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United States General Accounting Office: 
GAO: 

Testimony: Before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U.S. 
Senate: 

For Release on Delivery: 
Expected at 9:30 a.m. 
Thursday, May 23, 2002: 

Nuclear Waste: 

Uncertainties About the Yucca Mountain Repository Project: 

Statement of (Ms.) Gary Jones, Director, Natural Resources and 
Environment: 

GAO-02-765T: 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

We are pleased to be here today to discuss the Department of Energy’s
(DOE) project to develop a nuclear waste repository. As required by law,
DOE has been investigating a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to
determine its suitability for disposing of highly radioactive wastes in 
a mined geologic repository. On February 14, 2002, the secretary of 
energy recommended to the president approval of this site for the 
development of a nuclear waste repository. The next day, the president 
recommended approval of the site to the Congress. The president’s 
recommendation began a statutory review process for the approval or 
disapproval of the site, including action by the state of Nevada, the 
Congress, DOE, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) within 
specified time frames. If the site is approved, DOE must apply to NRC 
for authorization (a license) to construct a repository. If the site is 
not approved for a license application, or if NRC denies a license to 
construct a repository, the administration and the Congress will have 
to consider other options for the long-term management of existing and 
future nuclear wastes. 

Our testimony, which is based on our recent report on the Yucca Mountain
Repository Project,[Footnote 1] addresses (1) DOE’s readiness to submit 
a license application within the statutory time frame, (2) the extent 
to which DOE can meet its goal of opening a repository at Yucca 
Mountain in 2010, and (3) the extent to which DOE is managing the 
project consistent with applicable departmental procedures. 

Summary: 

DOE is not prepared to submit an acceptable license application to NRC
within the statutory limits that would take effect if the site is 
approved. The president’s recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site to 
the Congress triggered specific statutory time frames for the next 
steps in the repository project. Nevada, which had 60 days from 
February 15 to disapprove the site, did so on April 8. The Congress now 
has 90 days (of continuous session) from that date in which to enact 
legislation overriding the state’s disapproval. On May 8, the House of 
Representatives passed a joint resolution approving the site for a 
repository. If the Senate also passes this resolution—resulting in 
final approval of the site—the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires DOE to 
then submit a license application to NRC within 90 days of the 
effective date of the legislation. Thus, the process gives DOE about 5 
to 8 months from the date of the president’s recommendation to submit 
the license application. However, a September 2001 detailed assessment 
of the repository program by DOE’s managing contractor concluded that 
DOE would not be ready to submit a license application that would be 
acceptable to NRC until January 2006. DOE did not accept the 
contractor’s proposed new schedule and directed the contractor to 
develop a proposal to shorten the time to a license application to 
December 2004, or about 29 months from now. The contractor has now 
developed such a proposal, which is under review within DOE. Moreover, 
while a site recommendation and a license application are separate 
processes, essentially the same data are needed for both. Waiting until 
DOE was closer to having the additional information needed to support 
an acceptable license application would have put DOE in a better 
position to submit the application within the time frames set out in 
the law, and to respond to questions and challenges that may emanate 
from the statutory review process subsequent to the president’s 
recommendation. 

DOE is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca
Mountain by 2010. On the basis of DOE’s managing contractor’s September 
2001 reassessment, sufficient time would not be available for DOE to 
obtain a license from NRC and construct enough of the repository to 
open it in 2010. Even under the more recent proposal to submit a 
license application as early as December 2004, it is questionable 
whether DOE could open the repository in 2010. A key factor in the 
future licensing and construction of a repository is whether DOE will 
be able to obtain the increases in annual funding that would be 
required to open the repository by 2010. Because of the uncertainty of 
meeting the 2010 goal, DOE is exploring alternative approaches, such as 
developing surface facilities for storing waste at the site until 
sufficient underground disposal facilities can be constructed. Had DOE 
elected to defer a site recommendation until it was closer to having an 
acceptable license application, it could have ensured that the site 
recommendation was based on the approach to developing a repository 
that it intends to follow. This would have enabled DOE to develop an 
estimated schedule to design and build the preferred approach and to 
estimate its cost, including the annual funding requirements, as part 
of the information on which to make a site recommendation. 

