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Open Recommendations

Department of Energy: Action Needed to Approve Advanced Test Reactor Spent Fuel Plan
GAO-26-107969
May 07, 2026
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Energy The Secretary of Energy should direct the Office of Nuclear Energy senior leadership, in coordination with the Office of Environmental Management, to complete its evaluation of the Idaho Operations Office's research and test reactor spent fuel storage facility reconfiguration plan to enable continued storage and management of ATR spent fuel after 2030 without an interruption to ATR operations. (Recommendation 1)
Open
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Nuclear Waste Cleanup: Better Data and Project Prioritization Vital to Managing Aging Infrastructure and Communicating Needs
GAO-26-107957
May 05, 2026
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4 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Environmental Management The Assistant Secretary for EM should ensure sites create and complete corrective action plans to correct data validation issues identified in the FIMS validation scorecard process. (Recommendation 1)
Open
DOE agreed with the recommendation and said the Office of Environmental Management will coordinate with its field offices to create and track the status of corrective action plans. DOE expects to complete this update by the end of 2026. We will follow up with DOE after it has taken action.
Office of Environmental Management The Assistant Secretary for EM should ensure EM sites have procedures to accurately and comparably capture deferred maintenance and annual actual maintenance FIMS data elements, as required in DOE Order 430.1C. (Recommendation 2)
Open
DOE agreed with the recommendation and said the Office of Environmental Management will coordinate with its field sites to review current procedures for real property reporting requirements and propose changes as needed. DOE expects to complete this update by the end of 2026. We will follow up with DOE after it has taken action.
Office of Environmental Management The Assistant Secretary for EM should better incorporate more reliable information from EM sites in the Master Asset Plan, such as site project prioritization decisions for infrastructure maintenance projects, to better reflect site maintenance needs. (Recommendation 3)
Open
DOE partially agreed with the recommendation and said the Office of Environmental Management will evaluate current reporting requirements for the Master Asset Plan. EM stated in its comments that the plan does not prioritize EM-wide funding needs or provide direction to the sites. We recognize this and note that it is intended to communicate site prioritization decisions. Given the differences we found in the data between the Master Asset Plan and sites' integrated priority lists, as well as site officials' views that few to none of the maintenance needs are reflected in the Master Asset Plan, more reliable information is needed for the plan to function as intended. We will follow up with DOE after it has taken action.
Office of Environmental Management The Assistant Secretary for EM should communicate to Congress the reductions in cost and risk to mission that can be achieved by specific projects identified by their prioritization model. (Recommendation 4)
Open
DOE partially agreed with the recommendation and said the Office of Environmental Management will issue a memo to the sites to emphasize the importance of including additional information to support funding requests. The Master Asset Plan includes a project prioritization model that generates recommendations for how EM could utilize small increases in funding to make significant differences in reducing risks. A model that shows how to save millions of dollars while reducing risk is a powerful tool, but EM will not realize the goal of its model--to maximize the expected return from a limited budget--if it does not inform those who can help EM achieve its goal. We will follow up with DOE after it has taken action.

Department of Energy: Plan Needed to Meet Statutory Requirements for Clean Energy Demonstration Projects
GAO-26-107997
Feb 11, 2026
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Energy The Secretary of Energy should develop a plan to meet statutory requirements for managing projects and assessing lessons learned for clean energy demonstration projects. (Recommendation 1)
Open
DOE agreed with this recommendation. When we receive information from the agency regarding the agency's action regarding the recommendation, we will update the recommendation status

Nuclear Waste Cleanup: DOE Should Collect Information Specific to Soil and Legacy Landfills to Inform Overall Remediation Efforts
GAO-25-107565
Sep 26, 2025
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1 Open Recommendations
Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of Environmental Management The Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management should ensure that EM headquarters collects and uses information specific to the scope, schedule, and cost of soil and legacy landfill cleanup to enhance technical and policy support provided to sites and inform prioritization decisions to reduce risk. (Recommendation 1)
Open
EM did not concur with the recommendation. EM stated that within the EM program, soil and groundwater remediation information is typically aggregated because soil often serves as the source of groundwater contamination. When data specifically related to soil and legacy landfill cleanup is required for decision-making, EM stated that sites are able to furnish disaggregated data on a case-by-case basis. According to EM, routinely mandating sites to disaggregate this data would impose an unnecessary resource burden without offering a demonstrable benefit to EM's decision-making. However, groundwater cleanup and soil cleanup are often on very different timelines, with groundwater efforts sometimes taking decades long than soil or legacy landfill cleanups. Therefore, we believe that EM headquarters having information specific to soil and legacy landfill scope, schedule, and cost would help EM better allocate its resources to manage its risk-informed cleanup approach at its sites across the nation.
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