Nuclear Waste: DOE's Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Project Cost, Schedule, and Management Issues

摘要

The Department of Energy (DOE) is undertaking a project to improve the storage of spent (or irradiated) nuclear fuel from its nuclear reactors at the Department's Hanford Site in Washington State. This fuel is currently stored in water basins a few hundred yards from the Columbia River, where the deterioration of some of the fuel and the water basins has raised health and safety concerns. To address these concerns, the project currently under way involves installing equipment in the water basins to retrieve and package the fuel, building a facility to dry the fuel, and moving the dry fuel to a new interim storage facility farther from the river. Accordingly, you asked us to revisit this project to determine (1) its current status, (2) what problems might affect achieving current cost and schedule estimates, and (3) whether changes have been sufficient to address management weaknesses.