This is the accessible text file for GAO report number GAO-07-1010 
entitled 'Yucca Mountain: DOE Has Improved Its Quality Assurance 
Program, but Whether Its Application for a NRC License Will Be High 
Quality Is Unclear' which was released on August 6, 2007. 

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Report to the Honorable Jon C. Porter, House of Representatives: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 

GAO: 

August 2007: 

Yucca Mountain: 

DOE Has Improved Its Quality Assurance Program, but Whether Its 
Application for a NRC License Will Be High Quality Is Unclear: 

GAO-07-1010: 

GAO Highlights: 

Highlights of GAO-07-1010, a report to the Honorable Jon C. Porter, 
House of Representatives 

Why GAO Did This Study: 

Nuclear power reactors generate highly radioactive waste. To 
permanently store this waste, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been 
working to submit a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission (NRC) for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain about 
100 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada. Although the project has been beset 
with delays, in part because of persistent problems with its quality 
assurance program, DOE stated in July 2006 that it will submit a 
license application with NRC by June 30, 2008. NRC states that a high-
quality application needs to be complete, technically adequate, 
transparent by clearly justifying underlying assumptions, and traceable 
back to original source materials. 

GAO examined (1) DOE’s development of its schedule for submitting a 
license application and the stakeholders with whom it consulted, (2) 
NRC’s assessment of DOE’s readiness to submit a high-quality 
application, and (3) DOE’s progress in addressing quality assurance 
recommendations and challenges identified in GAO’s March 2006 report. 
GAO reviewed DOE’s management plan for creating the license 
application, reviewed correspondence and attended prelicensing meetings 
between DOE and NRC, and interviewed DOE managers and NRC on-site 
representatives for the Yucca Mountain project. In commenting on a 
draft of the report, both DOE and NRC agreed with the report. 

What GAO Found: 

The director of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management 
set the June 30, 2008, date for filing the license application with NRC 
in consultation with the DOE and contractor managers for the Yucca 
Mountain project. DOE officials told us that external stakeholders were 
not consulted because there was neither a legal requirement nor a 
compelling management reason to do so. According to the director, the 
June 2008 schedule is achievable because DOE has already completed a 
large amount of work, including the completion of a draft license 
application in 2005 that DOE decided not to submit to NRC. 

NRC officials believe it is likely that DOE will submit a license 
application by June 30, 2008, but until NRC receives the application, 
officials will not speculate about whether it will be high quality. NRC 
has not seen a draft of the license application, and NRC’s long-
standing practice is to maintain an objective and neutral position 
toward a future application until it is filed. To help ensure that DOE 
understands its expectations, NRC has, among other things, held 
periodic prelicensing management and technical meetings with DOE. 

DOE has made progress in resolving the quality assurance 
recommendations and challenges identified in GAO’s March 2006 report. 
For example, DOE has replaced the one-page summary of performance 
indicators that GAO had determined was ineffective with more frequent 
and rigorous project management meetings. DOE has addressed the 
management challenges GAO identified to varying degrees. For example, 
regarding management continuity, DOE has worked to fill and retain 
personnel in key management positions, such as the director of quality 
assurance. However, for various reasons—including the long history of 
recurring problems and likely project leadership changes in January 
2009 when the current administration leaves office—it is unclear 
whether DOE’s actions will prevent these problems from recurring. 

Figure: Major Milestones in the Yucca Mountain Project: 

[See PDF for Image] 

Source: DOE and NRC. 

[End of figure] 

[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-1010]. 

To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on 
the link above. For more information, contact Mark Gaffigan, (202) 512-
3841, gaffiganm@gao.gov. 

[End of section] 

Contents: 

Letter: 

Results in Brief: 

Background: 

DOE's Schedule to Submit a License Application to NRC by June 30, 2008, 
Was Developed in Consultation with Yucca Mountain Project Managers: 

NRC Officials Are Uncertain Whether DOE Will File a High-Quality 
License Application That Will Facilitate Completion of a Timely Review: 

DOE Has Made Progress in Implementing Our Quality Assurance 
Recommendations and Resolving Challenges We Identified: 

Concluding Observations: 

Agency Comments: 

Scope and Methodology: 

Appendix I: Comments from the Department of Energy: 

Appendix II: Comments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: 

Tables: 

Table 1: Major Milestones in DOE's Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository 
Schedule: 

Table 2: Key Technical Issues Identified by NRC and DOE: 

Figure: 

Figure 1: NRC's License Application Review Process: 

Abbreviations: 

BSC: Bechtel/SAIC Company, LLC: 
DOE: Department of Energy: 
EPA: Environmental Protection Agency: 
NRC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission: 
OCRWM: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: 
USGS: U.S. Geological Survey: 

United States Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, DC 20548: 

August 2, 2007: 

The Honorable Jon C. Porter: 
House of Representatives: 

Dear Mr. Porter: 

Nuclear power reactors generate nearly 20 percent of the nation's 
electricity, but they create waste that can remain highly radioactive 
for hundreds of thousands of years and requires proper disposal to 
protect public health and the environment. More than 50,000 metric tons 
of this radioactive waste is stored temporarily at 72 sites around the 
country--primarily at commercial nuclear power plants. The Nuclear 
Waste Policy Act of 1982 established the Office of Civilian Radioactive 
Waste Management (OCRWM) within the Department of Energy (DOE) and 
directed OCRWM to construct an underground geological repository to 
permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. 
The act also set 1998 as the target date for DOE to start accepting 
this waste and required the owners of spent nuclear fuel and high-level 
radioactive wastes to enter into contracts with DOE for the disposal of 
these materials and to pay for the repository's construction and 
operations. In 2002, the Congress approved the President's 
recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada for the repository. 
However, construction has not yet begun. DOE currently estimates that 
2017 is the earliest date that the repository could open. Since DOE was 
unable to begin the acceptance of waste in 1998 as required by the 
statute and contracts, the government has incurred a liability that DOE 
now estimates to be approximately $7 billion. Each year of delay in the 
operation of the repository beyond 2017 could increase the government's 
liability by up to $500 million. 

Before construction of the repository can begin, DOE must submit a 
license application to obtain a construction authorization from the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).[Footnote 1] The act directs NRC to 
issue or deny construction authorization within 3 years after receiving 
DOE's license application, unless NRC extends this period by not more 
than 1 year and reports the reasons for doing so to the Secretary of 
Energy and the Congress. To ensure that its license application review 
is completed within the allotted 3-to 4-year time frame, NRC expects 
the application to be high quality--that is, to contain the information 
necessary and sufficient to support the technical positions it 
presents. Specifically, NRC has stated that a high-quality license 
application would be complete, technically adequate, transparent-- 
clearly justifying and explaining any underlying assumptions and 
conclusions--and traceable back to original source materials. 

As part of the licensing process, DOE must demonstrate that its 
repository will meet NRC's regulations, which implement the 
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) standard for protecting public 
health and the environment from harmful exposure to the radioactive 
waste. In preparation to file a license application, DOE has been 
conducting numerous scientific and technical studies at the Yucca 
Mountain site that will serve as supporting documentation to 
demonstrate that it can meet these standards. DOE has also developed 
computer models to measure the probability that various combinations of 
natural and engineered features of the repository could safely contain 
waste for the long term, taking into account possible water 
infiltration, waste package corrosion, earthquakes, volcanic action, or 
other scenarios. 