DOE currently does not have a reliable estimate of when, and at what 
cost, a license application can be submitted or a repository can be 
opened because DOE stopped using its cost and schedule baselines to 
manage the site investigation in 1997. DOE needs to reestablish a 
baseline for the repository program that accounts for the outstanding 
technical work needed to prepare an acceptable license application and 
the estimated schedule and cost to achieve this milestone. In 
conjunction, DOE needs to use the baseline as a tool for managing the 
program, in accordance with the department’s policies and procedures 
for managing major projects. Therefore, our December 2001 report 
recommended that the secretary of energy reestablish the baseline 
through the submission of a license application and follow the 
department’s management requirements, including a formal procedure for 
changing program milestones. According to DOE, it is currently in the 
process of establishing a new baseline for the nuclear waste program. 

Background: 

Recognizing the critical need to address the issue of nuclear waste
disposal, the Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to
establish a comprehensive policy and program for the safe, permanent
disposal of commercial spent fuel and other highly radioactive wastes in
one or more mined geologic repositories. The act created the Office of
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management within DOE to manage its nuclear
waste program. Amendments to the act in 1987 directed DOE to 
investigate only the Yucca Mountain site. 

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act also set out important and complementary
roles for other federal agencies: 

* The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was required to establish
health and safety standards for the disposal of wastes in repositories. 
EPA issued standards for the Yucca Mountain site in June 2001 that 
require a high probability of safety for at least 10,000 years. 
[Footnote 2] 

* NRC is responsible for licensing and regulating repositories to 
ensure their compliance with EPA’s standards. One prerequisite to the 
secretary’s recommendation was obtaining NRC’s preliminary comments on 
the sufficiency of DOE’s site investigation for the purpose of a license
application. NRC provided these comments on November 13, 2001. If the
site is approved, then NRC, upon accepting a license application from 
DOE, has 3 to 4 years to review the application and decide whether to
issue a license to construct, and then to operate, a repository at the 
site.[Footnote 3] 

* The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (the board) reviews the
technical and scientific validity of DOE’s activities associated with
investigating the site and packaging and transporting wastes. The board
must report its findings and recommendations to the Congress and the
secretary of energy at least twice each year, but DOE is not required to
implement these recommendations. 

DOE has designated the nuclear waste program, including the site
investigation, as a “major” program that is subject to senior 
management’s attention and to its agencywide guidelines for managing 
such programs and projects. The guidelines require the development of a 
cost and schedule baseline, a system for managing changes to the 
baseline, and independent cost and schedule reviews. DOE is using a 
management contractor to carry out the work on the program. The 
contractor develops and maintains the baseline, but senior DOE managers 
must approve significant changes to cost or schedule estimates. In 
February 2001, DOE hired Bechtel SAIC Company, LLC (Bechtel), to manage 
the program and required the contractor to reassess the remaining 
technical work and the estimated schedule and cost to complete this 
work. 

DOE Will Not Be Ready to Submit a License Application within the 
Statutory Time Frame: 

DOE is not prepared to submit an acceptable license application to NRC
within the statutory limits that would take effect if the site were 
approved. Specifically, DOE has entered into 293 agreements with NRC to 
gather and/or analyze additional technical information in preparation 
for a license application that NRC would accept. DOE is also continuing 
to address technical issues raised by the board. In September 2001, 
Bechtel concluded, after reassessing the remaining technical work, that 
DOE would not be ready to submit an acceptable license application to 
NRC until January 2006. DOE did not accept the 2006 date. Instead, it 
directed the contractor to prepare a new plan for submitting a license 
application to NRC by December 2004. DOE’s current plan is that, by the 
end of September 2002, Bechtel will develop, and DOE will review and 
approve, a new technical, cost, and schedule baseline for submitting a 
license application to NRC in December 2004. 

