Report on audit of costs and management of the Yucca Mountain Project

The Department of Energy (Department) is responsible for establishing an underground waste repository to store high-level nuclear waste. To carry out this responsibility, the Department of Energy established the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (Waste Management Office). The Waste Management Office began characterization of the Yucca Mountain site to assess the feasibility of safely storing spent fuel and high level waste for 10,000 years. To date, the Department had spent about $1.5 billion on site characterization activities. The purpose of our audit was to examine how effectively these funds were spent and to examine the costs and management of contracting for the project. Our audit found that if procurement and fund allocation practices were streamlined, significant savings could be achieved over the remaining life of the project. Also, the anticipated reductions in the number of project participants had not materialized, nor had management and integration of the project been effectively implemented. In addition, the Waste Management Office`s efforts to make major staffing reductions had not met the original goals, and sound cost reduction ideas advanced by the project`s participants were not evaluated and implemented in a timely manner. Management agreed with our recommendations and is in the process of developing a program-wide strategic plan that recognizes funding constraints and has implemented a reorganization of the management structure at the Project Office