Chronic shortages of skilled staff at the Department of Energy’s multiple nuclear waste cleanup operations are contributing to faulty safety inspections, cost overruns and radiation leaks, a Government Accountability Office audit warned.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) operates 15 sites across the U.S. where large volumes of radioactive materials left over from four decades of nuclear weapons production await decontamination and disposal. At DOE’s massive Hanford, Washington, site on the Columbia River, where scientists produced plutonium for the atomic bomb that landed on Nagasaki, Japan, during World War II, 53 million gallons of waste still await disposal in a troubled operation that has no end date.
At the end of fiscal 2023, the EM office had a vacancy rate of 17 percent, with a workforce of 1,272 and vacancies totaling 263. Some situations were more dire, GAO reported. The vacancy rate at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, field office was 33 percent, and at the Carlsbad, New Mexico, field office, 34 percent.
EM also is dealing with a high staff attrition rate, with many staff at or approaching retirement. The EM staff oversee more than 10,000 contract staff working on cleanup operations.
