The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is responsible for addressing nuclear and hazardous wastes, including some of the most dangerously radioactive wastes in the world, and special nuclear materials, such as plutonium, resulting from more than 50 years of nuclear weapons production. DOE has planned or implemented a variety of treatment and disposal approaches, depending on the nature and extent of the waste (see table 1). Numerous legal and regulatory requirements govern various aspects of DOE’s cleanup effort. Many of the cleanup activities are governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, as amended, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, as amended, through various agreements with regulators. Additional laws affecting high-level waste and transuranic wastes are the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, which establishes the program to develop a geologic repository for storing high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act, which establishes the requirements for operation of a repository for transuranic wastes. In addition, under the Federal Facility Compliance Act of 1992, DOE has entered into agreements with federal and state regulators that establish milestones for accomplishing specified cleanup activities and a mechanism to obtain approval to change priorities and approaches. For example, under the agreement at Hanford, 10 percent of the tank waste is to be processed by 2018 and a report on the plans for the remaining 90 percent was due to regulators in January 2005, but now has been extended to June 30, 2006. DOE, under the direction of the Secretary of Energy, carries out its environmental cleanup program under the leadership of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management and in consultation with a variety of stakeholders. In addition to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental and health agencies that have regulatory authority in states where the sites are located, stakeholders include county and local governmental agencies, DOE community advisory groups, and Native American tribes. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is primarily responsible for cleaning up the wastes, largely through the use of contractors overseen by DOE staff. In addition, DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is responsible for the high-level waste repository being developed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is the repository where DOE plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. DOE’s Office of Legacy Management, created in 2003, is responsible for managing DOE’s postclosure responsibilities at its former nuclear weapons production sites to ensure the continued protection of human health and the environment. Over 2 years after implementing the accelerated cleanup plan, DOE has made progress in a number of areas, but the most difficult cleanup challenges remain. By March 2005, DOE was ahead or on its planned schedule in 13 of 16 risk reduction activities. Activities that had met or were ahead of the accelerated schedule included packaging nuclear materials for disposition, disposing of low-level and low-level mixed waste, and removing buildings. In some cases where DOE was meeting or exceeding current risk reduction targets, only a small percentage of the overall work had been accomplished. In contrast, DOE was behind its schedule for key activities that will have a major impact on DOE’s overall cleanup goals. These activities involve some of the more complex cleanup activities, including disposing of transuranic waste, treating high-level liquid waste, and closing tanks that had contained radioactive wastes. These activities account for at least 30 percent of the total expenditures DOE expects on cleanup and more than half of the cost reductions it hopes to achieve under the accelerated cleanup plan. Finally, DOE has had problems with other treatment and disposal activities not reflected in its performance measures, such as significant delays in shipping plutonium from sites to final storage locations, and delays in design and construction of key facilities. Taken together, these results suggest that DOE may already be at risk of not achieving its accelerated cleanup goals. DOE’s cleanup was ahead of its planned accelerated schedule for several activities, and other activities appeared to be on track. As of March 2005, DOE was ahead of schedule in 9 risk reduction measures that fell into the following cleanup categories—(1) tearing down and disposing of facilities, (2) packaging and disposing of special nuclear materials, (3) cleaning up low-level and low-level mixed waste, and (4) completing cleanup of specific locations where releases of contamination occurred. For example, in disposing of low-level and low-level mixed waste, DOE was more than 181,000 cubic meters—or 35 percent—ahead of its accelerated target goal. Table 2 shows the progress DOE has made in four categories, as of March 2005. These risk reduction measures show that DOE has made progress at an accelerated pace for a variety of cleanup activities that often require more readily available technology or standard treatment processes. For example, facility disposal primarily involves decontaminating and tearing