ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1996



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PT.6

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\i^Li SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

^(1^^ COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION



SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT

JOHN T. MYERS, Indiana, Chairman

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky TOM BEVILL, Alabama

JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan VIC FAZIO, California

FRANK RIGGS, CaUfornia JIM CHAPMAN, Texas

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey
JIM BUNN, Oregon

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Livingston, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking
Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.

James D. Ogsbury, Bob Schmidt, and Jeanne Wilson, Staff Assistants



PART 6
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Page

Environmental Management 1

Atomic Energy Defense Activities 235

Naval Reactors 385

Fissile Materials 693

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board 758

North Korea Reprogramming 841

Power Marketing Administrations 873

Commercial Waste Management 1005

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board 1121

Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1169

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 1455



Printed for the use of the Committee on Appnamiationa



855



ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 1996



HEARINGS

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION



SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT

JOHN T. MYERS, Indiana, Chairman

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky TOM BEVILL, Alabama

JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan VIC FAZIO, California

FRANK RIGGS, California JIM CHAPMAN, Texas

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey
JIM BUNN, Oregon

NOTE; Under Committee Rules, Mr. Livingston, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking
Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.

James D. Ogsbury, Bob Schmidt, and Jeanne Wilson, Staff Assistants



PART 6
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

Page

Environmental Management 1

Atomic Energy Defense Activities 235

Naval Reactors 385

Fissile Materials 693

Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board 758

North Korea Reprogramming 841

Power Marketing Administrations 873

Commercial Waste Management 1005

Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board 1121

Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1169

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 1455



Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations



U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
90-084 O WASHINGTON : 1995

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
ISBN 0-16-047151-6



COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
BOB LIVINGSTON, Louisiana, Chairman



JOSEPH M. McDADE, Pennsylvania

JOHN T. MYERS, Indiana

C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida

RALPH REGUIJ\, Ohio

JERRY LEWIS, California

JOHN EDWARD PORTER, IlUnois

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky

JOE SKEEN, New Mexico

FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia

TOM Delay, Texas

JIM KOLBE, Arizona

BARBARA F. VUCANOVICH, Nevada

JIM LIGHTFOOT, Iowa

RON PACKARD, California

SONNY CALLAHAN, Alabama

JAMES T. WALSH, New York

CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina

DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio

ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma

HENRY BONILLA, Texas

JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan

DAN MILLER, Florida

JAY DICKEY, Arkansas

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia

FRANK RIGGS, Cahfomia

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey

ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi

MICHAEL P. FORBES, New York

GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., Washington

JIM BUNN, Oregon

MARK W. NEUMANN, Wisconsin



DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin

SIDNEY R. YATES, IlUnois

LOUIS STOKES, Ohio

TOM BEVILL, Alabama

JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania

CHARLES WILSON, Texas

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington

MARTIN OLAV SABO, Minnesota

JULIAN C. DDiON, California

VIC FAZIO, California

W. G. (BILL) HEFNER, North Carolina

STENY H. HOYER, Maryland

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

RONALD D. COLEMAN, Texas

ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia

JIM CHAPMAN, Texas

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio

DAVID E. SKAGGS, Colorado

NANCY PELOSI, CaUfornia

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana

THOMAS M. FOGLIETTA, Pennsylvania

ESTEBAN EDWARD TORRES, CaUfornia

NITA M. LOWEY, New York

RAY THORNTON, Arkansas



James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director



ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1996



Wednesday, March 8, 1995.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

WITNESS

thomas p. crumbly, assistant secretary for environmental
manacement

Opening Remarks

Mr. Myers. The committee will come to order. This afternoon we
are going to hear on the environment restoration and waste man-
agement. Secretary Grumbly, we are pleased to have you. Your pre-
pared statement will be put in the record, and you may proceed as
you care.