Moreover, while a site recommendation and a license application are
separate processes, DOE will need to use essentially the same data for
both.[Footnote 4] Also, the act states that the president’s 
recommendation to the Congress is that he considers the site qualified 
for an application to NRC for a license. The president’s recommendation 
also triggers an express statutory time frame that requires DOE to 
submit a license application to NRC within about 5 to 8 months. 

DOE Lacks Information for a License Application: 

The 293 agreements that DOE and NRC have negotiated address areas of
study within the program where NRC’s staff has determined that DOE
needs to collect more scientific data and/or improve its technical
assessment of the data. According to NRC, as of March 2002, DOE had
satisfactorily completed work on 38 of these agreements and could 
resolve another 22 agreements by September 30 of this year. These 293
agreements generally relate to uncertainties about three aspects of the
long-term performance of the proposed repository: (1) the expected
lifetime of engineered barriers, particularly the waste containers; (2) 
the physical properties of the Yucca Mountain site; and (3) the 
supporting information for the mathematical models used to evaluate the
performance of the planned repository at the site. 

The uncertainties related to engineered barriers revolve around the
longevity of the waste containers that would be used to isolate the 
wastes. DOE currently expects that these containers would isolate the 
wastes from the environment for more than 10,000 years. Minimizing 
uncertainties about the container materials and the predicted 
performance of the waste containers over this long time period is 
especially critical because DOE’s estimates of the repository system’s 
performance depend heavily on the waste containers, in addition to the 
natural features of the site, to meet NRC’s licensing regulations and 
EPA’s health and safety standards. 

The uncertainties related to the physical characteristics of the site 
center on how the combination of heat, water, and chemical processes 
caused by the presence of nuclear waste in the repository would affect 
the flow of water through the repository. 

The NRC staff’s concerns about DOE’s mathematical models for assessing
the performance of the repository primarily relate to validating the
models; that is, presenting information to provide confidence that the
models are valid for their intended use and verifying the information 
used in the models. Performance assessment is an analytical method that 
relies on computers to operate mathematical models to assess the 
performance of the repository against EPA’s health and safety 
standards, NRC’s licensing regulations, and DOE’s guidelines for 
determining if the Yucca Mountain site is suitable for a repository. 
DOE uses the data collected during site characterization activities to 
model how a repository’s natural and engineered features would perform 
at the site. 

According to DOE, the additional technical work surrounding the 293
agreements with NRC’s staff is an insignificant addition to the 
extensive amount of technical work already completed—including some 600 
papers cited in one of its recently published reports and a substantial 
body of published analytic literature. DOE does not expect the results 
of the additional work to change its current performance assessment of a
repository at Yucca Mountain. 

From NRC’s perspective, however, the agreements provided the basis for
it to give DOE its preliminary comments on the sufficiency of DOE’s
investigation of the Yucca Mountain site for inclusion in a future 
license application. In a November 13, 2001, letter to the under 
secretary of energy, the Chairman of the NRC commented that: 

“although significant additional work is needed prior to the submission 
of a possible license application, we believe that agreements reached 
between DOE and NRC staff regarding the collection of additional 
information provide the basis for concluding that development of an 
acceptable license application is achievable.” 

The board has also consistently raised issues and concerns over DOE’s
understanding of the expected lifetime of the waste containers, the
significance of the uncertainties involved in the modeling of the 
scientific data, and the need for an evaluation and comparison of a 
repository design having a higher temperature with a design having a 
lower temperature. The board continues to reiterate these concerns in 
its reports. For example, in its most recent report to the Congress and 
the secretary of energy, issued on January 24, 2002, the board 
concluded that, when DOE’s technical and scientific work is taken as a 
whole, the technical basis for DOE’s repository performance estimates 
is “weak to moderate” at this time. The board added that gaps in data 
and basic understanding cause important uncertainties in the concepts 
and assumptions on which DOE’s performance estimates are now based; 
providing the board with limited confidence in current performance 
estimates generated by DOE performance assessment model. 