NRC requires a license applicant to support its technical analysis by 
implementing a quality assurance program that ensures that the 
scientific, engineering, procurement, recordkeeping, and other work at 
the project is performed under controlled conditions and can be 
verified by others. DOE project teams are responsible for carrying out 
various functions or aspects of the work and creating their own 
policies and procedures to implement the quality assurance 
requirements. DOE has established a quality assurance program that, for 
example, contains general requirements for calibrating equipment before 
conducting scientific tests, such as stipulating when and how the 
equipment should be calibrated and how to document the results. 

In March 2006, we reported that DOE had experienced persistent problems 
with its quality assurance program for the Yucca Mountain 
project.[Footnote 2] We concluded that the project's management tools 
were ineffective for monitoring performance and detecting new quality 
assurance problems. We recommended that DOE take action to strengthen 
the project's management tools to better identify problems and track 
progress in addressing them. Our report also identified three 
substantial management challenges facing the project. First, in March 
2005, DOE announced the discovery of e-mail messages implying that some 
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees responsible for analyzing water 
infiltration in Yucca Mountain may have falsified scientific data and 
had shown disdain for quality assurance program requirements. 
Subsequently, in January 2007, we reported that DOE had spent about 
$20.5 million to survey e-mail messages to determine the extent and 
nature of the problem, rework the USGS analysis, and conduct quality 
assurance and e-mail training.[Footnote 3] Second, DOE needs to ensure 
that specific engineering designs reflected high-level plans and 
regulatory requirements. For example, design changes to a spent fuel 
handling building led to the description of different design 
requirements regarding the need for a water-based, fire-suppression 
system. The activation of such a system could facilitate a nuclear 
reaction, if there were also an inadvertent release of spent nuclear 
fuel inside the building. The requirement for the system, therefore, 
was eliminated, but not all building design documents reflected the 
change. Third, DOE has experienced substantial turnover in key project 
management positions. NRC has stressed the importance of a continuity 
of qualified managers rather than a series of acting managers, but 9 of 
17 key management positions at DOE turned over between 2001 and 2006. 

Quality assurance problems are not new at the project and over time 
have contributed to delays in filing a license application. In 2001, 
DOE determined that, in part because of ongoing efforts to resolve 
quality assurance problems, it would be unable to submit a license 
application to NRC by December 2002, the target date scheduled when the 
Congress approved the Yucca Mountain site. DOE was also unable to meet 
a December 2004 goal for submitting a license application. Past 
initiatives to address these problems and prepare for the submission of 
a license application have included changes to improve the project's 
organizational culture and ability to quickly detect and resolve 
problems. Subsequently, in October 2005, DOE implemented its "New Path 
Forward" by making major changes to the project's design, organization, 
and management. For example, to improve accountability at the project, 
it reorganized project staff to create a single manager in charge of 
the project's major tasks in science, engineering, and licensing. DOE 
also designated Sandia National Laboratories as the project's lead 
laboratory to integrate the scientific work that Bechtel/SAIC Company, 
LLC (BSC), the project's lead contractor, had previously overseen. 

Shortly after his Senate confirmation in May 2006, OCRWM's director 
announced a new schedule to submit DOE's license application for the 
repository to NRC by June 30, 2008. The director has also fundamentally 
changed DOE's management of the Yucca Mountain project--DOE now 
directly manages the project, rather than limiting its role to 
overseeing BSC's implementation of its management and operating 
contract. OCRWM's director and deputy director now hold monthly program 
review meetings with DOE and contractor project managers and routinely 
participate in quality assurance management meetings with a focus on 
identifying and correcting problems. OCRWM's director has also 
identified specific performance measures for each project employee to 
improve the organizational culture. 

In light of persistent quality assurance problems and other delays that 
the Yucca Mountain project has experienced, we examined (1) DOE's 
development of its schedule for filing a license application by June 
30, 2008, and the stakeholders with whom it consulted; (2) NRC's 
assessment of DOE's readiness to file a license application that is 
high quality and enables NRC to complete its evaluation within 3 to 4 
years; and (3) DOE's progress in implementing the recommendations and 
resolving the additional challenges identified in our March 2006 report 
and the extent to which these challenges were considered in setting the 
license application schedule. 

To examine DOE's development of its license application schedule, we 
reviewed Yucca Mountain project documents, including DOE's license 
application management plan and progress reports, and interviewed 
senior OCRWM managers. To obtain NRC's assessment of DOE's readiness to 
file a high-quality license application, we attended prelicensing 
meetings and other interactions between NRC and DOE and reviewed NRC 
correspondence and statements regarding DOE's planned license 
application submission. We also interviewed NRC officials regarding 
these interactions and their views of the planned license application. 
Finally, to determine DOE's progress in implementing the 
recommendations in our March 2006 report and resolving the additional 
challenges we identified, we reviewed prior GAO reports, corrective 
action reports, and related Yucca Mountain project documents; 
interviewed senior OCRWM managers in DOE headquarters and the Yucca 
Mountain project office in Las Vegas, Nevada; and interviewed NRC 
officials. We conducted our work from February 2007 through July 2007 
in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Results in Brief: 

The decision to submit a license application to NRC by June 30, 2008, 
was made by OCRWM's director in consultation with DOE and contractor 
project managers; the director did not consult with nonfederal 
stakeholders, including the state of Nevada and the nuclear power 
industry. DOE officials told us they did not consult with external 
stakeholders because there was no legal requirement or compelling 
management reason for them to do so. They noted that the NRC review 
process includes public hearings on the application, which will provide 
stakeholders with an opportunity to comment on the substance of the 
application. OCRWM's director told us that he announced the decision to 
expedite the license application process shortly after taking office to 
jump-start what he viewed as a stalled project. The director believes 
the June 30, 2008, schedule is achievable because DOE has already 
completed a substantial amount of work, including the completion of a 
draft license application in 2005 that DOE ultimately determined was 
not ready to submit to NRC. To develop the internal schedule to meet 
the June 2008 date, project managers created a management plan to (1) 
assess the statutory and regulatory requirements for the license 
application; (2) identify any gaps and inadequacies in previous efforts 
to draft a license application; (3) rework the problem areas; and (4) 
create a management process to review, revise, and then seek DOE 
management's approval for filing the license application. 

NRC officials expect that DOE will file a license application by June 
30, 2008, but the officials would not speculate on its quality or 
whether it will enable NRC to complete its evaluation within the 3-to 4-
year time frame cited by the act because of NRC's long-standing 
practice to maintain an objective and neutral position toward proposed 
license applications until they are filed with NRC. NRC has expressed 
concern about the lack of a rigorous quality assurance program and the 
reliability of USGS's scientific work, which DOE had certified before 
it discovered the USGS e-mails indicating quality assurance problems. 
However, NRC recognizes that DOE has taken steps to address these 
problems. To better ensure that DOE understands its expectations, NRC 
has held periodic prelicensing management and technical meetings with 
DOE officials that are open to external stakeholders. NRC officials 
stated that DOE will need to file a high-quality application to enable 
NRC to complete its review within the 3-to 4-year time frame. 

