of the lesser radioactive sources are frequently found by DOE to be kept in quantities where their aggregated radioactivity would be equivalent to an IAEA category 2 source that would present a security concern. These lesser radioactive sources also may be more susceptible to inadvertent loss, which has already led in some cases to radiation exposure, high decontamination costs, and public panic. IAEA acknowledged in its Code of Conduct that its categorization of high-risk radiological sources is based on health effects and does not fully take into account the range of impacts that could result from accidents or malicious acts involving radioactive sources. 7. NRC stressed in its comments that DOE, through its representatives on NRC working groups and committees developing the national source tracking system, has had the opportunity to provide input on the design of the system and the potential usefulness of the system to assist its source recovery efforts. Regardless of DOE’s opportunities to provide input to NRC, DOE officials raised concerns to us during the course of our work about the usefulness of NRC’s source tracking system. Furthermore, in commenting on our draft report, DOE stated that there is a need for a more rigorous national-level tracking capability to assist the department in identifying and recovering unwanted sources.

We incorporated technical changes in this report, where appropriate, on the basis of detailed comments provided by both agencies.

We will send copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees. We will make copies available to others upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at ((202) 512-3841 or at aloisee@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are listed in appendix V.

Scope and Methodology

In our review, we examined (1) the status of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to recover unwanted sealed radiological sources and develop a disposal option for greater-than-class C (GTCC) waste, (2) DOE actions taken to recover and dispose of unwanted non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources, and (3) the extent to which DOE can identify and track unwanted sealed radiological sources for recovery and disposal. To better understand these issues, we met with officials at DOE, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and we visited the office of DOE’s source recovery project at Los Alamos National Laboratory and observed laboratory personnel recovering unwanted sealed radiological sources from a university. We also interviewed officials at nonfederal organizations, including the Health Physics Society, the Organization of Agreement States, and the Conference on Radiation Control Program Directors (CRCPD), as well as some recognized experts in the field. We also met with representatives from commercial entities that are licensed to possess high-risk radioactive sources and state regulatory officials in California and Ohio.

More specifically, to examine the status of DOE efforts to recover unwanted sealed radiological sources and develop a disposal option for GTCC waste, we interviewed DOE officials from the U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program, Office of Environmental Management, and Office of Security. We reviewed applicable statutes, regulations, and agency guidance as well as relevant DOE and NRC studies, reports, documents, and agency plans. We obtained information from the source recovery project inventory database to determine the number and type of sources recovered as of June 7, 2005. To determine the reliability of these data, we first asked officials a series of data reliability questions that addressed areas such as data entry, data access, quality control procedures, and data accuracy and completeness. We also inspected data records, reviewed manuals and documents relating to DOE data collection and verification methods, and interviewed DOE officials. We asked follow-up questions as necessary. In consultation with a GAO expert in research methodology, we analyzed the officials’ responses for relevant weaknesses in data reliability that would make their data unusable for our analysis and reporting purposes. On the basis of these efforts, we determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for summarizing volumes of recovered sealed radiological sources.

We also sought a better understanding of how sealed radiological sources are classified as waste. We developed a structured interview guide to collect information from commercial waste brokers that possess GTCC and non-GTCC waste from sealed radiological sources. This interview guide asked questions on areas such as the wastes these brokers often collect and the potential waste classes of common types of sealed radiological source devices. Because the practical difficulties of developing and administering a structured interview guide may introduce errors—resulting from how a particular question is interpreted, for example, or from differences in the sources of information available to respondents in answering a question—we included steps in the development and administration of the structured interview guide for the purpose of minimizing such errors. We pretested the instrument with three commercial waste brokers by telephone and modified it as appropriate to reflect questions and comments received during the pretests.