As recently as May 2001, DOE projected that it could submit a license
application to NRC in 2003. It now appears, however, that DOE may not
complete all of the additional technical work that it has agreed to do 
to prepare an acceptable license application until January 2006. In 
September 2001, Bechtel completed, at DOE’s direction, a detailed 
reassessment in an effort to reestablish a cost and schedule baseline. 
Bechtel estimated that DOE could complete the outstanding technical 
work agreed to with NRC and submit a license application in January 
2006. This date, according to the contractor, was due to the cumulative 
effect of funding reductions in recent years that had produced a 
“...growing bow wave of incomplete work that is being pushed into the 
future.” Moreover, the contractor’s report said, the proposed schedule 
did not include any cost and schedule contingencies. The contractor’s 
estimate was based on guidance from DOE that, in part, directed the 
contractor to assume annual funding for the nuclear waste program of 
$410 million in fiscal year 2002, $455 million in fiscal year 2003, and 
$465 million in fiscal year 2004 and thereafter.[Footnote 5] DOE did 
not accept this estimate because, according to program officials, the 
estimate would extend the date for submitting a license application too 
far into the future. Instead, DOE accepted only the fiscal year 2002 
portion of Bechtel’s detailed work plan and directed the contractor to 
prepare a new plan for submitting a license application to NRC by 
December 2004. Bechtel has prepared such a plan and the plan is under 
review by DOE. Although we have not reviewed the entire plan, we note 
that the plan (1) assumes that the program receives the $525 million in 
funds requested by the Administration for fiscal year 2003, which would 
be more than $100 million above the funds provided for fiscal year 
2002, and (2) work on 10 of the department’s 293 agreements with NRC 
would not be complete by the target license application date of 
December 2004. 

Essentially the Same Information Is Needed for a Site Recommendation
and a License Application: 

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, DOE’s site characterization 
activities are to provide information necessary to evaluate the Yucca 
Mountain site’s suitability for submitting a license application to NRC 
for placing a repository at the site. In implementing the act, DOE’s 
guidelines provide that the site will be suitable as a waste repository 
if the site is likely to meet the radiation protection standards that 
NRC would use to reach a licensing decision on the proposed repository. 
Thus, as stated in the preamble (introduction) to DOE’s guidelines, DOE 
expects to use essentially the same data for the site recommendation 
and the license application. 

In addition, the act specifies that, having received a site 
recommendation from the secretary, the president shall submit a 
recommendation of the site to the Congress if the president considers 
the site qualified for a license application. Under the process laid 
out in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, once the secretary makes a site 
recommendation, there is no time limit under which the president must 
act on the secretary’s recommendation. However, when the president 
recommended, on February 15, that the Congress approve the site, 
specific statutory time frames were triggered for the next steps in the 
process. Figure 1 shows the approximate statutory time needed between a 
site recommendation and submission of a license application and the 
additional time needed for DOE to meet the conditions for an acceptable 
license application. The figure assumes that the Congress overrides the 
state’s disapproval of April 8, 2002. As shown in the figure, Nevada 
had 60 days—until April 16—to disapprove the site. The Congress now has 
90 days (of continuous session) from that date in which to enact 
legislation overriding the state’s disapproval. If the Congress 
overrides the state’s disapproval and the site designation takes 
effect, the next step is for the secretary to submit a license 
application to NRC within 90 days after the site designation is 
effective. In total, these statutory time frames provide about 150 to 
240 days, or about 5 to 8 months, from the time the president makes a
recommendation to DOE’s submittal of a license application. On the basis
of Bechtel’s September 2001 and current program reassessments, however, 
DOE would not be ready to submit a license application to NRC until 
January 2006 or December 2004, respectively. 

Figure 1: Comparison of Statutory Site Approval Process with DOE’s 
Projected Schedule: 

[Refer to PDF for image] 

Secretary of Energy recommends site to the President: February 14. 

Statutory time: From February 15, 2002; about 5 to 8 months: 
President recommends site to Congress; 60 days later: 
Nevada disapproves site: April 8; 90 days[A] later: 
If Congress overrides Nevada's disapproval, site is approved; 90 days 
later: 
DOE required to submit license application. 

Additional time needed to meet agreements with NRC for an acceptable 
license application: from end of statutory time through January 2006 (2 
1/2 years or more): 
DOE able to submit acceptable license application. 

