The production and maintenance of nuclear weapons produces a variety of waste by-products, including transuranic waste. DOE is storing almost 100,000 cubic meters of transuranic waste, primarily at six sites, and expects to generate another 78,000 cubic meters of the waste over the next several decades as it cleans up its nuclear facilities. About 97 percent of the existing volume of transuranic waste is stored in standard 55-gallon steel drums and other types of containers. This waste, which typically consists of contaminated equipment, tools, protective clothing, and scrap materials, is called “contact-handled” waste because it can be handled with limited precautions to protect workers from radiation. The remaining volume of waste is called “remote-handled” waste because it emits higher levels of penetrating radiation that requires special shielding, handling, and disposal procedures. In 1979, the Congress authorized DOE to develop WIPP expressly to demonstrate the safe disposal of radioactive wastes resulting from U.S. defense activities and programs. By the end of 1988, DOE had constructed all surface facilities, shafts leading to the underground disposal area, and 7 of 56 planned disposal rooms. DOE had not, however, established a clear link between its scientific program to conduct underground tests at WIPP with transuranic waste and its plans to demonstrate compliance with EPA’s disposal regulations. In October 1992, the Congress passed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act. Among other things, the act authorized DOE to conduct testing at WIPP with limited quantities of contact-handled waste after EPA had (1) approved DOE’s testing and waste retrieval plans, (2) issued final disposal regulations for radioactive wastes, (3) determined DOE’s compliance with the terms of EPA’s “no migration” determination, and (4) found that the planned tests would provide data “directly relevant” to a certification of compliance with the disposal regulations or with RCRA. Also, before DOE may dispose of transuranic waste in WIPP, DOE must apply for and obtain from EPA a certification of WIPP’s compliance with the agency’s disposal regulations. In conjunction, EPA was required to establish the criteria for issuing a certificate of compliance to DOE. Finally, DOE may not begin disposing of waste in WIPP until 180 days after it has received a compliance certificate from EPA. DOE must also meet the requirements for disposing of hazardous wastes as defined under RCRA because, the Department estimates, over 60 percent of its stored transuranic waste also contains hazardous waste. The land disposal restrictions in EPA’s regulations implementing RCRA generally prohibit the disposal of untreated hazardous waste unless the agency makes a “no migration” determination. To receive such a determination for WIPP, DOE must demonstrate that there will be essentially no migration of hazardous waste from the repository’s boundary for as long as the waste remains hazardous. Also, because New Mexico is authorized by EPA to carry out a state RCRA program, DOE must obtain a permit from New Mexico for the design, maintenance, operation, and closure of WIPP. If DOE meets New Mexico’s requirements, the state expects to issue a draft permit for public comment by late summer 1996 and a final permit by June 1997. In addition to these key requirements, DOE must comply with other applicable federal environmental laws, such as the Federal Facility Compliance Act of 1992, which pertains to the treatment and disposal of waste at the sites where the waste is stored and/or generated. In 1993, DOE and EPA concentrated on the details of the planned waste disposal tests at WIPP and the relevance of the tests to a future compliance determination. At that time, DOE expected to complete the tests, apply for and receive a compliance certificate, and begin disposing of waste in the repository in 2000. In October 1993, however, DOE announced that by substituting waste tests conducted in laboratories for the planned tests in WIPP, it could open the repository 2 years earlier. The accelerated schedule has created a more dynamic, higher-risk environment for completing preparations for both the compliance application and disposal operations because more interdependent activities had to be conducted in parallel, rather than in sequence, with little time available to make adjustments on the basis of the results of individual activities. It is unclear whether DOE can accomplish all of the work needed to comply with EPA’s regulations for disposing of transuranic waste at WIPP on a schedule that would enable the Department to open the repository in April 1998. (See fig. 1 for DOE’s most recent schedule.) One reason is the disparity between the contents of DOE’s draft application for a certificate of compliance and EPA’s disposal regulations and the related criteria for deciding whether to issue the certificate. In addition, DOE was in the process of analyzing the results of the completed and ongoing scientific research that is to feed into the compliance application before it can submit a complete application. DOE, in its 1995 draft application, did not address many of EPA’s compliance criteria. This situation occurred, in