The Department of Energy continues to face quality assurance and other challenges for its planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., the Government Accountability Office has said.
Initiated in the 1980s, the project has been held back by delays and the agency is still seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Lately DoE has been working to restore confidence in scientific documents because of quality assurance problems that came to light through emails between project employees in 2005, for which GAO had issued an earlier warning, according to GAO-06-550T.
It said the agency has about 14 million more project e-mails to review, and that it also needs to resolve design control problems associated with its requirements management process, something that led to suspension of some project work last December.
The agency also continues to struggle managing the program’s complex organization, and significant personnel and project changes undertaken in last October could lead to a resurgence of earlier problem areas, such as confusion over roles and responsibilities, GAO said.
Further, it said the project’s performance indicators and other key management tools developed after announcing in 2004 a new commitment to quality assurance are not effective because they do not target existing areas of concern or track progress addressing them — and the tools have weaknesses detecting and highlighting significant problems for management attention.
