Recommendation: The NNSA Administrator should direct the W87-1 program to ensure consistent, reliable, and objective assessments of remaining feature and component design decisions in Phase 6.2 by developing study plans for remaining design studies consistent with the guidelines for such plans in NNSA's AOA procedure, including documenting and justifying deviations from best practices. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of Energy: National Nuclear Security Administration
Status: Open

Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Recommendation: The NNSA Administrator should direct the Office of Defense Programs to revise its program execution instruction to require that design studies for warhead life extension and replacement programs follow AOA best practices, such as by having a study plan, or to justify and document deviations from best practices. (Recommendation 2)

Agency: Department of Energy: National Nuclear Security Administration
Status: Open

Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Recommendation: The NNSA Administrator should direct the Office of Defense Programs' plutonium program office to ensure that the integrated master schedule in development for pit production meets NIMS standards, consistent with best practices for schedule development. (Recommendation 3)

Agency: Department of Energy: National Nuclear Security Administration
Status: Open

Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Recommendation: The NNSA Administrator should direct the W87-1 program to prioritize the development and documentation of a risk mitigation strategy to address the risk that pit production may be insufficient to meet W87-1 production needs. (Recommendation 4)

Agency: Department of Energy: National Nuclear Security Administration
Status: Open

Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Recommendation: The Secretary of State, in coordination with the Secretary of Energy, should commit to regularly scheduled, substantive briefings for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on all initiatives and negotiations related to nuclear cooperation in order to enhance transparency and establish greater confidence with Congress on nuclear cooperation matters. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of State
Status: Open

Comments: We will update this recommendation after receiving information from State regarding its plans to address it.

Recommendation: The Assistant Secretary of DOE's Office of Environmental Management should direct RL to conduct a root cause analysis to identify any programmatic causes that may have led to the collapse of PUREX Tunnel 1. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of Energy: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management: Environmental Management Consolidated Business Center
Status: Open

Comments: DOE concurs with this recommendations and has agreed to conduct a root cause analysis examining the programmatic cause leading to the Hanford PUREX tunnel collapse. In DOE's October 2020 Audit Report regarding the implementation of recommendations in our report, DOE states that the Office of Environmental Management is taking action to implement this recommendation, but that action is still insufficient to satisfy the recommendation.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy should ensure DOE headquarters offices responsible for the oversight of EM sites' field offices conduct an assessment of RL's management and oversight of the Hanford Site contractor's surveillance and maintenance activity for contaminated excess facilities. Based on the results of this assessment, DOE headquarters offices should consider whether such assessments should be conducted on a periodic basis. (Recommendation 3)

