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"Following the discovery of a radioactive leak coming from an underground pipe at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on Jan. 6, both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Yankee are being audited. The U.S. Government Accountability Office is planning a review of the NRC's requirements for and oversight of buried pipes at nuclear power plants. Yankee is being audited by the NRC to determine if its license renewal application completely and accurately represents the nature and extent of buried piping at the plant in Vernon. While the GAO's review has not yet begun, the NRC was in Vernon the week of May 24 to conduct its audit. The NRC has 90 days to issue its report. The NRC's visit to Yankee was scheduled, "In light of the recent developments related to tritium leaks found on the site and potential misinformation given to the state of Vermont by Entergy ..." "

A former member of the oversight panel that reviewed the results of an audit of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon was asked Wednesday to keep an eye on measures taken by power plant engineers to address issues raised in the audit. Arnie Gundersen, who calls himself a nuclear safety advocate, agreed to spend three days per month monitoring the progress of those engineers on behalf of the Vermont state Legislature. Entergy, which owns and operates Vermont Yankee, has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend Yankee's operating license for 20 more years. The current license expires in 2012. In addition to NRC approval, Entergy must also get the OK from the Vermont Legislature and the state's Public Service Board. The audit, which was conducted by Nuclear Safety Associates, was meant to inform the Legislature's and the PSB's decisions.

The Department of Energy needs to improve oversight after a contractor at Hanford was allowed to approve federal funding on behalf of DOE for its own contract, according to an audit by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General. The audit also said that in some cases the contractor was allowed to prepare statements of work, which established DOE's requirement for work to be performed under its contract. The DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, or ORP, already has made some changes after recognizing that oversight of Project Assistance Corp. was weak before the Office of Inspector General began its investigation. DOE issued a blanket purchase agreement to Project Assistance Corp. in 2003 for project management, risk assessment, program assessment, quality assurance, safety, cost and schedule estimating, budgeting and finance, and engineering. Annual costs of the contract have increased from $4.7 million in 2005 to $9.2 million in 2008.

Brown's Ferry nuclear reactor the subject of audit TVA was overbilled more than $1 million on work done to restart its Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 reactor, according to TVA's Office of Inspector General. Advertisement About $2.8 million in subcontractor costs billed to TVA by a contractor was audited and the preliminary review "caused us to have concerns that certain costs that were billed may have also been billed to TVA under other contracts," according to an emailed statement from the office. "In summary, we found TVA had been overbilled $1,075,020 including (1) $174,912 of unsupported and ineligible labor and per diem costs (2) $621,428 of unsupported and ineligible equipment costs (3) $199,180 of unsupported material costs. and (4) $79,500 of overstated task costs."

Brown's Ferry nuclear reactor the subject of audit TVA was overbilled more than $1 million on work done to restart its Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 reactor, according to TVA's Office of Inspector General. Advertisement About $2.8 million in subcontractor costs billed to TVA by a contractor was audited and the preliminary review "caused us to have concerns that certain costs that were billed may have also been billed to TVA under other contracts," according to an emailed statement from the office. "In summary, we found TVA had been overbilled $1,075,020 including (1) $174,912 of unsupported and ineligible labor and per diem costs (2) $621,428 of unsupported and ineligible equipment costs (3) $199,180 of unsupported material costs. and (4) $79,500 of overstated task costs."

A new audit of the sick nuclear workers compensation program found that the U.S. Department of Labor was following the rules, but the report said the federal agency could do more to help the claimants and accelerate the process. "Based on our review, we found that the claims decisions issued by DOL were based on evidence supplied by or obtained on behalf of claimants and complied with applicable laws and regulations," the report by the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General said.

Vermont Yankee can operate reliably past 2012, concluded a panel appointed to review an audit of the nuclear power plant in Vernon. But its reliability, wrote the panel in a report issued Tuesday, can only be guaranteed if Entergy invests the resources needed to address recommendations made by the panel and the independent consultant that conducted the audit. Entergy must be committed to a high standard of reliable performance, it wrote, and a credible process trusted by the public must be put in place to verify the company is following through on its commitments. Nonetheless, wrote the panel, "VY has had a very good historical performance." In its 37 years of operation, Vermont Yankee has not had an outage lasting one year or longer, though nearly half of the boiling water reactors in the United States have.

It began in late 2007 as a routine audit. Retail giant Wal-Mart noticed that some exit signs at the company's stores and warehouses had gone missing. As the audit spread across Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, the mystery thickened. Stores from Arkansas to Washington began reporting missing signs. They numbered in the hundreds at first, then the thousands. Last month Wal-Mart disclosed that about 15,800 of its exit signs - a stunning 20 per cent of its total inventory - are lost, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for at 4,500 facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what's the big deal? In a word: radiation.

The Department of Energy is not adequately reporting the environmental impact of its billion-dollar program to clean up nuclear waste, according to a government audit. The Government Accountability Office released a report today noting that the DOE's nuclear clean-up program has been labeled as "a high-risk area for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement" since 1990, which the GOA says is the result of "inadequate management and oversight of its projects." As recently as March of 2009, the report stated, the GOA testified that cost increases at some major nuclear clean up projects were estimated to require an additional $25 to $42 billion to complete. Despite the consistent problems with the projects and ballooning budgets, the DOE did not adequately report its progress or the actual environmental impact of its work, the audit states.

"Niger, the world's sixth-largest uranium producer, will review mining agreements with companies including Areva SA to ensure they're fair to the West African country, a mines ministry official said. Minister of Mines and Energy Souleymane Mamadou Abba, appointed by Niger's military rulers on March 1, hasn't yet set a schedule or format for the audit, Mahaman Laoun Gaya, an official at the ministry and a former government minister, said by phone today from the capital, Niamey. "The military authorities have decided to audit all the uranium and gold contracts," Gaya said."