[A] Ninety calendar days of continuous session of the Congress. 

[End of figure] 

DOE Is Unlikely to Open a Repository in 2010 As Planned: 

DOE states that it may be able to open a repository at Yucca Mountain in
2010. The department has based this expectation on submitting an
acceptable license application to NRC in 2003, receiving NRC’s
authorization to construct a repository in 2006, and constructing 
essential surface and underground facilities by 2010. However, Bechtel, 
in its September 2001 proposal for reestablishing technical, schedule, 
and cost baselines for the program, concluded that January 2006 is a 
more realistic date for submitting a license application. Because DOE 
objected to this proposed schedule, the contractor has now proposed a 
plan for submitting the application in December 2004. Because of 
uncertainty over when DOE may be able to open the repository, the 
department is exploring alternatives that might still permit it to 
begin accepting commercial spent fuel in 2010. 

Extension of License Application Date Will Likely Postpone 2010
Repository Goal: 

An extension of the license application date to December 2004 or January
2006 would likely preclude DOE from achieving its long-standing goal of
opening a repository in 2010. According to DOE’s May 2001 report on the
program’s estimated cost, after submitting a license application in 
2003, DOE estimates that it could receive an authorization to construct 
the repository in 2006 and complete the construction of enough surface 
and underground facilities to open the repository in 2010, or 7 years 
after submitting the license application. This 7-year estimate from 
submittal of the license application to the initial construction and 
operation of the repository assumes that NRC would grant an 
authorization to construct the facility in 3 years, followed by 4 years 
of construction. Assuming these same estimates of time, submitting a 
license application in the December 2004 to January 2006 time frame 
would extend the opening date for the repository until 2012 or 2013. 

Furthermore, opening the repository in 2012 or 2013 may be questionable
for several reasons. First, a repository at Yucca Mountain would be a 
first-of-a-kind facility, meaning that any schedule projections may be
optimistic. DOE has deferred its original target date for opening a
repository from 1998 to 2003 to 2010. Second, although the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act states that NRC has 3 years to decide on a construction 
license, a fourth year may be added if NRC certifies that it is 
necessary. Third, the 4-year construction time period that DOE’s 
current schedule allows may be too short. For example, a contractor 
hired by DOE to independently review the estimated costs and schedule 
for the nuclear waste program reported that the 4-year construction 
period was too optimistic and recommended that the construction phase 
be extended by a year-and-a-half.[Footnote 6] Bechtel anticipates a 5-
year period of construction between the receipt of a construction 
authorization from NRC and the opening of the repository. A 4-year 
licensing period followed by 5 years of initial construction could 
extend the repository opening until about 2014 or 2015. 

Finally, these simple projections do not account for any other factors 
that could adversely affect this 7- to 9-year schedule for licensing, 
constructing, and opening the repository. Annual appropriations for the 
program in recent years have been less than $400 million. In contrast, 
according to DOE, it needs between $750 million and $1.5 billion in 
annual appropriations during most of the 7- to 9-year licensing and 
construction period in order to open the repository on that schedule. 
In its August 2001 report on alternative means for financing and 
managing the program, DOE stated that unless the program’s funding is 
increased, the budget might become the “determining factor” whether DOE 
will be able to accept wastes in 2010.[Footnote 7] 

In part, DOE’s desire to meet the 2010 goal is linked to the court 
decisions that DOE—under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and as 
implemented by DOE’s contracts with owners of commercial spent fuel—is 
obligated to begin accepting spent fuel from contract holders not later 
than January 31, 1998, or be held liable for damages. Courts are 
currently assessing the amount of damages that DOE must pay to holders 
of spent fuel disposal contracts. Estimates of potential damages for 
the estimated 12-year delay from 1998 to 2010 range widely from the 
department’s estimate of about $2 billion to $3 billion to the nuclear 
industry’s estimate of at least $50 billion. The damage estimates are 
based, in part, on the expectation that DOE would begin accepting spent 
fuel from contract holders in 2010. The actual damages could be higher 
or lower, depending on when DOE begins accepting spent fuel. 