Mr. Grumbly. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chair-
man, members of the subcommittee, I appreciate very much the op-
portunity to discuss DOE's Environmental Management Program
and the form of its 1996 budget request and thank you very much
for including my statement in the record.

Before you, £uid I know you haven't had a chance to take a look
at it, but I have three documents that I hope you will at least take
some opportunity to glance at over the next couple weeks. First is
what we call the English language version of our budget. Environ-
mental Management 1995, which hopefully translates all of the
dollars and projects that begin with Ks and Ys and other things
into common sense so you can understand that.

Secondly, I think an important book called, "Closing The Circle
on the Splitting of the Atom," which really tries to detail particu-
larly for people who are under the age of 45, like myself, who didn't
understand what we did during the Cold War in order to

Mr. Myers. I have heard of the circle being broken, but

Mr. Grumbly. We are trying to close it with the stopping of nu-
clear weapons production in 1989. Thankfully, I think we are on
the road to trying to fulfill the legacy of Oppenheimer and Bohr
and other folks who want to make this right. It will give you a good
overview.

Third, you have got something called the Fiscal Year 1994 Re-
view from our office, which is our attempt to make sure all of you
understand that we are measuring our field offices very carefully,
and we will talk a little bit about some of the impacts of some of
this in my presentation.

(1)



It arises in part out of the request that this committee made last
year to me that we really keep track of the strategic plan that we
outlined, and both you and Mr. Bevill at that time asked me to
make sure that I was managing our program in line with our stra-
tegic plan, and I think we are.

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I think that this
year the Department of Energy's Environmental Management Pro-
gram has really turned the comer. We have turned the corner on
the budget. For the first time in the program history, this year's
request is an absolute reduction in the budget given the same scope
of work.

Though our total program request of $6.6 billion appears greater
than last year, this is only because significant new responsibilities,
over $840 million worth of spending was transferred to the Envi-
ronmental Management Program from the Department's Defense
Programs. Without these newly added tasks, mostly the Savannah
River site in South Carolina, our request represents an absolute 4
percent decline or approximately a $235 million reduction from last
year's request.

You can see from the chart over here just in terms of scope what
we are dealing with, that we actually have a request that is below
last year's request, and what puts it above last year's request are
all the materials that have been transferred to us from other parts
of the Department. So, for example, when you and your colleagues
look at Defense Programs requests you have to take out the $840
million that was transferred to us from Savannah River before you
really consider whether they have an add or subtract, so it is a
transfer inside the Department.

RESULTS

We believe we have turned the comer on results. For the first
time in the program's history we are devoting more of our clean-
up resources to actual on-the-ground cleanup than to study. In
1994, 46 percent of our actual cleanup dollars were going to reme-
diation. In 1995 that is up to 53 percent, and in 1996, if you were
to approve our budget request, that would go to 69 percent of the
actual cleanup dollars.

We have turned the comer on efficiency. We are proposing mas-
sive reductions in our budget request while proposing really a larg-
er program in terms of what we want to accomplish for this year.
We have implemented, I think, some ambitious management
changes to improve productivity, accounting for a leaner program,
and more than $2 billion in savings between fiscal years 1994 and
1996.

And, perhaps most importantly, I think we have turned the cor-
ner on setting priorities. This year's request reflects a fundamen-
tally different strategy to address the most urgent risks first and
to focus our limited resources on getting results rather than trying
to do everything at one time.

Today I would like to briefly, and I emphasize briefly, outline our
program, our accomplishments, the challenges we face, and most
importantly the profound changes that are under way in dealing



with the environmental legacy of the Cold War. But before I do, let
me point out the significant role that the Environmental Manage-
ment Program is playing in contributing to a leaner Federal Gov-
ernment and deficit reduction in line with the President's proposed
budget.