Agency: Department of Energy: Office of the Secretary
Status: Open

Comments: DOE concurs with this recommendation and the Office of Environmental Management agreed to conduct an assessment, in coordination with headquarters oversight offices, of the Richland Operations Office's management and oversight of the Hanford Site contractor's surveillance and maintenance activities for contaminated excess facilities. In DOE's October 2020 Audit Report regarding the implementation of recommendations in our report, DOE states that the Office of Environmental Management is taking action to implement this recommendation, but that action is still insufficient to satisfy the recommendation.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy, in coordination with DOE's Office of Project Management and NNSA's Office of Acquisition and Project Management, should develop requirements that clearly define how and where project management lessons learned for capital asset projects should be documented and saved to make them readily accessible across the department. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: DOE concurred with the recommendation and as of July 2020, continues to work on developing a policy memorandum in advance of revising DOE Order 413.3B, Program and Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets, to identify the project management lessons learned and outline the kinds of information the repository will collect. We will monitor DOE's effort and evaluate the action once it is complete.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy, in coordination with DOE's Office of Project Management and NNSA's Office of Acquisition and Project Management, should develop requirements for sharing project management lessons learned for capital asset projects from the beginning of a project (i.e., prior to the start of construction at CD-3) routinely and in a timely manner to improve DOE's ability to identify and evaluate problematic practices and positive experiences. (Recommendation 2)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: DOE concurred with the recommendation and as of July 2020, continues to work on developing a policy memorandum in advance of revising DOE Order 413.3B, Program and Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets, to have those conducting peer reviews elicit project management lessons learned with department-wide applicability and submit any discerned, as well as replace the order's definition of project management lessons learned with a standard industry definition. We will monitor DOE's efforts and evaluate the actions once they are complete.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy, in coordination with DOE's Office of Project Management and NNSA's Office of Acquisition and Project Management, should develop requirements for evaluating the effectiveness of corrective actions taken in response to project management problems for capital asset projects, with a focus on those lessons that necessitate the need for department-wide improvements. (Recommendation 3)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: DOE concurred with the recommendation and as of July 2020, plans to revise the Project Management Risk Committee charter by assigning it the responsibility to qualitatively evaluate the effectiveness of corrective actions taken in response to project management lessons learned from projects with a total project cost greater than $750 million having department-wide implications. This action, however, may not fully address the recommendation, in part because there may be some lessons learned with applicability department-wide from projects that do not meet this cost threshold. We will monitor DOE's effort and evaluate the action once it is complete.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy, working with the Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, should include more complete information on the assessments--that is, security plans, vulnerability assessments, independent assessments, and other assessments--used in the annual reports to support the agencies' assessments that DOE and NNSA sites are secure.

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: We reported in May 2019 that DOE and NNSA continued to make progress in responding to this recommendation. The draft 2018 annual report contained, as recommended, more complete and uniform information on assessments, though in some cases different terminology was used by programs and sites. As of June 2020, we have requested final 2018, 2019, and 2020 annual reports from NNSA to ensure progress has continued. Once we have received and reviewed the reports, we will update the status of this recommendation.

Recommendation: Additionally, the Secretary of Energy should develop a plan for addressing the physical security infrastructure needs at DOE sites. Similar to a report under development by NNSA, this plan could identify cost and time frames and enable DOE and the Congress to prioritize these projects.

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: As of June 2020, DOE has not implemented this recommendation. While DOE program offices (Environmental Management, Science, and Nuclear Energy) are individually considering long-term needs, the program offices are not required by Congress to submit the kind of physical security plan that Congress requires of NNSA. In the absence of Congressional direction, we believe it is unlikely that DOE will fully implement this recommendation.

Recommendation: Additionally, the Secretary of Energy should, in future annual security certification reports, inform Congress of the reasons for the delayed implementation of the June 2011 DOE material control and accountability order at some sites, as well as the steps DOE and its sites are taking to implement it. DOE should also provide Congress with information on any vulnerabilities or deficiencies in the security at sites that may potentially exist while the sites complete implementation of the order as well as information on any concomitant adjustment to their security posture that is required.

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: As of June 2020, we are continuing to monitor actions related to this recommendation. DOE has acknowledged in a classified memorandum the security risks associated with the slow pace of the material control and accountability order. DOE has also developed a plan to implement measures to address these risks in a phased approach with final implementation sometime in the 2020s. Some of the early phases will be complete between 2019 and 2022, but others will extend beyond 2022. As such, it will be important for DOE to continue to report to Congress on residual risk until planned actions are fully completed and their implementation has been verified by the relevant DOE program offices and DOE's Office of Enterprise Assessments. We will update the status of this recommendation once we have we have received and reviewed DOE's classified 2018-2020 annual reports to ensure this action is taken.

Recommendation: To ensure that NNSA will provide clear information to stakeholders about the program needs that the revised CMRR project will satisfy, the Secretary should direct the Under Secretary for Nuclear Security, in his capacity as the NNSA Administrator, to update the program requirements document for the revised CMRR project to clarify whether the project will provide plutonium analysis equipment to meet the needs of DOE and NNSA programs other than those in the Office of Defense Programs.

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: As of August 2020, LANL has drafted a revised PRD but NNSA's review is not yet complete. This recommendation will remain open until we can evaluate the PRD.