Allison Bawden

NNSA said it plans to implement new processes, including the use of templates and root cause guidance, to help project managers better meet reporting requirements. We recommend they complete the guidance and implement the process.

NNSA saw costs grow >25% on 7 out of 14 construction projects, but didn’t notify Congress about 5 of them for months, let alone within the 30 days required by law. Nor did NNSA assess the root causes of cost overruns for those 5 within 90 days or inform Congress, as required. #nukesky

NNSA spends a lot of money on nuclear weapons & infrastructure. NNSA has requirements (similar to those of the Nunn-McCurdy Act) to formally notify Congress about cost overruns and assess the reasons for the overruns, but it hasn’t consistently done so.
www.gao.gov/products/gao...

Los Alamos looks forward to additional park-and-ride shuttle routes to the lab. NNSA has some concerns about potential challenges with having sufficient federal staff to oversee the program and assess whether it’s providing the intended benefits.

Under a new authority in the FY25 NDAA, NNSA sites can reimburse some contractor commuting costs. This could improve safety and congestion. To date, Los Alamos is the only site to have made a proposal; they estimated it would cost $74 million to implement from FY25–30.

Commuting can be a slog. One way NNSA can address recruitment & retention challenges at its labs is by making it easier to get to work, including by offering park-and-ride shuttles and public transit subsidies.
www.gao.gov/products/gao...

Until the UPF is ready, NNSA will have to keep using an 80-year old facility that could cost up to a half billion dollars to maintain in the meantime. We recommended that NNSA develop a comprehensive plan for this maintenance.

The UPF is also delayed. The agency is monitoring the project, but there are already doubts that the contractor will meet its project milestone for 2029. There are concerns about the ability to track project progress because of the way the contractor categorizes project tasks.

The estimated cost to complete the UPF has increased nearly $4 billion just since construction started in 2018. Poor management accounts for $770 million of that. NNSA has conducted reviews to get to the root of the cost increases and implemented 19 out of 20 corrective actions.

In 2004 NNSA began planning the Uranium Processing Facility to replace Manhattan Project-era facilities at Y-12 in TN. Fast forward 21 years: UPF’s est. cost is up to nearly $10 billion and it’ll cost NNSA to keep using old facilities until UPF is complete.
www.gao.gov/products/gao...

We are starting work on just this issue! Want to get to the root causes.

This morning @nytimes reported on radiological risks in Ukraine. We have a recent report on the range of nuclear security and safety risks related to the war in Ukraine. www.gao.gov/products/gao...

As NNSA’s contractors underestimate the costs of the contracts across the enterprise, higher costs for small projects add up. We recommend NNSA ensure its contractors estimate costs more reliably to enable more realistic program planning & budgeting and better project management.

Over the next 2 decades, the United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars to modernize its nuclear weapons stockpile. These expenditures will include hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fixed-price construction subcontracts.

You wouldn’t think the cost of a fixed-price construction contract could increase—but hundreds of NNSA’s run over, to the tune of $37.5 million just in FY23. NNSA’s construction budget is always tight so unexpected increases mean delays for other projects. www.gao.gov/products/gao... #nukesky

NNSA’s plans for upgrading one of the facilities are no longer current and the agency hasn't evaluated its progress on repairing any of the three. We recommend that NNSA develop performance measures to track and report on its progress, and document options for future upgrades.

In 2023 NNSA submitted to Congress a plan for repairing & upgrading these facilities. But the plan doesn’t give Congress—or other decision-makers, like NNSA management—all the information they need to determine whether the fusion facilities can continue to perform as designed.

Fusion is essential for powering the USS Enterprise—and, here on earth, for maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile without explosive nuclear testing. NNSA operates 3 fusion facilities for these purposes.
www.gao.gov/products/gao... #nukesky

We pointed out some additional opportunities—for example, DNFSB should revise its human capital plan to include more details on how the Board will achieve its goals, and by when. This will support performance by ensuring that staff responsibilities are well defined.

But! DNFSB is supposed to have 5 presidentially nominated & Senate-confirmed Board members. Filling seats has been challenging; as of August 2025, the Board had 2 seats filled, with 1 member’s term expiring in Oct 2025. With 1 seated member, the Board’s authority will be limited.

DNFSB has been busy—in addition to independently overseeing health & safety protections at U.S. defense nuclear facilities, it has been improving its management and planning based on recommendations from GAO and others.

Or if you prefer…fission chips…as your main meal, check out our weapons Quick Look. www.gao.gov/products/gao...

There is a list on our web site of the unclassified titles of sensitive and classified (restricted) reports that we issue. It is regularly updated.

I don't find classification to be an impediment to the work, but we aren't always able to issue our work publicly. Our preference is to issue our work publicly whenever possible, which sometimes means a public version in which we note the type of information that was removed for classification.

Cesium is so old school. There are much more cutting-edge ways to irradiate your shrimp. www.gao.gov/products/gao...

To address the cost estimate issue, we also recommend that the OIG develop life cycle cost estimates for conducting incurred cost audits. This would provide the OIG and decisionmakers a better understanding of cost-effective approaches and anticipated long-term costs.

In addition, while the OIG’s audit manual met standards regarding key issues like ethics, independence, and professional judgment, we found that it was missing certain procedures for fieldwork, reporting, and peer review standards. The OIG has since updated its manual.

The OIG based its estimate on limited data and opted for a “Rough Order of Magnitude” estimate rather than a more thorough “Life Cycle Cost Estimate,” which would’ve been more suitable for supporting budgetary decisions, including determining the most cost-effective approaches.

Department of Energy: Inspector General’s Budget Estimates for Audits of Certain Contractors’ Costs Need Improvement The Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General seeks to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse. In 2021 the OIG established a new division to audit...

#nukesky When DOE’s Office of the Inspector General set up a division for auditing DOE’s largest contractors in 2021, it estimated it would cost ~$19 million/year to operate… but, as of 2025, the cost turns out to be more like $43.7 million.

Fully implementing our recommendations would provide NNSA and Congress with better cost information for budgetary decision-making on nuclear weapons and reduce duplicative data requests and reporting burdens for contractors.