April 16, 2003

Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Incident Response Program

Since September 11, 2001, the Department has seen a significant increase in the number of emergency deployments. For example, in the year following September 11, 2001,emergency response teams deployed 227 times consuming about 88,000 man-hours at acost of over $13 million. Over 90 percent of these deployments were carried out by the RAP and SRT teams. Prior to September 11, 2001, teams deployed only a limited number of times.

Our objective was to determine whether the goals and objectives of the Emergency Response Program were being met. Specifically, we sought to determine whether selected emergency response teams deployed when required.