Audit says funds wasted in cask program

Wednesday, June 25, 2003 | 11:28 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department wasted money and resources in its quest to develop nuclear waste containers, according to a new audit.

The department, which manages the Yucca Mountain project aimed at creating a national high-level nuclear waste repository, also directs research and development of waste storage and shipping containers.

The audit noted among its findings that the department developed three different interim storage containers at three department sites. Also, two other department divisions -- the Yucca Mountain project office and the department's naval reactor program -- were simultaneously pursuing different waste-shipping cask designs, according to the Energy Department's Inspector General audit released Tuesday.

The department had no comprehensive plan for cask development, the audit said. A "significant portion" of a $13.8 million waste package design budget might have been saved if the department had eliminated redundancies, the audit said.

"The opportunity still exists for the department to avoid potentially redundant development activities for transportation casks by consolidating two development programs with an estimated combined cost of $9 million to $24 million," the audit said.

The audit recommended that the department's assistant secretary for environmental management and the director of the Yucca Mountain office be given sufficient authority to integrate cask development, and that they consider coordinating on a single cask design with the naval reactors program.

In an official response, Yucca project managers disagreed with the recommendation that they coordinate with the naval reactors program. Naval nuclear waste and commercial power plant waste are too different for the two divisions to work together on the same cask design, the managers said.