PROPOSED REDUCTIONS

The President has proposed, as you know, to reduce the entire
departmental budget by $10.6 billion over the next five years. The
Environmental Management Program budget reductions will ac-
count for the largest portion of this cut. For fiscal years 1997
through 2000, the President's request will be reduced by $4.4 bil-
lion in outlays, which translates into approximately $5.5 billion
less in requested budget authority than was previously estimated
in administration plans. These reductions are significant, but I be-
lieve that they will be achievable without fundamentally altering
our moral responsibility to deal with the legacy of the Cold War.

However, I think we should make no mistake that there are lim-
its to how large and how fast, particularly how fast, budget reduc-
tions can happen, without jeopardizing our ability to meet our legal
and moral obligations to protect human health and safety. About
65 percent of our program budget is driven by compliance with
legal obligations, and about 25 to 30 percent of the budget is gov-
erned by vital, although not legally mandated, responsibilities to
care for the safety of our nuclear materials. This leaves little room
for further efficiency gains beyond the ones that we have already
outlined, and I think it establishes a point beyond which further
budget cuts will go directly into the essence of our missions and un-
dermine our efforts.

Our responsibilities include, and I think it is important to em-
phasize this, they include some of the Nation's most urgent envi-
ronmental risks by anybody's stretch of the imagination: hundreds
of underground tanks of liquid, high-level radioactive waste in
South Carolina, Washington, Idaho, and upstate New York — most
of these tanks are the size of the Capitol dome, with a capacity of
a million gallons and some tanks at Hanford until recently were at
risk for explosions — as well as intensely radioactive spent nuclear
fuel and weapons grade plutonium, the stufi" of nuclear warheads.

As I will describe in a minute, this program does cleanup, but
it does a lot more than cleanup, and I think it is important to em-
phasize that. It is really a lot more than just a cleanup program.
Given the seriousness of the responsibilities that we have, there is
not a great margin for error or miscalculation. We succeed partly
when bad things don't happen in the United States of America.

OVERVIEW OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Let me briefly describe the program as it exists. The Depart-
ment's Office of Environmental Management, which was estab-
lished in late 1989, manages the largest environmental steward-
ship program in the world. We have over 130 sites and facilities
across the Nation, encompassing 10,000 projects, estimated to cost
over $200 billion over the next several decades.

Most broadly, our job is to safely operate vast installations, for
example, Hanford is 500 square miles, Idaho is 800 square miles.



Savannah River is 300 square miles, extraordinarily dangerous ma-
terials, and massive complex facilities and unparalleled operations.
This task is far easier described than carried out.

To illustrate, we are dealing with a wide variety of threats and
risks such as the following: First, contaminated drinking water,
soils and surface water; second, the theft or diversion of nuclear
weapons material, for example, plutonium and highly enriched ura-
nium; and third, literally thousands of radioactively contaminated
buildings that must be stabilized and eventually decontaminated.

We simultaneously try to satisfy a wide variety of demands.
First, compliance with State and Federal laws and regulations and
associated agreements that the Department has signed up to, most-
ly prior to 1993. Secondly, worker safety and health protection
standards derived from the nuclear industry and departmental
practices; and third, short and long-term technology development
needs, the seed com that is necessary for creating effective and af-
fordable environmental remediation systems for the future and
which will really be the key for deciding how much of our land can
be returned to anything other than very restricted use.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

We are making, I think, some significant strides in reducing the
environmental and public health risks and hazards from more than
50 years of nuclear weapons production, testing, and research. For
example, in the last year we began to stabilize inventories of
pyrophoric plutonium. As you know, plutonium can be extremely
unstable. It can explode and bum spontaneously under certain con-
ditions, which is exactly what happened in two fires at Rocky Flats
in Colorado in 1957 and 1969.

We treated 40 million gallons of hazardous wastewater associ-
ated with the K-25 central neutralization facility at Oak Ridge and
we converted 700,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste into
safer, more stable dry calcine form at our site in Idaho. There are
some people who have said we haven't gotten anything for our
money in the last five years. I think they are misinformed. I don't
think they have entirely done their homework. We have done a lot.

