Nuclear Waste DOE's Hanford Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Project Cost, Schedule, and Management Issues

Abstract

The Department of Energy (DOE) is undertaking a project to improve the storage of spent (or irradiated) nuclear fuel from its nuclear reactors at the Department's Hanford Site in Washington State. This fuel is currently stored in water basins a few hundred yards from the Columbia River, where the deterioration of some of the fuel and the water basins has raised health and safety concerns. To address these concerns, the project currently under way involves installing equipment in the water basins to retrieve and package the fuel, building a facility to dry the fuel, and moving the dry fuel to a new interim storage facility farther from the river. Accordingly, you asked us to revisit this project to determine (1) its current status, (2) what problems might affect achieving current cost and schedule estimates, and (3) whether changes have been sufficient to address management weaknesses.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA369495

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Business Administration
  • Columbia River
  • Commerce
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Cost Estimates
  • Drainage Basins
  • Employment
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Management
  • Environmental Protection
  • Management Personnel
  • Nuclear Fuels
  • Nuclear Materials
  • Organizational Structure
  • Waste Management
  • Water Purification

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy Engineering.
  • Riverine Ecology