Department of Energy: Problems and Progress in Managing Plutonium

The Department of Energy is addressing the subject recommendation by ongoing development of a complex-wide Integrated Pit Management Program Plan. The development of the plan is necessary to provide DOE a corporate vision for management of strategic reserve and surplus pits prior to disposition activities at the proposed Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility at the Savannah River Site. The draft plan describes scope, major ongoing pit management activities, and roles and responsibilities of the participating DOE and contractor organizations. The draft plan is scheduled to go out for review and comment on October 31, 2000, and the milestone for finalization is January 2001, with yearly updates. An integral part of the plan addresses the planned repackaging of the pits stored at the Pantex Plant into the ALR8 Sealed Insert storage containers. Repackaging capacity is 200 pits per month, and there are ongoing funding discussions for this activity.

In February 2000, DOE issued an implementation plan to address the issues raised by GAO and in a similar recommendation issued by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB). DOE agreed to take actions to achieve an estimated repackaging rate of 200 pits per month. In addition, DOE modified its container surveillance plan to provide more formalized information regarding the statistical basis for the plan, an outline of the quantitative and qualitative analyses that would be performed, and an explanation of how the results of these analyses will be used to predict future container performance. DOE hoped that this surveillance plan would provide the appropriate level of assurance that container defects would be identified prior to any significant compromise to the pit storage environment. While DOE had difficulties implementing its surveillance program and performing the required number of evaluations of pit containers in fiscal year 2000, additional evaluations were performed in fiscal year 2001 by a new contractor at the Pantex Plant--the DOE facility storing plutonium pits. DOE reiterated its commitment to repackage and perform surveillance on pit containers as agreed to in its implementation plan. In May 2002, the DNFSB agreed that pits were being placed in adequate containers at a satisfactory rate. While it emphasized that only inspection over time will tell how long such storage would remain adequate, the DNFSB stated that it was encouraged by recent progress DOE had made implementing its recommendation.