DOE has made progress in implementing the quality assurance 
recommendations in our March 2006 report and resolving the challenges 
we identified, but it is unclear whether its actions will prevent 
similar problems from recurring. Specifically, DOE has eliminated the 
one-page summary of performance indicators--the primary management tool 
DOE program managers had used to monitor project performance--that we 
determined was ineffective. In its place, OCRWM's director has 
instituted more frequent and rigorous project management meetings and 
is introducing a new trending report that synthesizes information from 
the project's corrective action program. In addition, in response to 
the USGS e-mail issue, Sandia National Laboratories developed a new 
water infiltration model to replace USGS's technical analysis to ensure 
that the license application's scientific analysis is accurate and 
supportable, and DOE reviewed e-mail and other documents to determine 
the root cause and extent of the problem. Regarding the rigor of the 
engineering design process, DOE has implemented new systems to ensure 
that specific engineering designs reflect high-level plans and 
regulatory requirements. Regarding management continuity, DOE has 
worked to fill and retain personnel in key management positions, such 
as the director of quality assurance. However, DOE continues to lose 
key project managers, most recently with the departure of OCRWM's 
deputy director. In addition, OCRWM's director is a political appointee 
whose term is expected to end in January 2009 when a new administration 
takes office, and the management style and priorities of future 
directors may be different. Furthermore, DOE project officials 
anticipate that changing the project's culture and history of recurring 
quality assurance problems will take a long time. 

Background: 

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, establishes a 
comprehensive policy and program for the safe, permanent disposal of 
commercial spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive wastes in 
one or more geologic repositories. The act charges DOE with (1) 
establishing criteria for recommending sites for repositories; (2) 
"characterizing" (investigating) the Yucca Mountain site to determine 
its suitability for a repository;[Footnote 4] (3) if the site is found 
suitable, recommending it to the President, who would submit a 
recommendation to the Congress if he agreed that the site was 
qualified; and (4) seeking permission from NRC to construct and operate 
a repository at the approved site. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 
users of nuclear-power-generated electricity pay $0.001 per kilowatt- 
hour into a Nuclear Waste Fund, which may be used only to pay for the 
siting, licensing, and construction of a nuclear waste repository. In 
fiscal year 2006, DOE reported that the fund had $19.4 
billion.[Footnote 5] DOE also reported that it had spent about $11.7 
billion (in fiscal year 2006 dollars) from project inception in fiscal 
years 1983 through 2005 and estimated that an additional $10.9 billion 
(in fiscal year 2006 dollars) would be incurred from fiscal years 2006 
to 2017 to build the repository. 

Since the early 1980s, DOE has studied the Yucca Mountain site to 
determine whether it is suitable for a high-level radioactive waste and 
spent nuclear fuel repository. For example, DOE completed numerous 
scientific studies of water flow and the potential for rock movement 
near the mountain, including the likelihood that volcanoes and 
earthquakes will adversely affect the repository's performance. To 
allow scientists and engineers greater access to the rock being 
studied, DOE excavated two tunnels for studying the deep underground 
environment: (1) a 5-mile main tunnel that loops through the mountain, 
with several research areas or alcoves connected to it, and (2) a 1.7- 
mile tunnel that crosses the mountain, allowing scientists to study 
properties of the rock and the behavior of water near the potential 
repository area. Since July 2002, when the Congress approved the 
President's recommendation of the Yucca Mountain site for the 
development of a repository, DOE has focused on preparing its license 
application. 

In October 2005, DOE announced a series of changes in the management of 
the project and in the design of the repository to simplify the project 
and improve its safety and operation. Previously, DOE's design required 
radioactive waste to be handled at least four separate times by 
transporting the waste to the Yucca Mountain site, removing the waste 
from its shipping container, sealing it in a special disposal 
container, and moving it into the underground repository. The new 
repository design relies on uniform canisters that would be filled and 
sealed before being shipped, reducing the need for direct handling of 
most of the waste prior to being placed in the repository. As a result, 
DOE will not have to construct several extremely large buildings 
costing millions of dollars for handling radioactive waste. In light of 
these changes, DOE has been working on revising the designs for the 
repository's surface facilities, developing the technical 
specifications for the canisters that will hold the waste, and revising 
its draft license application. 

In accordance with NRC regulations, before filing its license 
application, DOE must first make all documentary material that is 
potentially relevant to the licensing process electronically available 
via NRC's Internet-based document management system. This system, known 
as the Licensing Support Network, provides electronic access to 
millions of documents related to the repository project. DOE is 
required to initially certify to NRC that it has made its documentary 
material available no later than 6 months in advance of submitting the 
license application. NRC, Nevada, and other parties in the licensing 
process must also certify their documentary material was made available 
following DOE's initial certification. This information will then be 
available to the public and all the parties participating in the 
licensing process. OCRWM currently expects to certify its material in 
the Licensing Support Network by December 21, 2007. In addition, OCRWM 
expects to complete the necessary designs and have the draft license 
application ready for DOE management's review by February 29, 2008. 

NRC is charged with regulating the construction, operation, and 
decommissioning phases of the project and is responsible for ensuring 
that DOE satisfies public health, safety, and environmental regulatory 
requirements. Once DOE files the license application, NRC will begin a 
four-stage process to process the application and decide whether to (1) 
authorize construction of the repository, (2) authorize construction 
with conditions, or (3) deny the application. As shown in figure 1, 
this process includes the following steps: 

* Acceptance review. NRC plans to take up to 180 days to examine the 
application for completeness to determine whether the license 
application has all of the information and components NRC requires. If 
NRC determines that any part of the application is incomplete, it may 
either reject the application or require that DOE furnish the necessary 
documentation. NRC will docket the application once it deems the 
application complete, indicating its readiness for a detailed technical 
review. 

* Technical review. The detailed technical review, scheduled for 18 to 
24 months, will evaluate the soundness of the scientific data, computer 
modeling, analyses, and preliminary facility design. The review will 
focus on evaluating DOE's conclusions about the ability of the 
repository designs to limit exposure to radioactivity, both during the 
construction and operation phase of the repository (known as 
preclosure) and during the phase after the repository has been filled, 
closed, and sealed (known as postclosure.) If NRC discovers problems 
with the technical information used to support the application, it may 
conduct activities to determine the extent and effect of the problem. 
As part of this review, NRC staff will prepare a safety evaluation 
report that details staff findings and conclusions on the license 
application. 

* Public hearings. NRC will also convene an independent panel of 
judges--called the Atomic Safety Licensing Board--to conduct a series 
of public hearings to address contested issues raised by affected 
parties and review in detail the related information and evidence 
regarding the license application. Upon completion, the board will make 
a formal ruling (called the initial decision) resolving matters put 
into controversy. This initial decision can then be appealed to the NRC 
commissioners for further review. 

