In the wake of a government report that says the Department of Energy (DoE) has weak management oversight of supply shortages of a critical gas used in radiation detection systems and other applications, two Democrats on the House Science Committee have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to take a wider look at DoE’s Isotope Program to avoid future mismatches between supply and demand.

“The Department of Energy was in charge of managing the supply of Helium-3, and apparently did not think to check how much they had and what the needs were,” Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the ranking member on the Science Subcommittee on Energy, said in a statement this week. “No one using Helium-3 knew they needed a ‘plan B’ until they learned with little warning that there wasn’t enough. The Department of Homeland Security was planning to spend billions of dollars developing nuclear security technologies that required Helium-3 and had no clue that the supply was almost gone.”

GAO on Tuesday released a report critical of DoE’s management of He-3 supply and demand, which led to a shortage of the critical gas and forced the federal government to nurse the current supply and ration how it can be used.

“The overall federal awareness of and response to the helium-3 shortage was delayed because no entity within DoD had stewardship responsibility for coordinating the production and sale of helium-3,” says the report, Managing Critical Isotopes: Weaknesses in DoE’s Management of Helium-3 Delayed the Federal Response to a Critical Supply Shortage.

As a result of the shortage, which didn’t become apparent until 2008, the White House National Security Staff in July 2008 set forth three priorities for the use of He-3, including applications for which there are no alternatives to using the gas such as certain kinds of research, radiation detection programs where the United States deploys detectors at foreign ports and borders, programs with large sunk costs, such as a DoE physics research effort, GAO says.

The White House panel also decided that no He-3 would be used for new radiation portal monitors that DHS deploys at the nation’s sea and land ports of entry to detect illicit smuggling of radiological materials into the United States (Defense Daily, Nov. 18, 2009).

To obtain He-3, the DoE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) extracts the gas from the radioactive decay of tritium, which is a component of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. NNSA provides the He-3 to DoE’s Isotope Program, which in turn sells it. While the Isotope Program controls the supply of some isotopes it sells, that is not the case with He-3.

Neither the NNSA nor the Isotope Program has overall management responsibility for He-3 and neither group adequately communicated with the other regarding supply and demand, GAO says.

The shortage has been driven by the drawdown in the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal as a result of the end of the Cold War.

In its recommendations, GAO suggests that DoE “clarify” who has overall management responsibility for the isotopes that the Isotope Program sells. The organization actually sells 17 isotopes that it doesn’t have stewardship over because it doesn’t control their supply, the report says.

In a reply contained within the GAO report, the NNSA takes exception to the recommendation regarding the Isotope Program, saying that stewardship of isotopes is not its mission. The NNSA did say that DoE recognizes the need to better manage He-3.

Miller and Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), the ranking member on the Science Subcommittee for Investigations and Oversight, say the DoE’s response that the Isotope Program is not responsible for managing isotope stockpiles is surprising. Therefore, they want GAO to investigate the Isotope Program to “ensure the program is better prepared to anticipate and avoid future demand and supply surprises.”