The Department of Energy is unable to outline the precise costs and schedules for waste cleanups at a dozen federal sites that produced nuclear weapons materials during World War II and the Cold War, the Government Accountability Office said in a report published Friday.
At just eight of the 12 sites, cleanup could cost roughly $15 billion over the next 60 years, GAO said.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management cannot “readily identify the scope, schedule, and cost of soil and legacy landfill cleanup,” the report said, adding that “having information available that is specific to soil and legacy landfill cleanup at EM sites would improve headquarters’ ability to track resources needed to implement remedy decisions.”
The eight sites investigated by GAO include the Hanford Site in Washington state, Los Alamos in New Mexico, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. GAO said 12 total sites have “remaining soil or legacy landfill cleanup.”