* NRC commission review. In the likely event of an appeal, the NRC 
commissioners will review the Atomic Safety Licensing Board's initial 
decision. In addition, outside of the adjudicatory proceeding, they 
will complete a supervisory examination of those issues contested in 
the proceeding to consider whether any significant basis exists for 
doubting that the facility will be constructed or operated with 
adequate protection of the public health and safety. The commissioners 
will also review any issues about which NRC staff must make appropriate 
findings prior to the authorization of construction, even if they were 
not contested in the proceeding. 

Figure 1: NRC's License Application Review Process: 

[See PDF for image] 

Source: NRC. 

[End of figure] 

However, until DOE submits a license application, NRC's role has 
involved providing regulatory guidance; observing and gathering 
information on DOE activities related to repository design, performance 
assessment, and environmental studies; and verifying site 
characterization activities. These prelicensing activities are intended 
to identify and resolve potential licensing issues early to help ensure 
that years of scientific work are not found to be inadequate for 
licensing purposes. DOE and NRC have interacted since 1983 on the 
repository. In 1998, they entered into a prelicensing interaction 
agreement that provides for technical and management meetings, data and 
document reviews, and the prompt exchange of information between NRC's 
on-site representatives and DOE project personnel. Consistent with this 
prelicensing interaction agreement and NRC's regulations, NRC staff 
observe and review activities at the site and other scientific work as 
they are performed to allow early identification of potential licensing 
issues for timely resolution at the staff level. 

EPA also has a role in the licensing process--setting radiation 
exposure standards for the public outside the Yucca Mountain site. In 
2001, EPA set standards for protecting the public from inadvertent 
releases of radioactive materials from wastes stored at Yucca Mountain, 
which are required by law to be consistent with recommendations of the 
National Academy of Sciences. In July 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that EPA's standards were 
not consistent with the National Academy of Sciences' 
recommendations.[Footnote 6] In response, EPA proposed a revised rule 
in August 2005.[Footnote 7] The director of EPA's Office of Air and 
Radiation Safety told us that EPA plans to finalize its rule this year. 
In addition, NRC must develop exposure limits that are compatible with 
EPA's rule. NRC published a proposed rule which it states is compatible 
with EPA's rule,[Footnote 8] received public comments in 2005, but has 
not yet finalized the rule. If EPA's rule does not change significantly 
in response to public comments, NRC's rule would not require major 
revisions either and could be finalized within months. However, if 
EPA's final rule has major changes, it could require major changes to 
NRC's rule, which could take more than a year to redraft, seek and 
incorporate public comments, and finalize, according to NRC officials. 

DOE's Schedule to Submit a License Application to NRC by June 30, 2008, 
Was Developed in Consultation with Yucca Mountain Project Managers: 

In July 2006, DOE announced its intent to file a license application to 
NRC no later than June 30, 2008. OCRWM's director set the June 30, 
2008, goal to jump-start what he viewed as a stalled project. OCRWM's 
director told us that he consulted with DOE and contractor project 
managers to get a reasonable estimate of an achievable date for 
submitting the license application and asked OCRWM managers to develop 
a plan and schedule for meeting the June 30, 2008, goal. OCRWM's 
director believes this schedule is achievable, noting that DOE had 
already performed a significant amount of work toward developing a 
license application. Specifically, DOE completed a draft license 
application in September 2005, but opted not to file it with NRC to 
allow more time to address the USGS e-mail issue, revise the 
repository's design to simplify the project and improve its safety and 
operation, and consider revising its technical documents in response to 
the possibility that EPA would revise the radiation standards for the 
proposed repository. Table 1 shows the project's major milestones. 

Table 1: Major Milestones in DOE's Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository 
Schedule: 

Milestone: Complete repository designs for use in the license 
application; 
Date: November 30, 2007. 

Milestone: Certify the License Support Network; 
Date: December 21, 2007. 

Milestone: Submit draft application to OCRWM's director for DOE 
management review; 
Date: February 29, 2008. 

Milestone: Issue supplement to the environmental impact statement; 
Date: May 30, 2008. 

Milestone: File the license application with NRC; 
Date: June 30, 2008. 

Milestone: License application docketed by NRC[A]; 
Date: September 30, 2008. 

Milestone: Start Nevada rail construction; 
Date: October 5, 2009. 

Milestone: Receive construction authorization from NRC; 
Date: September 30, 2011. 

Milestone: Update the license application to receive a license from NRC 
to receive and possess nuclear waste[B]; 
Date: March 29, 2013. 

Milestone: Complete construction for initial operations; 
Date: March 30, 2016. 

Milestone: Complete start-up testing; 
Date: December 31, 2016. 

Milestone: Begin receipt of radioactive waste canisters; 
Date: March 31, 2017. 

Source: DOE. 

[A] Assumes a 90-day docketing review by NRC. 

[B] DOE would need to receive a license to receive and possess before 
it can begin to receive waste. 

[End of table] 

DOE did not consult with external stakeholders in developing this 
schedule because there was no legal or regulatory requirement or 
compelling management reason to do so, according to senior OCRWM 
officials. However, these officials noted that the NRC review process 
includes extensive public hearings on the application, which will 
provide stakeholders with an opportunity to comment on and challenge 
the substance of the application. In addition, regarding other aspects 
of the program, senior OCRWM officials noted that they have often 
consulted with external stakeholders, including city and county 
governments near the proposed repository site, NRC, USGS, and nuclear 
power companies. OCRWM has also consulted with Nevada, the U.S. 
Department of the Navy, and other DOE offices. For example, in 
developing its standards for the canisters that will be used to store, 
transport, and place the waste in the repository, DOE consulted with 
the Navy and the nuclear power plant operators that generate the 
nuclear waste and will use the proposed canisters. In addition, DOE has 
worked with the local city and county governments near the repository 
to develop the plans for transporting the waste to the proposed 
repository. 

OCRWM's director has made the submission of the license application by 
June 30, 2008, the project's top strategic objective and management 
priority. Accordingly, each OCWRM office has created business plans 
detailing how its work will support this objective. Furthermore, DOE 
has developed a license application management plan that incorporates 
the lessons learned from previous license application preparation 
efforts and works to ensure that the license application meets all DOE 
and NRC statutory, regulatory, and quality requirements. The plan 
establishes a process whereby teams assess the statutory and regulatory 
requirements for the license application, identify any gaps and 
inadequacies in the existing drafts of the license application, and 
draft or revise these sections. Since the license application is 
expected to be thousands of pages long, the plan divides the license 
application into 71 subsections, each with a team assigned specific 
roles and responsibilities, such as for drafting a particular 
subsection or approving a particular stage of the draft. Finally, the 
plan also creates new project management controls to provide oversight 
of this process and manage risks. For example, the plan details how 
issues that may pose risks to the schedule or quality of the license 
application should be noted, analyzed, and resolved, and how the 
remaining issues should be elevated to successively higher levels of 
management. 