Since the establishment of the program in 1989, and I refer you
to the chart over on your right, we have treated a total of 4.2 bil-
lion gallons of ground and surface water, which is enough to fill the
reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington
monument 624 times. We have also removed more than 30 million
cubic meters of contaminated soils and uranium tailings, enough to
fill the inside of Mackey Arena where the Boilermakers play 156
times, which is exactly what the Indiana State Sycamores might
like to do there. Or put another way, there is enough to cover the
track and infield at the Old Brickyard 10 stories high.

Mr. Myers. Now, I understand what you are talking about.

Mr. Grumbly. WTiich is not where we put it.

Mr. Myers. You finally put it in language we understand.

Mr. Grumbly. I am trying, Mr. Chairman.

meeting commitments

Despite this progress, we recognize that a whole lot remains to
be done. To manage this program, we are setting goals and meeting



them. Last year, Mr. Chairman, this subcommittee asked what
yardstick Congress should use in measuring this program, and at
that time we provided to the subcommittee a copy of our strategic
plan, which laid out our commitments for 1994 and 1995.

I am proud to report that we essentially met or exceeded vir-
tually all of the commitments that we promised you last year. We
didn't do everjrthing. We are not perfection, but I think we made
major progress against the commitments we made. But we can't af-
ford to rest on the accomplishments we made.

As I said, much remains to be done. We have more results that
we are committed to getting in fiscal year 1996. For the coming
year, we plan to finally begin the operation of the Defense Waste
Processing Facility at the Savannah River site, which will trans-
form this highly toxic and radioactive waste into stable glass logs.
We will complete the stabilization of the inventories of plutonium
at the Rocky Flats site that present a fire hazard, and we will con-
tinue to upgrade the storage of spent nuclear fuel to prevent work-
er and environmental exposure.

I set six priorities when I came in May 1993. You can see them
across the bottom. Reduce urgent risks in this complex, deal with
worker safety, get more results, increase managerial control, focus
our technology program, and improve the relationships that we
have with the public.

In the yellow is my own self-estimate of where we are. You can
see I don't think that we are close to perfection at this point, but
I do think we are making progress. I think that with the 1996 and
1997 budgets that we have proposed that we have the opportunity
to make a lot of progress against these problems using less re-
sources than we have spent in the past.

CHANGING THE WAY WE DO BUSINESS

We recognize that this program has been inefficient and that is
why one of my major goals has been to increase the managerial ac-
countability of this program. It is a difficult and daunting task, but
I want to let you know that we are prioritized and we do have a
good sense of where it is that we want to go. Our 1996 budget re-
quest, as I said, is approximately $6.6 billion, and this includes
$843 million in funding for significant new responsibilities at three
sites which have been transferred from the Department's Defense
Programs office — ^the Savannah River site in South Carolina, the
Mound plant near Dayton, Ohio, and the Pinellas plant near Clear-
water, Florida — as well as several other high-risk facilities that
were transferred to us beginning this fiscal year from the Energy
Research Program.

The requested amount will allow us to carry out our legal obliga-
tions during fiscal year 1996 with a few exceptions that we have
already begun working with State regulators to resolve. However,
after this fiscal year, even with the continued productivity and sav-
ings that are expected, I think there will be a gap between avail-
able resources and requirements, and I would like to explain how
we plan to meet our legal and moral obligations, given the declin-
ing resources that we know we are going to have.



RECOMPETING CONTRACTS

In the previous administration when our program was created,
the necessary ramping up of budgets was, frankly, carried out in
an organizational environment in which cost was no object. We in-
herited a system of nuclear weapons production in which managing
the cost of that complex was really not high on the agenda.

We recognize that this is no longer the case. We are making sub-
stantial changes in our management practices in order to increase
the efficiency and to reduce the costs. For example, we are
recompeting and renegotiating over $30 billion worth of contracts
to include greater incentives for outstanding performance and to
ensure that our contractors, not the taxpayers, take on a larger
share of the risks associated with doing business.

