GAO: Clarify future land use plans, regulatory scope for cleanup efforts

On October 16, the Government Accountability Office publicly released two reports related to the Department of Energy's nuclear waste cleanup efforts.

The reports come at a time when the DOE is leasing or transferring land on its legacy nuclear sites to various entities that are pursuing nuclear fuel cycle activities and is considering future leases to support solar arrays, AI infrastructure projects, and other industrial uses. One report concludes with an observation on the DOE's "renewed focus on the potential future uses of these sites and the interest among some community stakeholders and industry in using the land for commercial and other purposes."

Both reports provide recommendations for improving decision-making processes at DOE cleanup sites with the goal of completing projects sooner and at less cost.

Future land use planning: Nuclear Waste: Future Land Use Planning at Selected DOE Cleanup Sites (GAO-27-108063), reviews how land use plans have been incorporated into activities at six of the DOE's legacy cleanup sites since 1992: Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho, and Hanford Site in Washington.

In reviewing agency documents, policies, and laws as well as conducting interviews, the GAO determined that DOE cleanup standards largely conformed to initial land use plans that required less stringent cleanup at four of the sites. At Idaho and Hanford, however, portions of each site were cleaned to strict standards for residential use, despite the DOE agreeing that the land was unlikely to be used for residential purposes.

The report states that initial plans for possible future uses of waste site land guided cleanup processes but created no binding requirements. It suggests that a more formal procedure for considering future land uses in the decision-making process ultimately could reduce uncertainty, promote efficiency, and prove cost effective.

Also among the report's recommendations are the following:

• "Better guidance from the [Environmental Protection Agency] on considering reasonably anticipated future land use as part of the environmental cleanup process at DOE cleanup sites."
• "Better cost and schedule analysis of cleanup options based on multiple potential future land use assumptions in advance of making a cleanup decision."
• "More specific direction from Congress on roles and responsibilities by DOE and regulators."

The GAO prepared the future land use planning report as a requirement of Senate Report 118-188, which was submitted alongside the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025.

Legal and regulatory barriers: In its recommendations, the future land use planning report specifically refers to a second October 16 report, Nuclear Waste: Addressing Legal and Regulatory Barriers Could Accelerate Cleanup and Reduce Costs (GAO-27-107791).

Both reports address future land use planning as a part of the site cleanup process that potentially could be improved. The legal and regulatory barriers report claims that while the DOE considered potential future land uses in its cleanup plans, in some cases it did not explore the costs of all possible uses, including those that required less stringent cleanup standards, resulting in a process that targeted "unrealistic" goals and perhaps was less cost conscious. The report suggests that Congress could provide-and the DOE and the EPA could collaborate to clarify-the steps the DOE should take to incorporate multiple land use cost assessments prior to selecting a cleanup plan.

Along with land use planning, the legal and regulatory barriers report lists additional factors that the GAO views as inhibiting the DOE's cleanup work at various sites. At the core of them is what the report describes as a complicated regulatory framework guiding cleanup, which it says is the result of three laws designating rulemaking powers to three different regulatory bodies:

• The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), which is implemented by the DOE.
• The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), which is implemented by the EPA.
• The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), which is implemented by various states under the EPA's authority.

The results of this framework, according to the report, include state regulations and cleanup requirements that sometimes conflict with the standards that the DOE is authorized to pursue under the AEA; a belief among EPA staff that they lack authority to challenge state rules that are at least as strict as the AEA's provisions; and projects being pursued according to potentially outdated techniques for radionuclide cleanup and to DOE-state agreements that were created before contamination at some sites was fully analyzed in scope.

The GAO includes recommendations for Congress as well as for the DOE and the EPA in its report. Among them are suggestions for Congress to clarify the DOE's authority under the AEA and provide a mechanism by which the EPA can resolve discrepancies between the DOE's cleanup standards and state regulations, as well as a suggestion for the DOE and the EPA to create an interagency task force to review projects.

Responses from the DOE and the EPA are appended at the end of the report. Though the agencies agree and disagree with different parts of the recommendations, both note regarding the interagency task force that they already pursue partnering initiatives.

Momentum for cleanup: The GAO reports do not include timelines for implementing their suggestions, although both note that cleanup of the DOE's 15 legacy sites currently is estimated to last until 2100 and cost between $641 billion and $840 billion.

However, speaking at a conference in March 2026, Tim Walsh, assistant secretary for the DOE's Office of Environmental Management, expressed a desire to accelerate that cleanup, connecting it to reuse of the sites as hubs for energy- and technology-related growth.

The GAO's future land use report suggests that some of that growth already has been realized on former cleanup site land: as of February 2026 at Oak Ridge alone, more than 25 nuclear companies have established presences on transferred or leased land, touting capital investments of about $10 billion and the future creation of about 2,500 new jobs.