NRC Officials Are Uncertain Whether DOE Will File a High-Quality 
License Application That Will Facilitate Completion of a Timely Review: 

NRC officials believe it is likely that DOE will submit a license 
application by June 30, 2008, but will not speculate about its quality 
due to a long-standing practice to maintain an objective and neutral 
position toward proposed license applications until they are filed with 
NRC. According to NRC officials, NRC's ability to review an application 
in a timely manner is contingent on the application being high quality, 
which NRC officials define as being complete and accurate, including 
traceable and transparent data that adequately support the technical 
positions presented in the license application. NRC has expressed 
concern about the lack of a rigorous quality assurance program and the 
reliability of USGS scientific work that DOE had certified before the 
USGS e-mails were discovered.[Footnote 9] Based on its prelicensing 
review, NRC recognizes that DOE is addressing problems with its quality 
assurance program and, by developing a new water infiltration model, is 
restoring confidence in the reliability of its scientific work. 

When the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gave NRC responsibility for 
licensing the nuclear waste repository, NRC staff began engaging in 
prelicensing activities aimed at gathering information from DOE and 
providing guidance so that DOE would be prepared to meet NRC's 
statutory and regulatory requirements and NRC would be prepared to 
review the license application. NRC issued high-level waste disposal 
regulations containing criteria for approving the application and 
publicly available internal guidance detailing the steps and activities 
NRC will perform to review the application. NRC also established a site 
office at OCRWM's Las Vegas, Nevada, offices to act as NRC's point of 
contact and to facilitate prompt information exchanges. NRC officials 
noted that they have also been working for several years to communicate 
NRC's expectations for a high-quality license application. 

Although NRC has no formal oversight role in the Yucca Mountain project 
until DOE files a license application, NRC staff observe DOE audits of 
its quality assurance activities to identify potential issues and 
problems that may affect licensing. The NRC staff then report their 
findings in quarterly reports that summarize their work and detail any 
problems or issues they identify. For example, after observing a DOE 
quality assurance audit at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 
in August 2005, NRC staff expressed concern that humidity gauges used 
in scientific experiments at the project were not properly calibrated-
-an apparent violation of quality assurance requirements. Due in part 
to concerns that quality assurance requirements had not been followed, 
BSC issued a February 7, 2006, stop-work order affecting this 
scientific work. In June 2007, OCRWM project managers told us that 
because quality assurance rules were not followed, DOE could not use 
this scientific work to support the license application. 

To facilitate prelicensing interactions, NRC and DOE developed a formal 
process in 1998 for identifying and documenting technical issues and 
information needs. As shown in table 2, issues were grouped into nine 
key technical issues focused mainly on postclosure performance of the 
geologic repository. Within this framework, NRC and DOE defined 293 
agreements in a series of technical exchange meetings. An agreement is 
considered closed when NRC staff determines that DOE has provided the 
requested information. Agreements are formally closed in public 
correspondence or at public technical exchanges. As of June 2007, DOE 
has responded to all 293 of the agreements. NRC considers 260 of these 
to be closed. NRC considers 8 of the remaining 33 agreements to be 
potentially affected by the USGS e-mail issue that emerged in 2005. 
Their resolution will be addressed after NRC examines the new water 
infiltration analysis. NRC considers that the remaining 25 have been 
addressed but still need additional information. DOE has indicated that 
it does not plan any further responses on these agreements, and that 
the information will be provided in the June 2008 license application. 

Table 2: Key Technical Issues Identified by NRC and DOE: 

Key technical issue: Container Life and Source Term; 
Short description: Prediction of the waste package container lifetime, 
including estimates of the amount of radioactivity that may escape from 
deteriorated waste packages. 

Key technical issue: Evolution of the Near-Field Geochemical 
Environment; 
Short description: Changes in the waste package environment over long 
periods. 

Key technical issue: Igneous Activity; 
Short description: The likelihood and consequences of volcanic 
activity. 

Key technical issue: Repository Design and Thermal-Mechanical Effects; 
Short description: Evaluation of how heat from the waste may affect the 
mechanical properties of the geologic repository design. 

Key technical issue: Radionuclide Transport; 
Short description: Identification of key geochemical processes that may 
control radionuclide transport at Yucca Mountain. 

Key technical issue: Structural Deformation and Seismicity; 
Short description: Evaluation of earthquake and fault activity. 

Key technical issue: Thermal Effects on Flow; 
Short description: Understanding of the effects of heat generated by 
the waste on moisture flow around the repository. 

Key technical issue: Total System Performance Assessment and 
Integration; 
Short description: Development of the capability to conduct and review 
total system performance assessments. 

Key technical issue: Unsaturated and Saturated Flow under Isothermal 
Conditions; 
Short description: Characterization of groundwater flow near the 
repository. 

Source: NRC. 

[End of table] 

NRC determined that adding agreements to the original 293 was not an 
efficient means to continue issue resolution during prelicensing, given 
DOE's stated intent to submit its license application, first in 2004, 
and now in 2008. NRC is now using public correspondence, as well as 
public technical exchanges and management meetings, to communicate 
outstanding and emerging technical issues. For example, NRC's September 
2006 correspondence provided input on DOE's proposed approach for 
estimating seismic events during the postclosure period and requested 
further interactions on the topic. Also, since May 2006, NRC and DOE 
have conducted a series of technical exchanges to discuss such topics 
as DOE's total system performance assessment model, the seismic design 
of buildings, and other DOE design changes. Other interactions are 
planned to ensure that NRC has sufficient information to conduct its 
prelicensing responsibilities. 

DOE Has Made Progress in Implementing Our Quality Assurance 
Recommendations and Resolving Challenges We Identified: 

DOE is implementing the recommendations and addressing the challenges 
identified in our March 2006 report, but it is unclear whether the 
department's actions will prevent similar problems from recurring. 
Specifically, in response to our recommendations that DOE improve its 
management tools, DOE has eliminated the one-page summary (or panel) of 
performance indicators and has revised its trend evaluation reports. 
DOE is supplementing these changes with more rigorous senior management 
meetings that track program performance to better ensure that new 
problems are identified and resolved. DOE has also begun addressing 
additional management challenges by independently reworking USGS's 
water infiltration analysis, fixing problems with a design and 
engineering process known as requirements management, and reducing the 
high-turnover rate and large number of acting managers in key project 
management positions. 

DOE Has Replaced or Improved Two Previously Ineffective Management 
Tools: 

Our March 2006 report found that two of the project's management tools-
-the panel of performance indicators and the trend evaluation reports-
-were ineffective in helping DOE management to monitor progress toward 
meeting performance goals, detecting new quality assurance problems, 
and directing management attention where needed. In response, DOE has 
stopped using its panel of performance indicators and replaced them 
with monthly program review meetings--chaired by OCRWM's director and 
attended by top-level OCRWM, BSC, Sandia, and USGS managers--that 
review the progress of four main OCRWM projects: (1) the drafting of 
the license application; (2) the effort to select and load documents 
and records into NRC's Licensing Support Network; (3) work 
supplementing DOE's environmental impact statement to reflect the 
October 2005 changes in repository design, which shift from direct 
handling of waste to the use of canisters; and (4) the development of a 
system to transport waste from where it is generated, mainly nuclear 
power plants, to the repository. In addition, DOE has developed the 
following four new, high-level performance indicators that it evaluates 
and discusses at its monthly program review meetings: 

* safety, including injuries and lost workdays due to accidents at the 
project; 

* quality, including efforts to improve OCRWM's corrective action 
program, which works to detect and resolve problems at the project and 
the performance of the quality assurance program; 

* cost, including actual versus budgeted costs, staffing levels, and 
efforts to recruit new employees; and: 

* culture, including the project's safety conscious work environment 
program, which works to ensure that employees are encouraged to raise 
safety concerns to their managers or to NRC without fear of retaliation 
and that employees' concerns are resolved in a timely and appropriate 
manner according to their importance. 