down a building, and disposing of the rubble at established disposal sites. In addition, DOE’s measures show that it had nearly completed its activity to package plutonium and uranium residues, a highly dangerous activity due to the potential for a nuclear accident or worker exposure. While DOE has made progress in several areas, a significant part of the progress was due to accelerated activities at relatively few sites and reflects completion of only a small percentage of the overall work to be performed. For example, DOE’s Rocky Flats site alone accounted for more than 180,000 of the total 181,600 cubic meters of low-level and low-level mixed waste that DOE disposed of ahead of schedule. Similarly, more than half of the progress made ahead of schedule in remediating potential contamination areas was due to work performed at Rocky Flats. And although DOE made progress on many of its risk reduction measures, some individual sites did not make progress at an accelerated pace. For example, although DOE was ahead of schedule in disposing of low-level and low-level mixed waste, both the Oak Ridge site and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were slightly behind their site targets on this measure. In addition, DOE’s progress in a few areas reflected achieving only a small portion of the overall work to be completed. The most extreme example shows that DOE was ahead in packaging depleted uranium; however, this reflects about 1 percent of the nearly 700,000 metric tons to be packaged. In tearing down and disposing of nuclear facilities, DOE had completed about 9 percent of the 515 facilities it has to clean up. In addition to areas in which DOE was ahead of schedule, cleanup progress was on track or nearly on track for four risk reduction measures in the following cleanup categories: (1) packaging high-level waste for disposal, (2) cleaning up special nuclear materials, (3) packaging spent nuclear fuel for disposal, and (4) eliminating geographic sites (see table 3). These cleanup activities involve difficult and hazardous work. Making progress on cleanup activities is an important step in reducing environmental risks and annual operating costs, and in demonstrating results under the accelerated cleanup plan. DOE officials told us that achieving cleanup results for these waste activities helps reduce future mortgage costs such as surveillance and maintenance of unneeded facilities, avoids potentially higher remediation costs in the future, and demonstrates actual cleanup progress. To achieve such progress in reaching its risk reduction goals, DOE took a number of steps including changing the sequence of some cleanup activities to complete tasks earlier than originally scheduled and reducing work scope where warranted for other activities. Site officials credited the achievements to remediating targeted areas such as contaminated burial grounds, waste sites, facilities, and plutonium production reactors along the Columbia River at Hanford and a variety of obsolete buildings at Idaho and Savannah River. According to DOE officials at these sites, many of these areas were scheduled for decommissioning and disposal in the future, but because they were no longer needed, they were disposed of earlier than originally planned. In addition, making progress in certain areas can free up funding for use on other, more complex projects. For example, at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, officials told us that completing disposal of most of its low-level and low-level mixed waste 2 years ahead of schedule has allowed them to apply the funds originally planned for managing this waste to other cleanup activities at the site. In contrast to progress on cleanup activities for which DOE is ahead of or on schedule, DOE is having difficulty with other cleanup work that could have a major impact on its accelerated cleanup goals. As of March 2005, DOE was falling behind in three risk reduction measures under two cleanup categories that account for a significant portion of the potential cost reductions DOE was expecting—radioactive tank waste and transuranic waste. See table 4 for a list of cleanup activities for the two waste types on which DOE has fallen behind since implementing the accelerated cleanup plan. DOE efforts to treat and dispose of radioactive waste from its tanks are primarily at three DOE sites—Hanford, Idaho, and Savannah River. However, because the Hanford and Idaho sites have not yet begun to treat their liquid radioactive tank waste, the measure for eliminating liquid waste from underground tanks applies to the Savannah River Site. Although Savannah River has been processing radioactive tank waste sludge since 1996, it was behind in processing and eliminating from its tanks nearly 3 million gallons of liquid primarily because the site was still developing waste separation technology and lacked operational treatment facilities for disposing of liquid tank waste. While all three of DOE’s sites had performance goals for closing radioactive waste tanks through March 2005, no tanks have been closed since 1997. Plans to close tanks at the three sites have been delayed because DOE continues to work with regulators to reach agreement on closure requirements and due to a legal challenge to DOE’s tank closure strategy.