DOE Is Reviewing Alternative Ways to Accept Wastes in 2010: 

Because of the uncertainty of achieving the 2010 goal for opening the
Yucca Mountain repository, DOE is examining alternative approaches that
would permit it to meet the goal. For example, in a May 2001 report, DOE
examined approaches that might permit it to begin accepting wastes at 
the repository site in 2010 while spreading out the construction of 
repository facilities over a longer time period. The report recommended 
storing wastes on the surface until the capacity to move wastes into 
the repository has been increased. Relatively modest-sized initial 
surface facilities to handle wastes could be expanded later to handle 
larger volumes of waste. Such an approach, according to the report, 
would permit partial construction and limited waste emplacement in the 
repository, at lower than earlier estimated annual costs, in advance of 
the more costly construction of the facility as originally planned. 
Also, by implementing a modular approach, DOE would be capable of 
accepting wastes at the repository earlier than if it constructed the 
repository described in the documents that the secretary used to 
support a site recommendation. 

DOE has also contracted with the National Research Council to provide
recommendations on design and operating strategies for developing a
geologic repository in stages, which is to include reviewing DOE’s 
modular approach. The council is addressing such issues as the (1) 
technical, policy, and societal objectives and risks for developing a 
staged repository; (2) effects of developing a staged repository on the 
safety and security of the facility and the effects on the cost and 
public acceptance of such a facility; and (3) strategies for developing 
a staged system, including the design, construction, operation, and 
closing of such a facility. In March 2002, the council published an 
interim report on the study in which it addresses a conceptual 
framework for a generic repository program. The Council plans to issue 
a final report this fall, in which it intends to provide specific 
suggestions for incorporating additional elements of staged repository 
development into DOE’s repository program. 

DOE’s Current License Application Milestone Date Is Not Supported by the
Program’s Baseline: 

As of December 2001, DOE expected to submit the application to NRC in
2003.[Footnote 8] This date reflects a delay in the license application 
milestone date last approved by DOE in March 1997 that targeted March 
2002 for submitting a license application. The 2003 date was not 
formally approved by DOE’s senior managers or incorporated into the 
program’s cost and schedule baseline, as required by the management 
procedures that were in effect for the program. At least three 
extensions for the license application date have been proposed and used 
by DOE in program documents, but none of these proposals have been 
approved as required. As a result, DOE does not have a baseline 
estimate of the program’s schedule and cost—including the late 2004 
date in its fiscal year 2003 budget request—that is based on all the 
work that it expects to complete through the submission of a license 
application. 

DOE’s guidance for managing major programs and projects requires, among 
other things, that senior managers establish a baseline for managing 
the program or project. The baseline describes the program’s mission—in 
this case, the safe disposal of highly radioactive waste in a geologic 
repository—and the expected technical requirements, schedule, and cost 
to complete the program. Procedures for controlling changes to an 
approved baseline are designed to ensure that program managers consider 
the expected effects of adding, deleting, or modifying technical work, 
as well as the effects of unanticipated events, such as funding 
shortfalls, on the project’s mission and baseline. In this way, 
alternative courses of action can be assessed on the basis of each 
action’s potential effect on the baseline. DOE’s procedures for 
managing the nuclear waste program require that program managers revise 
the baseline, as appropriate, to reflect any significant changes to the 
program. After March 1997, according to DOE officials, they did not 
always follow these control procedures to account for proposed changes 
to the program’s baseline, including the changes proposed to extend the 
date for license application. According to these same officials, they 
stopped following the control procedures because the secretary of 
energy did not approve proposed extensions to the license application 
milestone. As a result, the official baseline did not accurately 
reflect the program’s cost and schedule to complete the remaining work 
necessary to submit a license application. 