Although DOE plans to develop additional performance indicators, these 
four simplified indicators have replaced about 250 performance 
indicators on the previous performance indicator panel. According to a 
cognizant DOE official, the previous performance indicator panel was 
ineffective, in part, because it focused on what could be measured, as 
opposed to what should be measured, resulting in DOE focusing its 
efforts on developing the performance indicator panel instead of 
determining how to use this information as a management tool. The 
monthly program review and the new performance indicators are designed 
to be more useful to OCRWM management by being simpler and more focused 
on the key mission activities. 

DOE has also revised its trend evaluation reports to create new 
organizational structures and procedures that detail the processes and 
steps for detecting and analyzing trends and preparing trend evaluation 
reports for senior management review. DOE has appointed a trend program 
manager and implemented a work group to oversee these processes. 
Furthermore, as we recommended, the new trend program has an increased 
focus on the significance of the monitored condition by synthesizing 
trends projectwide instead of separating OCRWM's and BSC's trend 
evaluation reports. 

To improve the utility of trend evaluation reports as a management 
tool, the procedures now identify the following three types of trends 
and criteria for evaluating them: 

* Adverse trends are (1) repeated problems that involve similar tasks 
or have similar causes and are determined by management to be 
significant or critical to the success of the project; (2) repeated 
problems that are less significant but collectively indicate a failure 
of the quality assurance program, may be precursors to a more 
significant problem, or pose a safety problem; and (3) patterns of 
problems that management determines warrant further analysis and 
actions to prevent their recurrence. 

* Emerging trends are problems that do not meet the criteria for an 
adverse trend, but require actions to ensure that they do not evolve 
into an adverse trend. 

* Monitored trends are fluctuations in the conditions being monitored 
that OCRWM management determines do not warrant action, but each 
fluctuation needs close monitoring to ensure that it does not evolve 
into an emerging or adverse trend. 

DOE has also implemented changes to its corrective action program--the 
program that provides the data that are analyzed in the trend 
evaluation program. The corrective action program is the broader system 
for recognizing problems and tracking their resolution. It is one of 
the key elements of the project's quality assurance framework and has 
been an area of interest to NRC in its prelicensing activities. The 
corrective action program consists of a computer system that project 
employees can use to enter information about a problem they have 
identified and create a record, known as a condition report, and a set 
of procedures for evaluating the condition reports and ensuring these 
problems are resolved. 

Regarding our broader conclusions that the OCRWM quality assurance 
program needed more management attention, in spring 2006, DOE requested 
a team of external quality assurance experts to review the performance 
of the quality assurance program. The experts concluded that 8 of the 
10 topics they studied--including the corrective action program--had 
not been effectively implemented. Specifically, the team found that the 
corrective action program did not ensure that problems were either 
quickly or effectively resolved. Furthermore, a follow-up internal DOE 
study, called a root cause analysis report, concluded that the 
corrective action program was ineffective primarily because senior 
management had failed to recognize the significance of repeated 
internal and external reviews and did not aggressively act to correct 
identified problems and ensure program effectiveness. 

In response, DOE has revised the corrective action program in an effort 
to change organizational behaviors and provide increased management 
attention. For example, DOE has restructured the condition screening 
team, which previously had poor internal communication and adversarial 
relationships among its members, according to a senior project manager. 
Similarly, a December 2006 external review of the quality assurance 
program found that OCRWM staff had focused its efforts on trying to 
downgrade the significance of condition reports to deflect individual 
and departmental responsibility, rather than ensuring that the 
underlying causes and problems were addressed. In response, DOE (1) 
reorganized the condition screening team to reduce the size of the team 
but include more senior managers; (2) identified roles, 
responsibilities, and management expectations for the team, including 
expectations for collaborating and communicating; and (3) formalized 
processes and criteria for screening and reviewing condition reports. 
The condition screening team now assigns one of four significance 
levels to each new condition report and assigns a manager who is 
responsible for investigating the problem. 

In addition, DOE has restructured the management review committee, 
which oversees the corrective action program and the condition 
screening team. The management review committee is charged with, among 
other things, reviewing the actions of the condition screening team, 
particularly regarding the condition reports identified as having the 
highest two levels of significance. The management review committee 
also reviews draft root cause analysis reports, and any condition 
reports that could affect the license application. Whereas these 
functions were previously performed by BSC, the management review 
committee is now sponsored by OCRWM's deputy director and includes 
senior DOE, BSC, and Sandia managers. DOE has also created written 
policies to clarify the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of 
the management review committee. The goal of these changes is to 
refocus management attention--with OCRWM's deputy director serving as a 
champion for the corrective action program--and ensure that problems 
are resolved in a timely and efficient manner. 

DOE Has Addressed Other Management Challenges: 

DOE has addressed to varying degrees three other management challenges 
identified in our March 2006 report: (1) restoring confidence in USGS's 
scientific documents; (2) problems with a design and engineering 
process known as requirements management; and (3) managing a changing 
and complex program, particularly given the high turnover in key 
management positions. Specifically: 

* USGS e-mail issue. DOE has taken three actions to address concerns 
about the reliability of USGS's scientific work after a series of e- 
mails implied that some USGS employees had falsified scientific and 
quality assurance documents and disdained DOE's quality assurance 
processes. Specifically, DOE (1) evaluated USGS's scientific work; (2) 
directed Sandia to independently develop a new water infiltration model 
to compare with USGS's model and reconstruct USGS's technical 
documents; and (3) completed a root cause analysis, including a 
physical review of more than 50,000 e-mails and keyword searches of 
nearly 1 million other e-mails sampled from more than 14 million e- 
mails. DOE's evaluation of USGS's scientific work concluded that there 
was no evidence that the USGS employees falsified or modified 
information. DOE's root cause analysis team concluded that there was no 
apparent widespread or pervasive pattern across OCRWM of a negative 
attitude toward quality assurance or willful noncompliance with quality 
assurance requirements. However, the analysis found that OCRWM's senior 
management had failed to hold USGS personnel accountable for the 
quality of the scientific work, fully implement quality assurance 
requirements, and effectively implement the corrective action program. 
These internal studies and reports and Sandia's independent development 
of a new water infiltration model are intended to restore public 
confidence in the water infiltration modeling work in the license 
application. 

