Nuclear Safety: Construction of the Protective Shelter for the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Faces Schedule Delays, Potential Cost Increases, and Technical Uncertainties

According to a State official, when State recognized in 2010 another pledge conference would be needed to complete the Chernobyl shelter project, it decided that it needed to be better able to assess the project's performance because it was difficult for State to get benchmarks from the shelter contractor or any other source. Consequently, State made its April 2011 pledge of additional funds contingent on increased monitoring of the projects cost and schedule benchmarks to ensure they remain within agreed cost amounts and timeframes. Since the U.S. pledge would be paid in annual increments, State would require continuous benchmark monitoring and reporting as a condition of its annual payments. Although State did not establish its own performance benchmarks, its considerations and actions partially implement our recommendation; it made U.S. annual payments contingent on the project's performance against benchmarks being continuously transparent, which provides donors a better means to quickly identify and respond to any poor performance.

As required by the contingent placed on the U.S.'s April 2011 pledge of additional funds, a quality assurance officer would be based at the project site and continuously report directly to the donor nations, including the U.S. Unlike the set format of the current project reports provided to donors, the quality assurance officer could revise reporting information to donors as needed to explain emerging problems. State's action implements the intent of our recommendation, which is to ensure that donors get continuously relevant and applicable information on the project's performance goals and time frame.

In GAO's 2007 report, we reported difficulties with continued funding of the Chernobyl project from the FREEDOM Support Act (FSA) account, which had dwindling funds used for many other purposes. In State's 2007 letter responding to our recommendations, State said the department fully concurred with GAO's related recommendation, is anticipating future funding needs in its budget planning, and continues to press for equitable burden-sharing among our international partners. However, in 2011 a State official told us that the U.S. had been able to find sufficient funding in the same account for the current round of additional funding, which is expected to be the U.S.'s final pledge, and therefore had not needed to plan a contingency funding strategy. As a result, alternative actions were taken to meet the objective of the recommendation.