In November 1999, the Yucca Mountain site investigation office proposed
extending the license application milestone date by 10 months, from 
March to December 2002, to compensate for a $57.8 million drop in 
funding for fiscal year 2000. A proposed extension in the license 
application milestone required the approval of both the director of the
nuclear waste program and the secretary of energy. Neither of these
officials approved this proposed change nor was the baseline revised to
reflect this change even though the director subsequently began 
reporting the December 2002 date in quarterly performance reports to 
the deputy secretary of energy. The site investigation office 
subsequently proposed two other extensions of the license application 
milestone, neither of which was approved by the program’s director or 
the secretary of energy or incorporated into the baseline for the 
program. Nevertheless, DOE began to use the proposed, but unapproved, 
milestone dates in both internal and external reports and 
communications, such as in congressional testimony delivered in May 
2001. 

Because senior managers did not approve these proposed changes for
incorporation into the baseline for the program, program managers did 
not adjust the program’s cost and schedule baseline. By not accounting 
for these and other changes to the program’s technical work, milestone 
dates, and estimated costs in the program’s baseline since March 1997, 
DOE has not had baseline estimates of all of the technical work that it 
expected to complete through submission of a license application and 
the estimated schedule and cost to complete this work. This condition 
includes the cost and schedule information contained in DOE’s budget 
request for fiscal year 2003. 

When DOE hired Bechtel to manage the nuclear waste program, one of the
contractor’s first assignments was to document the remaining technical
work that had to be completed to support the submission of a license
application to NRC and to estimate the time and cost to complete this
work. The contractor’s revised, unofficial baseline for the program 
shows that it will take until January 2006 to complete essential 
technical work and submit an acceptable license application. Also, DOE 
had estimated that completing the remaining technical work would add 
about $1.4 billion to the cumulative cost of the program, bringing the 
total cost of the Yucca Mountain project’s portion of the nuclear waste 
program to $5.5 billion.[Footnote 9] As noted earlier, DOE accepted 
only the fiscal year 2002 portion of the proposed baseline and then 
directed the contractor to prepare a plan for submitting a license 
application to NRC by December 2004. The resulting plan is now under 
review within DOE. 

Because of these management weaknesses, we recommended in our
December 2001 report that the secretary of energy reestablish the 
baseline through the submission of a license application and follow the
department’s management requirements, including a formal procedure for
changing program milestones. According to DOE, it is currently in the
process of establishing a new baseline for the nuclear waste program. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes our prepared statement. We would be happy
to respond to any questions that you or members of the subcommittee may
have. 
 
Contacts and Acknowledgments: 

For further information about this testimony, please contact me at
(202) 512-3841. Dwayne Weigel, Daniel Feehan, Doreen Feldman, Susan
Irwin, and Robert Sanchez also made key contributions to this 
statement. 

[End of section] 

Footnotes: 

[1] U.S. General Accounting Office, Nuclear Waste: Technical, Schedule, 
and Cost Uncertainties of the Yucca Mountain Repository Project, 
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-02-191] (Washington, D.C.: 
Dec. 21, 2001). 

[2] The Energy Policy Act of 1992 required EPA to establish specific 
health and safety standards for a repository at Yucca Mountain. 

[3] The acceptance of a license application is not the same as 
approving an application. A decision to approve or disapprove any 
application would be made by NRC following extensive review and 
testing. 

[4] See General Guidelines for the Recommendation of Sites for Nuclear 
Waste Repositories; Yucca Mountain Site Suitability Guidelines 
(preamble), 66 Fed. Reg. 57298, 57322 (Nov. 14, 2001). 

[5] DOE’s budget request for fiscal year 2003 is about $527 million, or 
$72 million more than assumed in Bechtel’s reassessment. The 
preliminary amounts for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 are $538 million and 
$550 million, respectively. 

[6] U.S. Department of Energy, Independent Cost Estimate Review of the 
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, 2001 Total System Life 
Cycle Cost (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 2001). 

[7] U.S. Department of Energy, Alternative Means of Financing and 
Managing the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, DOE/RW-0546 
(Washington, D.C.: Aug. 2001). 

[8] DOE’s 2003 budget request states that DOE now expects to submit the 
license application between October and December 2004. 

[9] DOE estimated that the program cost $4.1 billion, on the basis of 
year-of-expenditure dollars from the program’s inception in 1983 
through March 2002. The $5.5 billion estimate for the license 
application is based on year-of-expenditure dollars from 1983 through
January 2006. 

[End of section] 

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