Letter to Comptroller General David M. Walker

July 15, 2004

The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States
The General Accounting Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Comptroller General Walker:

We write to request that the General Accounting Office (GAO) investigate the search for missing fuel rods at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and its implications for federal management of nuclear materials. Though the missing fuel at Vermont Yankee has been located, we are concerned that the loss of nuclear material at the Yankee facility in our state is the second such loss at a Northeastern power plant in five years, the other being the loss of spent fuel rods at the Millstone facility in Connecticut.

The search to locate these materials raises serious questions about whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is conducting appropriate oversight of nuclear materials at individual nuclear plants and whether the federal government should change its nuclear materials management policies. In that regard, we request that the GAO investigate and report to Congress on:

•Historical Changes in NRC Nuclear Materials Management. We understand that, in the past, NRC had a more direct role in the tracking of both nuclear materials stored on site at nuclear power plants and those sent to off-site storage - activities now conducted by the licensee. We request that GAO compare current and historic NRC nuclear materials tracking practices, and describe the justification for any historic changes to federal tracking programs.

•Trends in the Nuclear Industry that May Suggest the Need for Additional Oversight. We note a number of changes in the nuclear sector that may make a less centralized, licensee-managed approach to nuclear materials less effective including: consolidation and mergers among energy companies that change ownership and record keeping practices at particular sites, and extended power uprates or license extensions that may result in additional off-site waste shipments or on-site storage.
We request that GAO examine and identify whether these or other trends in the industry suggest the need for stronger oversight by the NRC.

•Options for Strengthening Nuclear Materials Accounting. We also ask the GAO to provide Congress with a range of options for improvements to the system, including a discussion of whether Congress should consider: (1) increasing or modifying the level of inspection oversight, (2) updating tracking reporting requirements, (3) changing the search protocol when fuels are reported missing and (4) improving or modernizing record keeping practices.

Thank you for investigating this matter. Due to the importance of this issue to our constituents, it is our hope that your office can make this investigation a high priority.

Sincerely,

Jim Jeffords
Patrick Leahy
Bernard Sanders