To determine which commercial waste brokers to interview, we first used a list of commercial waste brokers compiled by CRCPD’s National Orphan Radioactive Material Disposition Program. This list contained 18 waste brokers that met the CRCPD criteria of being in good standing with CRCPD and serving more than 1 million customers, serving non-DOE customers, or serving more than one state. However, because this list is not comprehensive and there is no single source listing of commercial waste brokers, we also asked each broker we interviewed for the names of additional brokers who could provide useful information or insights into these issues. We continued this expert referral technique until the references we received became repetitive. In all, we used our structured interview guide to interview a nonprobablility sample of 12 commercial waste brokers in various geographical locations. We then used the results of these structured interviews to create a table summarizing common sealed radiological sources devices and their potential waste class (see app. II). We shared preliminary drafts of this table with experts at DOE and NRC and with leading scientists in the field of sealed radiological source security from nonfederal organizations, such as the Monterrey Institute of International Studies and the Low-Level Waste Forum. We received and incorporated their comments as appropriate on the structure and contents of the table. On the basis of this process, we determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this report.

To examine the actions DOE has taken to recover and dispose of unwanted sealed radiological sources, we interviewed source recovery project personnel and officials from the U.S. Radiological Threat Reduction Program. We also conducted interviews with representatives from nonfederal entities, including the Monterrey Institute of International Studies, the Health Physics Society, CRCPD, the National Research Council, and the Council on Foreign Relations. We discussed with these agency officials and representatives the likelihood of DOE’s needing to recover more non-GTCC waste from unwanted sealed radiological sources in the future if the Barnwell, South Carolina, disposal site restricts access for licensees in 36 states by mid-2008 as planned. To obtain a better understanding of how much non-GTCC waste might be stored if licensees in these states are denied disposal access for this waste, we gathered information on the quantity of non-GTCC waste disposed at the two commercial disposal sites that can accept classes B and C waste in Richland, Washington, and Barnwell, South Carolina, between 2001 and 2004. To determine the reliability of these data, we first asked disposal operators a series of data reliability questions that addressed specific areas, such as data entry, data access, quality control procedures, and data accuracy and completeness. We added follow-up questions as necessary. In consultation with a GAO expert in research methodology, we analyzed their responses for relevant weaknesses in data reliability that would make their data unusable for our analysis and reporting purposes. On the basis of these efforts, we determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for summarizing volumes of disposed waste at these disposal sites.

To determine the extent to which DOE can identify and track unwanted sealed radiological sources for recovery and disposal, we interviewed DOE and NRC officials regarding the scope, capabilities, and limitations of their existing databases for tracking these sources. We reviewed past estimates of the number of sealed radiological sources in the United States, including the scope and methodologies used to create these estimates. To examine NRC efforts to develop a national source tracking system for certain sealed radiological sources, we interviewed NRC and DOE officials who participated in the system’s initial formulation. We reviewed planning and management documents, including related NRC submissions to the Office of Management and Budget, NRC’s business case analyses, and the proposed rule for implementing a national source tracking system. We also reviewed the survey instrument NRC used to populate the interim database. Finally, we interviewed state officials from Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Oregon to determine whether any states currently track sealed radiological sources and gathered these officials’ views on the need for a national source tracking system.

We conducted our review between June 2004 and September 2005 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Selected Sealed Radiological Source Devices and Their Potential Waste Classes

Table 4 presents selected common devices that utilize sealed radioactive sources and the NRC waste classes in which sources from these devices might be disposed. This table shows the variability in the possible sources used in devices, their relative risks according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) categorization scheme, and the range of waste classes associated with the sources that could be used in these devices. The radionuclides and the ranges of radioactivity listed next to each device are presented for illustrative purposes—each device might use one of these radionuclides in one or more sources. The IAEA source category corresponds to each radionuclide and radioactivity range, based on an IAEA technical document, as noted. The potential waste classes are associated with each device and not with the specific radionuclides that might be in these devices. In other words, not all radionuclides that could be used in a source within a device produce the range of waste classes associated with the device.

Comments from the Department of Energy

Comments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the person named above, Casey Brown, Ryan Coles, John Delicath, Daniel Feehan, Doreen Feldman, Susan Iott, Thomas Laetz, Cynthia Norris, Anthony Padilla, Judy Pagano, Leslie Pollock, and Barbara Timmerman made key contributions to this report.