GAO finds DOE lacks clear standards for contractor oversight

The Energy Department lacks a common definition and measurable standards for judging contractor systems meant to identify safety and performance problems at nuclear-waste cleanup sites, according to a Government Accountability Office audit publicly released August 26, 2026.

GAO found that selected field offices within DOE’s Office of Environmental Management evaluated contractor assurance systems—or took related oversight steps—without clear criteria for deciding whether those systems were effective. The gap made it harder to compare risks across sites, support effectiveness conclusions and hold contractors accountable through their contracts.

The findings do not constitute a new nationwide evacuation or contamination warning. They concern how DOE checks contractor performance at a limited sample of sites. But the issue matters to workers, nearby communities and taxpayers because Environmental Management relies heavily on contractors for a cleanup mission involving 15 contaminated sites and an estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in remaining work.

How the oversight system is supposed to work

DOE expects certain contractors to operate contractor assurance systems, or CASs. These are management processes intended to monitor performance, identify and report problems, take corrective action and provide information that DOE can use to tailor its own oversight.

GAO reviewed agency and contractor records, conducted a site visit and interviewed DOE officials and contractors. Its nongeneralizable sample covered three contracts and associated field offices: the Central Plateau Cleanup Contract at the Hanford Site in Washington, the Idaho Cleanup Project End State Contract at Idaho National Laboratory and the Los Alamos Legacy Cleanup Contract at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The audit was conducted from September 2024 through August 2026.

GAO said Hanford and Idaho field offices had described their contractor assurance systems as effective, while Los Alamos had not made an effectiveness determination. But neither DOE nor Environmental Management had defined what “effective” meant or established specific evaluation criteria.

What GAO found at the three sites

At Hanford, the field office reported poor work planning and conduct of operations that led Environmental Management to request corrective-action plans in several areas. A contractor review of issues from January 2022 through October 2023 found that 13 of 33 sampled issues in the two highest significance categories—nearly 40 percent—were improperly closed or insufficiently documented.

At Idaho, the contractor reported 15 radiological events over eight months, from June 2024 through February 2025, that put personnel at risk of radiological overexposure. GAO did not report confirmed worker overexposure or injury. The events included failures such as not wearing dosimeters or not following radiological boundaries, according to the audit.

At Los Alamos, GAO found concerns that the contractor lacked effective processes for identifying significant issues. A widespread breakdown in the contractor’s training and qualification program in 2023 led to a stop-work order and delayed nuclear-waste disposal and environmental-remediation work by 90 days.

Why the missing standards matter

Environmental Management oversees cleanup at 15 sites contaminated by decades of nuclear weapons production and nuclear-energy research. GAO said the office spends about 95 percent of its roughly $8 billion annual budget on contracts and has a contractor workforce of more than 25,000 people.

DOE estimated in April 2026 that the remaining cleanup work could continue through 2100 and cost between $641 billion and $840 billion. That figure is a long-term estimate of potential cleanup work, not a new appropriation or an immediate bill.

GAO also found that Environmental Management headquarters did not systematically collect or standardize contractor-assurance information well enough to identify trends or compare risks across sites. Headquarters had not implemented its field-office oversight assessment schedule since 2020. Although annual schedules were developed beginning in 2024, GAO said the planned assessments had not been carried out.

Without consistent terms, metrics and thresholds, field offices may reach different conclusions about similar performance problems. GAO said headquarters also could not demonstrate how information from contractor assurance systems and field offices informed risk-based oversight priorities.

DOE agreed to four recommendations

DOE concurred with all four GAO recommendations. The agency was asked to define contractor assurance system effectiveness and establish measurable evaluation criteria; clarify what information headquarters needs from field offices and how it will use that information; design and implement regular oversight assessment schedules; and use contract mechanisms to establish expectations and consequences for contractor performance.

GAO separately found that Environmental Management had not used contract mechanisms to hold the three selected contractors accountable for contractor-assurance-system performance. The report said clearer performance expectations could be tied to contract provisions, performance evaluations, award fees or other mechanisms.

All four recommendations remained open on GAO’s product page as of September 14, 2026. The next accountability test is whether DOE publishes usable standards, standardizes information across sites, completes the planned assessments and links contract decisions to measurable contractor-assurance performance.

Sources

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