From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Review of Plans for New Plutonium Research Facility at Los Alamos Audio interview by GAO staff with Eugene Aloise, Director, Natural Resources and Environment Related GAO Work: GAO-12-337: Modernizing the Nuclear Security Enterprise: New Plutonium Research Facility at Los Alamos May Not Meet All Mission Needs Released: March 2012 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's March 2012. Plutonium is vital to the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, however, much of the nation's plutonium research and development capabilities are housed in ageing and potentially hazardous facilities at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory. A group led by Gene Aloise, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team, recently reviewed plans to construct a new plutonium research facility. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Gene to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] What prompted the Department of Energy to invest in building a new facility for analyzing and storing plutonium? [ Gene Aloise: ] Well, DOE is in the process now of modernizing the entire nuclear weapons complex, it's now called the Nuclear Security Enterprise. Many of these buildings were built during the Manhattan project and some of them are more than 60 years old. This particular building, the Chemistry and Metallurgical Research facility, is 60 years old, in very bad shape, and to the point where it's affecting or could affect the health and safety of the workers. And they're dealing with plutonium—which is a very toxic, dangerous material—so they need a modern facility to work in; and the plutonium is used in our nuclear weapons to maintain and sustain a reliable and secure nuclear stockpile, so this building is very important for that research. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And your team looked at the schedule and the cost estimates for this project, what did you find there? [ Gene Aloise: ] Well, we found first of all, the budget for this facility has increased over six fold, from about $700 to $900 million to now about $3.5 to almost $6 billion and it will probably go higher than that. But in recent twist to this was in the president's budget to facility because of budget resource shortages has been delayed for 5 years, but now that raises all kinds of questions because the administration has been saying that this facility was absolutely necessary to maintain our nuclear stockpile, but now they're saying they can do it for 5 years in the existing facilities. But, as I mentioned, these facilities are in bad shape and this one in particular sits on a fault line, two parallel fault lines underneath it, and we don't want an earthquake to destroy a building that has plutonium in it. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You looked at the proposed project in the context of the nation's plutonium stockpile needs and requirements, what did you find there? [ Gene Aloise: ] Well, we think that the building—which is the smallest of the three designs that we looked at—will meet the stockpile needs, the nuclear weapons needs for plutonium. But there's other research dealing with plutonium that's happening in the complex now in different facilities—there's eight different facilities in the nuclear weapons stockpile—all doing some kind of research, some of them using plutonium. And it doesn't look like these other research needs will all fit into this new Chemistry and Metallurgical Research building, so we recommended to DOE that they assess all the plutonium research needs and see if this new building will accommodate them, but if not, are they going to need another building, at what cost to the taxpayer. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You mentioned that recommendation to DOE. Is GAO making other recommendations in this report? [ Gene Aloise: ] Yeah, we're asking DOE to reassess their final cost estimate because the estimate we reviewed did not include the number of risks that we think need to be considered when they develop an estimate. And we also, in addition to assess the plutonium research needs, told DOE to report to Congress what they found. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, you talked about the fault lines and the safety hazards in the existing facility, and for taxpayers who are interested in the nation's nuclear security and how we managed plutonium, what's the bottom line of this report? [ Gene Aloise: ] The bottom line is this all comes with a very high price tag, $88 billion the first 10 years and $180 billion for 20 years, but it's important to modernize some of these facilities because they are crumbling and this is not the only one—we are spending billions building other facilities as well—but all of that comes at a very high price. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.