The Department of Energy's efforts to reform its nuclear-safety program have had unclear results, because agency officials neglected to measure the costs and benefits of their efforts, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report analyzed DOE's decision to weed out unnecessary and duplicative rules, reducing the number of its safety directives from 80 to 42. The directives lay out the safety requirements for DOE contractors who handle the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and environmental nuclear waste sites.

But according to GAO, the department hasn't assessed how the streamlining of rules has affected cost or safety.

"Instead, DOE is measuring success by using output-oriented measures, such as the number of directives eliminated, and not outcome measures, such as specific productivity improvements or cost savings," GAO analysts wrote in the report. "In the absence of clear measures linking the reform effort to productivity and safety improvements, DOE is not well positioned to know that its reform effort will achieve the intended benefits."

DOE official strongly disagreed with the report's findings. In an official response, DOE's Office of Health, Safety and Security questioned the report's accuracy.

"We believe this GAO report does not accurately reflect the intent, the structure or the impact of the Department's safety reform efforts," Chief HSS Officer Glenn Podonsky wrote. "Nor does this report reflect a full understanding of the disciplined and systematic approach the Department took to revising and streamlining its internal management directives process in order to improve safety across the complex."

The report does lay out some of DOE's projected benefits from the reform effort, such as raising the threshold at which a facility treating radioactive waste has to undergo a "rigorous review process." Under the previous rules, the review was conducted anytime the facility was shut down -- even for maintenance. The new directive limits such review to "higher-risk" facilities.

But in other cases, it finds changes questionable. For example, DOE removed the requirements for contractors to follow the agency's safety management guidelines, because companies already have to comply with federal regulations. But the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has raised concerns that contractors may not implement safety practices "as rigorously" under the new arrangement.

The report comes as House Republicans push to hand HSS's oversight authority for the safety of nuclear weapons workers to DOE's quasi-independent National Nuclear Security Administration (Greenwire, May 16).