The conceptual design for the Tritium Extraction Facility was reviewed by three teams—the “Red Team,” the “Independent Review Team,” and the “Formal Design Review Team.” Although there is no requirement for such reviews, they were requested by DOE headquarters’ Office of Commercial Light Water Reactor Production and the Project Office at Savannah River to increase their confidence in the conceptual design of the facility before proceeding to the preliminary design phase. In addition to the overall comments made by two of the review teams, all three teams made a number of specific comments. Comments that the review teams considered to be significant and that we believe cover issues that could affect the success of the project related to the design of the remote handling and tritium extraction processes, the need to include contingencies in the schedule, and the level of detail in the conceptual design report. DOE’s Process for Handling Review Teams’ Comments

Although one of the review teams was chartered by DOE headquarters and two were chartered by the Savannah River Project Office, the purpose of obtaining the independent reviews of the conceptual design was similar in all three cases—to provide confidence in the adequacy of the Tritium Extraction Facility’s conceptual design. The Project Office prepared a list of the actions taken, and the three members of the Red Team concluded that, overall, the Project Office had been responsive to the comments. The Project Office handled the Independent Review Team’s comments differently. The original intention was for the Formal Design Review Team to review the Project Office’s responses and for the chairman of the team to issue a “closure” memo (1) stating that the team had reviewed and agreed with the Project Office’s responses to its comments and (2) endorsing the conceptual design. DOE had two specific comments. As a result, the comment has not been resolved. To obtain information on the process DOE used to respond to the comments raised by the review teams, we reviewed the review teams’ charters; correspondence between the review teams, the Project Office, and DOE; and the teams’ reports and related documents. Each represents significant uncertainties, in terms of scope, cost, and schedule. A section devoted to the project’s schedule should be added to the conceptual design report. The team’s chairman no longer considers this a major comment.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) plans to build a Tritium Extraction Facility at its Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the reports of three different teams responsible for reviewing the project's conceptual design and related products, focusing on: (1) the major comments raised by the three reviews; and (2) the process used by DOE to respond to those comments.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) two of the teams that reviewed the Tritium Extraction Facility's conceptual design found the project's scope, cost, and schedule to be appropriate and found no issues that would necessitate reevaluating the project; (2) the third team made no overall comments on the project; (3) the three teams also had nearly 800 specific comments; (4) comments that the review teams considered to be significant related to: (a) the design of the remote handling and tritium extraction processes; (b) the need for the project's schedule to allow for contingencies that could occur in the process and equipment development; and (c) the adequacy of the level of detail in the conceptual design report; (5) DOE handled each review team's specific comments differently; (6) for one team, the Savannah River Project Office prepared a response to each comment, and DOE headquarters had three members of the original review team comment on the adequacy of the responses; (7) for comments made by the second team, the Project Office responded to all comments, but did not seek the team's review of the responses; (8) for the third review team's comments, DOE responded to each comment, but the design team has not yet reviewed the responses; (9) overall, DOE made many changes to the conceptual design because of the review teams' comments and appears to have been generally responsive to the comments; (10) however, some comments--such as the one related to a need to include contingencies in the projects' schedule--have not been resolved to the satisfaction of the review teams; and (11) nonetheless, DOE approved the conceptual design report and the project entered the preliminary design phase in October 1997.