part, because DOE submitted the draft application to EPA shortly after the agency had issued its proposed criteria for public comment in January 1995, well before EPA issued the final criteria in February 1996. Although the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act required EPA to issue the final criteria within 2 years of its enactment, or by October 30, 1994, the delay in issuing the criteria occurred, in part, because of the agency’s emphasis in 1993 on reviewing DOE’s plans for the tests with waste at WIPP and on issuing the agency’s disposal regulations. In addition, according to the director of EPA’s WIPP program, the agency took some additional time to complete the criteria so that it could ensure that the public had an adequate opportunity to participate in developing the criteria. When DOE eliminated the proposed tests in the WIPP underground, however, timely issuance of the compliance criteria became important to achieving DOE’s accelerated timetable for opening WIPP. In April 1994, when DOE announced that it planned to begin operating WIPP in mid-1998, it assumed that EPA would issue the final compliance criteria in January 1995 and that DOE would submit a draft compliance application to EPA 2 months later. EPA, however, did not issue the proposed criteria for public comment until January 1995 and, at that time, estimated that it would take at least 1 year to issue the final criteria. Nevertheless, DOE submitted part of its draft compliance application to EPA in March 1995 and the remaining part of the application 4 months later. DOE recognized and informed EPA, the state of New Mexico, and other parties that its draft application was incomplete but sought these parties’ comments to help it prepare to submit its final compliance application in December 1996 and receive a certificate of compliance 1 year later. (In October 1995, DOE amended its schedule, including moving the planned date for submitting its final application to October 1996.) In remarks prefacing the draft application, DOE noted that because EPA had issued the proposed compliance criteria a few months earlier, the Department was not able to follow all of the criteria in preparing the draft application. DOE also noted that the draft application did not include details on many of the subjects addressed in the draft criteria. Among other things, these subjects included the results of experiments in progress to support the final calculations on WIPP’s performance as a repository, information on the potential barriers to the release of the waste materials from the repository, seals for the shafts leading from the surface to the underground area, and the active institutional controls planned for the site after the repository is closed. Finally, DOE stated that its draft application did not contain analyses demonstrating that WIPP could meet the requirements of EPA’s disposal regulations for protecting groundwater from radioactive materials. In January 1996, after reviewing the draft application, EPA advised DOE that the application lacked the necessary detail for an appropriate and thorough review for technical adequacy. Although the agency refrained from commenting on the draft application’s completeness, it provided DOE with over 370 detailed comments on apparent deficiencies in the application. For example, the agency said the application lacked the necessary detail on the characteristics of the WIPP site, the waste to be disposed of in the repository, and barriers to the release of radioactive materials from the repository that DOE might engineer to enhance the repository’s performance. (See app. I for examples of the deficiencies in DOE’s draft application that were observed by EPA and New Mexico’s Environmental Evaluation Group.) Other parties that are likely to provide comments to EPA on DOE’s application for a certificate of compliance also expressed concern that DOE’s draft application was incomplete. The 1992 WIPP Land Withdrawal Act provided special status to New Mexico, the Environmental Evaluation Group, and the National Academy of Sciences. The act required DOE to provide these parties with free and timely access to the data on health, safety, or environmental protection issues at WIPP and authorized the parties to evaluate and publish analyses of DOE’s regulatory compliance activities. In a March 1996 report, the Environmental Evaluation Group stated that the draft application could not be considered an adequate draft document for demonstrating compliance with EPA’s disposal regulations because the application lacked substantial features that would be expected in the final application. According to the Group, the document resembled the framework rather than a draft of an application because it lacked a logical presentation of the proofs of compliance with EPA’s disposal regulations. Even the most basic information, the Group said, is absent from the draft application. Among other deficiencies, the Environmental Evaluation Group stated, the application did not adequately describe the waste that DOE would dispose of in WIPP or discuss the problems that the Department had been encountering in documenting the physical, chemical, and radiological characteristics of this waste.