August 28, 2014

The Readiness of the Department's Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center

The Federal Radiological Monitoring and Assessment Center (FRMAC) is a multi-agency Federal asset whose mission is to manage radiological, environmental monitoring and assessment activities during a nuclear or radiological incident within the United States.  Because of the national importance of FRMAC’s ability to respond to radiological and nuclear incidents, we initiated this inspection to determine if FRMAC was operationally ready to accomplish its mission in the critical areas of personnel, training, lessons learned and equipment.

Our inspection found that FRMAC was generally operationally ready to accomplish its mission and we did not identify any issues in the critical areas of personnel, training and lessons learned.  However, we did identify issues with aging equipment and potential reliability issues that could adversely impact the timeliness of FRMAC's response to radiological emergencies.  Specifically, our evaluation of FRMAC's equipment revealed that some equipment was aging and was near, or had reached, the end of its life cycle as defined by NNSA policy.

We suggested that the Office of Emergency Operations ensure the timely replacement of aging FRMAC equipment critical to its operational readiness.

Topic: National Security & Safety