Laboratory officials attributed the leak to the reactor’s spent-fuel pool. Although the tritium posed little threat to the public, a firestorm of public concern erupted because
BNL had delayed until 1996 installing monitoring wells near the reactor despite a 1994 agreement by laboratory staff with Suffolk County officials to do so, and
BNL officials reported that the tritium had probably been leaking for at least 12 years without the laboratory’s or DOE’s knowledge. Fuel pool  passes leak  test. Although BNL officials later told us that the leak test was not accurate and that the two monitoring wells they installed earlier were in the wrong location to detect the tritium contamination, BNL officials relied on these data as the basis for their confidence that the spent-fuel pool did not leak. DOE’s Brookhaven Group, which had line accountability over BNL activities, failed to hold the laboratory accountable for meeting its agreements with local authorities. However, the laboratory’s own investigation of the tritium leak concluded that the laboratory’s safety and environmental protection division should have placed more emphasis on assessing potential risk and should have questioned the reactor division on the accuracy of the test results. They were part of a group of 51 wells installed throughout the laboratory site in response to a need to improve BNL’s groundwater monitoring program. BNL used the results from the two monitoring wells near the reactor as further evidence that the spent-fuel pool was not leaking because water samples from these wells did not identify the tritium leak. DOE’s Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health; the Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology; and the Director of the Office of Energy Research all told us of their dissatisfaction with BNL’s and the Brookhaven Group’s inability to develop effective ways to maintain the public’s trust. The Decision to Terminate AUI Was Based on Performance and Loss of the Community’s Trust

The Secretary of Energy took full responsibility for his decision to terminate DOE’s contract with AUI as BNL’s contractor. Lab publicly  announces  elevated  levels of  tritium in  groundwater  on site. DOE’s resident oversight office, the Brookhaven Group, had direct responsibility for the laboratory’s ES&H performance but failed to hold BNL officials accountable for meeting all regulatory commitments. Senior DOE leadership also failed by not creating an effective management and accountability system that would ensure that all offices of DOE and its contractors met their ES&H responsibilities. One hope for clarifying DOE’s roles and responsibilities may be found in the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (Results Act), which offers DOE the opportunity to raise these issues to a strategic level. Associated Universities generally agreed with our summary of the events surrounding the tritium leak. 2. 3. 4. Comments From Associated Universities, Inc. GAO Comments

1. However, as our report discusses, BNL and DOE staff agreed with Suffolk County to install monitoring wells but delayed their installation in favor of higher priority projects. 5. 6. 7. For example, within DOE we interviewed Office of Environment, Safety and Health officials who had evaluated the tritium recovery effort and safety management processes at the laboratory; the Chicago Operations Office manager and staff who were responsible for overseeing activities of DOE’s local Brookhaven office (the Brookhaven Group) during the early 1990s; and officials of DOE’s Brookhaven Group who administered DOE’s contract with AUI and who reviewed the laboratory’s reactor, ES&H, and groundwater monitoring programs.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the events surrounding the leak of the radioactive element tritium from a research reactor at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the resulting termination of Associated Universities, Inc., as the laboratory's contractor.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) because Brookhaven employees did not aggressively monitor its reactor's spent-fuel pool for leaks, years passed before tritium contamination was discovered in the aquifer near the spent-fuel pool; (2) reliance on incomplete tests of the water level in the spent-fuel pool and on sample data from monitoring wells scattered about the site led Brookhaven and Department of Energy (DOE) officials to give low priority to a potential tritium leak; (3) even after laboratory and DOE staff agreed with Suffolk County regulatory officials to install monitoring wells near the reactor in 1994, Brookhaven officials postponed their installation in favor of environmental, safety, and health activities they considered more important; (4) once the wells were installed and the high levels of tritium were discovered, the laboratory reported that the spent-fuel pool could have been leaking for as long as 12 years; (5) although the tritium poses little threat to the public, the delay in installing the monitoring wells raised serious concerns in the Long Island community about: (a) the laboratory's ability to take seriously its responsibilities for environment and for human health and safety; and (b) DOE's competence as an overseer of the laboratory's activities; (6) the responsibility for failing to discover Brookhaven's tritium leak has been acknowledged by laboratory managers, and DOE admits it failed to properly oversee the laboratory's operations; (7) DOE's on-site oversight office, the Brookhaven Group, was directly responsible for Brookhaven's performance, but it failed to hold the laboratory accountable for meeting all of its regulatory commitments, especially its agreement to install monitoring wells; (8) senior DOE leadership also shares responsibility because they failed to put in place an effective system that encourages all parts of DOE to work together to ensure that contractors meet their responsibilities for environmental, safety and health issues; (9) DOE's latest strategic plan, submitted in support of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, offers an opportunity to focus attention on the need to address DOE's management structure and accountability problems from a strategic perspective; and (10) the Secretary of Energy's decision to terminate Associated Universities' 50 years as the laboratory's contractor was based, according to DOE's official statements, on the laboratory's loss of the public's trust and DOE's own investigation, which concluded that the laboratory had not kept pace with contemporary expectations for the protection of the environment and human health and safety.