* Problems with design control and the requirements management process. 
DOE has revised its design control and requirements management 
processes to address the problems that our March 2006 report 
identified. In addition, to gauge the effectiveness of these changes, 
DOE conducted an internal study called a readiness review, in which it 
determined that the changes in the processes were sufficient and that 
BSC was prepared to resume design and engineering work. Subsequently, 
in January 2007, DOE's independent assessment of BSC and the 
requirements management process concluded that the processes and 
controls were adequate and provided a general basic direction for the 
design control process. DOE has also contracted with Longenecker and 
Associates to review the project's engineering processes with the final 
report due in the summer of 2007. 

* Management turnover. DOE has worked to fill and retain personnel in 
key management positions that had been vacant for extended periods of 
time, most notably the director of quality assurance and the OCRWM 
project director. In addition, as part of an effort to change the 
organizational culture, OCRWM's director has created a team to evaluate 
how to improve succession planning and identify gaps in the skills or 
staffing levels in OCRWM. However, DOE continues to lose key project 
managers, most recently with the departure of OCRWM's deputy director. 
Furthermore, additional turnover is possible after the 2008 
presidential election, when the incoming administration is likely to 
replace OCRWM's director. Historically, new directors have tended to 
have different management priorities and have implemented changes to 
the organizational structure and policies. To address this concern, 
OCRWM's director suggested legislatively changing the director position 
by making it a long-term appointment to reflect the long-term nature of 
the Yucca Mountain project. 

Concluding Observations: 

The OCRWM director's schedule for filing a repository license 
application with NRC by June 30, 2008, will require a concerted effort 
by project personnel. However, given the waste repository's history 
since its inception in 1983, including two prior failed efforts to file 
a license application, it is unclear whether DOE's license application 
will be of sufficient quality to enable NRC to conduct a timely review 
of the supporting models and data that meet the statutory time frames. 
DOE has taken several important actions to change the organizational 
culture of the Yucca Mountain project since the issuance of our March 
2006 report. These actions appear to be invigorating, for example, the 
quality assurance program by focusing management attention on improving 
quality by resolving problems. However, for a variety of reasons, it 
has yet to be seen whether DOE's actions will prevent the kinds of 
problems our March 2006 report identified from recurring or other 
challenges from developing. First, some of DOE's efforts, such as its 
efforts to reduce staff turnover, are in preliminary or planning stages 
and have not been fully implemented. Therefore, their effectiveness 
cannot yet be determined. Second, improving the quality assurance 
program will also require changes in the organizational behaviors of 
OCRWM's staff and contractors. OCRWM's director told us that these 
types of cultural changes can be particularly difficult and take a long 
time to implement. Consequently, it may be years before OCRWM fully 
realizes the benefits of these efforts. Finally, as we have previously 
reported, DOE has a long history of quality assurance problems and has 
experienced repeated difficulties in resolving these problems. 

Agency Comments: 

We provided DOE and NRC with a draft of this report for their review 
and comment. In their written responses, both DOE and NRC agreed with 
our report. (See apps. I and II.) In addition, both DOE and NRC 
provided comments to improve the draft report's technical accuracy, 
which we have incorporated as appropriate. 

Scope and Methodology: 

To examine the development of DOE's license application schedule, we 
reviewed DOE documents related to the announcement and creation of the 
license application. We also reviewed the DOE management plan for 
creating the license application and other internal reports on the 
progress in drafting the application. We interviewed OCRWM's director 
and other OCRWM senior management officials in DOE headquarters and its 
Las Vegas project office about the process for creating the schedule, 
including consultations with stakeholders. In addition, we observed 
meetings covering topics related to the license application schedule 
between DOE and NRC, the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and 
Materials, and the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. These meetings 
were held in Rockville, Maryland; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Arlington, 
Virginia. 

To obtain NRC's assessment of DOE's readiness to file a high-quality 
license application, we obtained NRC documents--such as the status of 
key technical issues and briefing slides on NRC's technical exchanges 
with DOE. We also attended NRC staff briefings for the Commission's 
Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials, including a briefing 
on NRC's prelicensing activities; reviewed meeting transcripts; and 
observed a NRC-DOE quarterly meeting and recorded NRC's comments. In 
addition, we interviewed NRC's project manager who is responsible for 
reviewing the postclosure portion of a license application, NRC's on- 
site representative at the Las Vegas office, and other NRC regional 
officials. Furthermore, we interviewed the director of EPA's Office of 
Air and Radiation Safety regarding the status of EPA's rulemaking to 
set radiation exposure standards for the public outside the Yucca 
Mountain site. 

To determine DOE's progress in implementing the recommendations and 
resolving the additional challenges identified in our March 2006 
report, we reviewed prior GAO reports that assessed DOE's quality 
assurance process and relevant DOE corrective action reports, root 
cause analyses, and other internal reviews that analyzed DOE's efforts 
to improve its management tools and its corrective action program in 
general. We also reviewed related NRC documents, such as some 
observation audit reports. We observed NRC and DOE management meetings 
and technical exchanges in Rockville, Maryland, and Las Vegas, Nevada, 
that covered related issues. We also interviewed OCRWM's director in 
DOE headquarters and senior managers at the Yucca Mountain project 
office in Las Vegas about their efforts to address our recommendations. 
Regarding the quality assurance challenges noted in our prior report, 
we reviewed a January 2007 GAO report discussing the USGS issue and 
reviewed DOE documents detailing their actions to restore confidence in 
the scientific documents. We reviewed internal DOE documents regarding 
requirements management and interviewed the program's chief engineer in 
charge of resolving this issue. Finally, regarding staff turnover in 
key management positions, we reviewed OCRWM's strategic objectives, 
business plan, and project documents and interviewed OCRWM's director 
and other senior project managers about their efforts to improve 
succession planning. 

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents 
of this report, we plan no further distribution of it until 30 days 
from the date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies of this 
report to the appropriate congressional committees, the Secretary of 
Energy, the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the director 
of the Office of Management and Budget, and other interested parties. 
We will also make copies available to others upon request. In addition, 
the report will be available at no charge on the GAO Web site at 
http://www.gao.gov. 

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please 
contact me at (202) 512-3841 or gaffiganm@gao.gov. Contact points for 
our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found 
on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this report were 
Richard Cheston, Casey Brown, Omari Norman, Alison O'Neill, and Daniel 
Semick. 

Sincerely yours, 

Signed by: 

Mark E. Gaffigan: 
Acting Director, Natural Resources and Environment: 

[End of section] 

Appendix I: Comments from the Department of Energy: 

Department of Energy: 
Washington, DC 20585: 

July 26, 2007: 

Mr. Mark Gaffigan: 
Acting Director: 
Natural Resources and Environment: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
Washington, D.C. 20548: 

Dear Mr. Gaffigan: 

Thank you for the opportunity to review and provide comments on the 
draft Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled Yucca 
Mountain DOE /lets Improved Its Quality Assurance Program, But Whether 
Its Application for a NRC License Will Be High Quality Is Unclear. We 
appreciate GAO's recognition of the Office of Civilian Radioactive 
Waste Management's (OCRWM) increased management focus on quality 
assurance improvements and the progress we have made in addressing 
issues identified in your March 2006 report. 

