House panel calls out nuke officials for repeated failures

Members of a U.S. House panel say they’re frustrated with decades of security and safety lapses at the sites that make up the nation’s nuclear complex.

They called out top officials with the U.S. Energy Department and the National Nuclear Safety Administration during a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C.

The panel focused on oversight failures that contributed to a 2014 radiation release that forced the closure of the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico.

An energy department official said it’s unclear how much it will cost to resume full operations.

Republican Rep. Chris Collins of New York says taxpayers are on the hook for mistakes made at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and wanted to know why no one was fired.