This is the largest single recompetition in the history of the De-
partment of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission.

WORK FORCE REDUCTIONS

We are reducing the number of contractor employees by nearly
18,000 over the next 18 months, which will restore the number of
employees at the sites to the levels they were at full production ca-
pacity. We are doing this even though we recognize that we don't
have to lay off 18,000 in order to meet the President's budget goal.
But if you take a look at the downward ramp that we all know we
are on, we want to essentially jump over fiscal year 1996 and get
to a level of employment at our sites that can be sustained for a
longer period of time. So fundamentally we don't want to cut the
tail of the cat more than once here.

It is too painful for the communities who are involved to do this
and we think it is better if we can get on with it and get down to
the level of employment that we really need to have for the long



RISK RELATED PLANNING

We will continue, and in fact, we will increase our use of risk-
based assessments to determine where to allocate resources so that
we can address the urgent risks first.

We are on schedule to deliver the required report to Congress
this June. The Senate Energy Committee in the fiscal year 1994
appropriations bill or authorization bill basically told us that we
needed to present a risk-based program to the Congress in time for
the 1997 budget, and we are on schedule to do this.

These initiatives are ambitious. In fact, I think if you compare
our management goals to those of some of the major Fortune 500
companies, we are pushing the limit already of what an organiza-
tion can achieve in terms of efficiency gains.

When I talked to former Secretaries of Defense and Secretaries
of Energy and the heads of major Fortune 500 companies, like Sec-
retary Schlesinger, Norm Augustine from Martin Marietta, their
basic response to the program that we have here in terms of be-
coming more efficient is you are really at the outer edge of what
you can realistically expect to do.



RENEGOTIATING COMPLIANCE AGREEMENTS

We are also changing the way we do business with regulators.
To ensure that we continue to meet our legal obligations, we are
working with regulators to change our compliance agreements that
apply to the Department. Let me take a moment to emphasize this
point.

There is a lot of talk about changing our budget and changing
our laws and we are very interested in working with the Congress
on both of these types of changes, but we need to be clear about
one thing, and that is unless and until the laws are actually
changed, we are duty bound to honor them. I cannot pick and
choose the laws that we obey, and the Department is committed to
complying with the laws that apply to its sites and operations.

When Secretary O'Leary and myself took these jobs, we took
oaths of office to uphold the Constitution and to faithfully execute
the laws of the land. We take that oath very seriously, and so,
members of the committee, I think we can and we should have the
debate about the laws by which we are governed, particularly the
environmental statutes to see whether they really make sense.

I just testified on Monday on the Senate side about contemplated
changes to increase the consideration of risk in the environmental
laws. I also have long supported changes in Superfund that would
make it work better and cost less, and we need to make sure that
those changes are, in fact, enacted this year. For now I think we
are in pretty good shape.

I am happy to report that we have substantially increased our
compliance from approximately 75 percent of our milestones in
1993 to about 87 percent in 1994 and 1995, so in only two years
we have cut in half the number of missed compliance milestones
at our sites. For fiscal year 1996, if we are appropriated the re-
quested funding level we expect to miss only about 2 or 3 percent
of our legal milestones and this is better than most Fortune 500
companies do. However, as I said, the outyears are a major prob-
lem, and we are working vigorously with States to fix these prob-
lems.

Many of the agreements were signed during a climate that was
much different from the one we have today. Some of the milestones
and schedules for completion are technically unworkable. Recogniz-
ing this, it is a reasonable and, indeed, a sensible thing to do to
work cooperatively with the States, stakeholders and the EPA to
renegotiate those agreements as appropriate to align them more
with current fiscal reality. Also our goal in negotiating these agree-
ments is to ensure that they will achieve the greatest risk reduc-
tion and risk prevention per dollar spent.

CONCLUSION

Let me conclude. Through ambitious changes in managing our