OCRWM has taken numerous actions to ensure a high-quality license 
application that can be docketed will be Submitted to the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission (NRC) no later than June 30, 2008. We have 
established a cadre of personnel with substantial licensing, 
regulatory, and NRC experience. We have also fundamentally revised our 
approach to the license application by establishing a rigorous process 
approach to ensure the license application is a high-quality document 
based on sound science. 

Personnel and Organization Changes: 

In July 2006, I announced four strategic objectives for the Program. 
One of these objectives is to design. staff, and train the OCRWM 
organization such that it has the skills and culture needed to design, 
license, and manage the construction and operation of the Yucca 
Mountain Project with safety, quality, and cost effectiveness. A Senior 
Executive Service-level individual, reporting directly to me, has been 
assigned as the project manager to plan and implement the 
organization's development. In part, this effort is intended to ensure 
that organizational culture changes will extend beyond my tenure. 

In the meantime, OCRWM has substantially changed the offices and 
personnel responsible for developing the license application. We 
completed a transition of' responsibility for the post-closure safety 
assessment from Bechtel SAIL Company, LLC (BSC'), OCRWM's management 
and operating contractor, to Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), our 
designated lead laboratory. Sandia is managing all national laboratory 
post-closure analysis and science work on the Yucca Mountain Project, 
BSC now focuses on its core competency of engineering design and pre-
closure safety analysis. The top three license application individuals 
in OCRWM, BSC, and SNL are new hires since 2005' and each has 
significant utility and nuclear facility licensing experience. 

OCRWM also has contracted with 12 nationally and internationally 
recognized nuclear safety experts who support MUM, BSC, and SNL. 
Finally, OCRWM established a license strategy team which includes 
participants, academia, private sector firms, Program and former NRC 
executives. 

Changes to Processes and Procedures: 

In early 2D06, OCRWM projectized the license application by 
establishing a scope, cost, and schedule for license application 
development with clear quality criteria. An OCRWM project manager with 
nuclear engineering and nuclear safety expertise arid proven nuclear 
project successes was selected to lead tile project. 

A license application development and review organization has been 
established with individuals experienced in engineering, science, and 
licensing. This organization is divided. into design, subsurface 
design, pre-closure safety analysis, into surface design, subsurface 
design, pre-closure safety analysis, post-closure safety analysis, and 
programmatic. Each of these areas is further divided into 71 specific 
sections that are directly traceable to the NRC's NUREG 1804, }\/cc/ 
Mountain Review Plan. 

Nearly all the processes and procedures related to developing the 
license application have been revised over the past two years. OCRWM 
and its contractors have established a rigorous approach to developing 
the license application that was not employed with previous license 
application development efforts. The final license application i s 
expected to contain nearly 10,000 pages of technical information. 

The license application development process consists of four successive 
phases: a an internal draft, a final draft, and a final license 
application section. Each phase is approved by tile appropriate 
science, engineering, licensing, Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program, and 
Office of General Counsel staff prior to proceeding to the next phase. 
A total of 284 line management reviews by teams averaging 10 people 
each will he conducted. When a section proceeds to the final license 
application phase and is validated, it is ready for transmittal to the 
NRC, and My the OCRWM Me= can authorize changes. 

In summary, OCRWM has substantially modified the organizations 
established rigorous license application expectations, and procedures 
that are maintained through configuration control; and hired national 
and international experts to assess the processes. We are confident 
that all these change-, will result in a high-quality license 
application that is complete, docketable, and, ultimately, licenseable. 

If you have any questions, please contact me or Victor Trebules of my 
staff. Mr. Trebules can be reached on 202-586-8793. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Edward F. Sproat, III, Director: 
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: 

[End of section] 

Appendix II: Comments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: 

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission: 
Washington, DC 20555-0001: 

July 30, 2007: 

Mr. Mark Gaffigan, Acting Director: 
Natural Resources and Environment: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office: 
441 G Street, NW: 
Washington, D.C. 20548: 

Dear Mr. Gaffigan: 

Thank you for providing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) 
the opportunity to review and comment on the U.S. Government 
Accountability Office's (GAO) draft report GAO-07-1010, "Yucca Mountain 
- DOE Has Improved Its Quality Assurance Program, but Whether Its 
Application for a NRC License Will Be High Quality Is Unclear," The NRC 
staff has reviewed the draft report and generally agrees with GAO's 
findings and conclusions. Although we did not identify any significant 
issues regarding accuracy, completeness, and sensitivity of 
information, we have separately transmitted editorial comments to your 
staff. In addition, we have a comment on page 15 of the draft report, 
the first sentence of the second paragraph which states ".,the 
commission staff began engaging in pre-licensing activities.." This 
statement should be clarified to indicate that it is the NRC staff, and 
not the personal staff of the Commission, who began engaging in pre- 
licensing activities. 

If you have any questions regarding this response, please contact 
Lawrence E. Kokajko, Director of the Division of High-Level Waste 
Repository Safety. Mr. Kokajko can be reached by telephone at (301) 492-
3165. 

Sincerely, 

Signed by: 

Luis A. Reyes: 
Executive Director for Operations: 

cc: Casey Brown, GAO: 
Richard Cheston, GAO: 

[End of section] 

FOOTNOTES 

[1] Under 10 C.F.R. Part 63.121, NRC also requires, among other things, 
that (1) the geologic repository operations be located in and on lands 
that are either owned by DOE or are permanently withdrawn and reserved 
for its use and (2) DOE obtain necessary water rights for the project. 

[2] GAO, Yucca Mountain: Quality Assurance at DOE's Planned Nuclear 
Waste Repository Needs Increased Management Attention, GAO-06-313 
(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 17, 2006). 

[3] GAO, Yucca Mountain Project: Information on Estimated Costs to 
Respond to Employee E-mails That Raised Questions about Quality 
Assurance, GAO-07-297R (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 19, 2007). 

[4] The 1987 amendments to the act directed that DOE investigate only 
the Yucca Mountain site. 

[5] The Nuclear Waste Fund provided $8.3 billion and funding for 
defense waste provided $3 billion. Both commercial spent nuclear fuel 
and high-level defense waste are planned for disposal at Yucca 
Mountain. 

[6] Nuclear Energy Institute v. EPA, 373 F.3d 1251 (D.C. Cir 2004). 
Prior to establishing the original standards, EPA requested 
recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences that resulted in 
the National Research Council's report, Technical Bases for Yucca 
Mountain Standards (Washington, D.C.: 1995). 

[7] 70 Fed. Reg. 49014 (Aug. 22, 2005). 

[8] 70 Fed. Reg. 53313 (Sept. 8, 2005). 

[9] NRC expressed concerns in 1984 that some project staff viewed 
quality assurance requirements as unnecessary and burdensome, and, in 
1986, DOE issued a stop-work order based on its determination that USGS 
staff did not appreciate the importance of quality assurance and that 
USGS work would not meet NRC's expectations. 

GAO's Mission: 

The Government Accountability Office, the audit, evaluation and 
investigative arm of Congress, exists to support Congress in meeting 
its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance 
and accountability of the federal government for the American people. 
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