"There are new calls for an independent audit into the Lucas Heights nuclear facility, with a whistleblower claiming staff are at risk from serious safety breaches. A suspended employee of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) facility in Sydney's south has gone public with claims a worker was exposed to a "massive" dose of radiation in a 2008 accident. David Reid was a health and safety officer at ANSTO's Radiopharmaceuticals and Industrials business, ARI, and says a vial of highly radioactive material was dropped, but wasn't reported for hours."

The parliamentary Public Finance Oversight Commission decided on Friday to call on the Court of Audit to review operations of the fund established to finance radioactive waste disposal and decommissioning of the Krsko Nuclear Power Plant in the last five years.

The parliamentary Public Finance Oversight Commission decided on Friday to call on the Court of Audit to review operations of the fund established to finance radioactive waste disposal and decommissioning of the Krsko Nuclear Power Plant in the last five years.

According to an Inspector General report released today, DOE sites have 2,635 unneeded weapons. The surplus was created by changing security requirements for the plants' protective forces in the years that followed 9/11, the report said. The IG audit said that DOE and NNSA are not always properly managing the inventories of surplus weapons and that the weapons -- valued at more than $2.8 million -- could be used by other agencies or law enforcement.

Published this weekend by Rio daily O Globo, a report by a Brazilian official organization criticized the lack of security at Brazil's nuclear installations, which range from electricity-generating plants to hospital equipment. "The deficiencies signaled out by the Brazilian Court of Audit (which ensures proper management of federal public resources) go from a state of chaos in radioactive installations to the lack of enough adequately trained technicians supervising the power stations at Angra dos Reis, a seaside resort where two nuclear plants for generating electricity are located, the newspaper said.

"The construction contractor for Plant Vogtle, Shaw Group, temporarily stopped work after an internal audit showed new employees weren't given a questionnaire about their past or current abuse of drugs and alcohol. A Shaw spokesperson said employees were asked the questions verbally. "

"New Hampshire Rep. Paul Hodes demanded on Wednesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "answer for its lack of heightened oversight of the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant." In a letter submitted to Gregory B. Jaczko, chairman of the NRC, Hodes wrote that the NRC's "lax oversight has allowed Vermont Yankee to continue operating despite a safety record featuring frequent, repeated radioactive leaks." He also demanded that the NRC shut down Yankee until an audit of the plant's safety has been conducted. "Families in the emergency planning zone have lost faith in regulators that time and time again allowed Vermont Yankee inspections to miss radioactive leaks," stated Hodes, in a press release. Less than one month ago, stated Hodes, Yankee underwent security and safety inspections as part of a scheduled reactor shutdown. "

"The federal regulators that are considering granting a license for DTE Energy's proposed Fermi 3 nuclear reactor have agreed to investigate quality assurance violations associated with plans for the new reactor. Last fall the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a notice of violation to DTE for failing to have a plan to ensure that work done by contractors met standards. According to the NRC, quality assurance (QA) comprises all planned and systematic actions that are necessary to provide adequate confidence that a structure, system, or component will perform satisfactorily in service. Attributes of a QA program include procedures, recordkeeping, inspections, corrective actions, and audits. In June 15 ruling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing board responded to a petition by a coalition of environmental groups by agreeing to hold a formal hearing on the issue of quality assurance violations."

"Hill Air Force Base was one of the worst offenders in a list of nine military facilities that failed to properly account for nearly 1,000 nuclear-related items, according to an article in The Air Force Times. The Times article, based on an Air Force audit conducted last year, indicated none of the accounting errors compromised the safety or security of any weapons. The discrepancies came, however, in the wake of an international debacle in which contractors at Hill mistakenly sent sensitive components of ballistic missiles to Taiwan. The nuclear missile fuses had mistakenly been labeled as helicopter batteries."

The contractor who ran the Savannah River Site for almost two decades and is a big part of the company which was just awarded a new $3.3 billion deal to run the liquid waste operation is under federal investigation for irregular accounting practices. Washington Savannah River Company altered findings in a 2007 financial audit to justify expenses to the government, federal investigators said in a report made public Wednesday. The Energy Department's Inspector General said, as a result, it cannot verify more than $1 billion in expenses submitted by WSRC that year.

Perma-Fix Environmental has received the go-ahead to resume shipments of radioactive waste to the Nevada Test Site from its M&EC processing facility in Oak Ridge, but a temporary ban on shipments to NTS remains in effect for the company's facilities at Richland, Wash., and Gainesville, Fla. Larry McNamara, the chief operating officer of Perma-Fix, said today an audit last week at the Oak Ridge facility went well and satisified the previous concerns. M&EC was put on suspension following a September incident in which a container of waste leaked and had rad contamination on its exterior.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued its Safety Evaluation Report (SER) with Open Items for the proposed renewal of the operating licenses for Indian Point nuclear power plant, Units 2 and 3. Entergy submitted an application to the NRC in April 2007 to extend the Indian Point licenses by 20 years. The plant, operated by Entergy, is located in Buchanan (Westchester County), N.Y. The current 40-year operating licenses expire Sept. 28, 2013, for Unit 2, and Dec. 12, 2015, for Unit 3. The SER documents the results of the NRC staff's review of the license renewal application and site audit of Indian Point's aging management programs to address the safety of plant operations during the period of extended operation. Overall, the results show that Entergy has identified actions that have been or will be taken to manage the effects of aging in the appropriate systems, structures, and components of the plant and that their functions will be maintained during the period of extended operation. In a letter dated Jan. 15, Brian Holian, director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation's Division of License Renewal, provided Entergy with the SER and requested responses to the open items by March 16. The SER is available on NRC's Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html.