Title: A New Nuclear Waste Cleanup Plan Could Save Billions

Description: For decades, the Department of Energy has been working to
clean up dangerous nuclear waste left behind by U.S. nuclear weapons
production and energy research. But finding space to dispose of this
waste is an obstacle. We'll get an update on DOE's effort from GAO's
Nathan Anderson.

Related work: GAO-25-107109, Nuclear Waste: An Integrated Disposal Plan
Could Help DOE Complete Its Cleanup Mission and Save Billions 

Released: May 2025


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[Nathan Anderson:] DOE needs to have an integrated disposal schedule
that is influenced by what is fastest and least expensive and doing so
will likely save billions of dollars.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report. Your source for
fact-based, nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. For decades, the
Department of Energy has been working to clean up dangerous nuclear
waste left behind by U.S. nuclear weapons production and energy
research. To complete this cleanup mission, the DOE must safely dispose
of the remaining 11 million cubic meters of waste, which pose risks to
human health and our environment. But finding space to dispose of this
waste is an obstacle. We'll get an update on this effort from GAO's
Nathan Anderson, who has a new report out today. Thanks for joining us.

[Nathan Anderson:] Thanks for having me again, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Nathan, the Department of Energy has been working on
cleaning up nuclear waste for a very long time. How much has been
cleaned up and how much remains?

[Nathan Anderson:] Well, as the Cold War ended, Department of Energy was
charged with cleaning up 107 sites across the country. And these were
all sites that were involved with nuclear weapons production and nuclear
energy research. The department has cleaned up 92 of the 107 sites, but
the 15 sites that remain are also the most challenging. So DOE estimates
the cleanup of these sites will generate over 11 million cubic meters of
radioactive waste. This would fill about 4500 Olympic sized swimming
pools or 11 Empire State buildings.

[Holly Hobbs:] This might seem like a basic question, but how do you
clean up nuclear waste? How is that done?

[Nathan Anderson:] It might be basic, but I really like that question
because it prompts the 'it depends' answer. There are different types of
waste with different levels of risk. And these differences lead to
different treatment approaches. Most of DOE's waste is technically low
level waste, and that means that it has very low levels of
radioactivity. Think of contaminated soil that has to be dug up or
tearing down old facilities where trace amounts of contamination
occurred. Several DOE sites have low level waste disposal facilities on
them. And there are three facilities across the country, including
private ones that accept waste from DOE locations. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So that's the low-level waste. What about waste with
higher levels of radioactivity?

[Nathan Anderson:] So the department also disposes of another type of
waste, a little bit riskier, called transuranic waste, which was largely
generated from working with plutonium. This includes materials like
clothes, tools, rags and debris. DOE disposes of transuranic waste in a
facility in New Mexico where the waste is stored 2200ft underground in
what is essentially an old salt mine. 

Now, the trickier type of waste is high level waste. The high-level
waste is largely sludge stored in underground tanks at Hanford, Idaho
and Savannah River sites. And needs to be extracted and immobilized
before disposing of it. And this waste must be disposed of in a
permanent, deep geologic repository by law. But the United States
stopped working on the Yucca Mountain project, and so we don't have one.
And it's not looking like we'll have one for decades to come.

[Holly Hobbs:] So why has it taken so long? 

[Nathan Anderson:] As you can imagine, this is a huge not in my backyard
issue. Even the communities that want to host disposal sites because of
the tremendous amount of money that sites can bring in face resistance
from state governments that don't like the idea of nuclear waste being
transported across state lines. Now, we already transport low-level
waste, as well as transuranic organic waste, all across the country for
storage every week. So this is not a difficult or new engineering or
transportation issue. We do it all the time. This is a social issue and
a political issue that arises with new waste from government sites, gets
debated. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So if we're already doing it, what's the issue here?

[Nathan Anderson:] One of the challenges here is inertia. In many cases,
the department has already committed to the methods and schedules for
waste treatment and disposal in agreements with state and federal
regulators. So new or different approaches would require DOE to
renegotiate

[Holly Hobbs:] So given these challenges, is the DOE looking into
alternative options for disposing of waste?

[Nathan Anderson:] In a word, no. Instead, DOE relies on sites to
conduct this kind of planning. This is a problem because disposal isn't
something that can be done in isolation. These disposal facilities that
are ultimately going to store most of this waste, they have limited
capacity. So the government needs to come in with a centralized function
and the analysis to back it up to say, 'we're going to weigh the
different needs and the different risks and then determine what waste
should go from which site to what facility and when.' And there are also
numerous waste streams that don't yet have an agreed upon disposal
option. Now, these waste streams aren't terribly dangerous and, in many
cases, they appear to meet the criteria for acceptance at existing
disposal facilities. But DOE still needs to reach agreement with the
states that house these. 

So we did something a bit unconventional in this evaluation. We actually
did what we feel is DOE's job for them. And through a bunch of
complicated analysis, we basically optimized the schedule and found that
billions of dollars could be saved by simply resequencing when DOE sends
what waste to what facilities.

[Holly Hobbs:] So what's the impact of all of this? What's the impact of
the delays? What's the impact of DOE not taking action on this?

[Nathan Anderson:] Ultimately, DOE will not be able to complete its
cleanup mission without finding a disposal pathway for all of this
nuclear waste. There's also no way that DOE can fulfill all of its
commitments it has already made to states where the waste is presently
stored or being treated. So the status quo is going to need to change. 

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[Holly Hobbs:] So Nathan just told us that while DOE has cleaned up most
nuclear waste sites, the 15 that remain are the most challenging to
address. And DOE needs a new strategy for doing so. Nathan, what more do
we think the Department of Energy should be doing?

[Nathan Anderson:] We're making a few recommendations in this report
that could really be game changers for the taxpayer if they're
implemented. I'm going to list 3. 

So one is we're recommending that DOE develop models that identify
optimal disposal pathways and schedules. Two, we're recommending that
DOE developed a nationwide and integrated disposal strategy for its
waste. And then third, we're recommending DOE leverage the optimization
analysis and the integrated planning efforts to work holistically with
U.S. regulators. 

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question. What's the bottom line of this report?

[Nathan Anderson:] The status quo needs to be disrupted. Rather than
have nuclear waste disposal stagnate based on decades old and stovepipe
agreements with states that don't consider the waste in other states,
DOE needs to have an integrated disposal schedule that is influenced by
what is fastest and least expensive. And doing so will likely save
billions of dollars.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Nathan Anderson talking about our new report on
nuclear waste cleanup. Thanks for your time, Nathan.

[Nathan Anderson:] Thanks, Holly. Appreciate it.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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