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The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) directs the massive cleanup of more than 100 sites that were involved in the production of nuclear weapons materials during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. This report offers suggestions for more effectively characterizing and treating the orphan and special-case wastes that are part of EM's accelerated cleanup program. It identifies technical opportunities for EM to improve the program that will save time and money without compromising health and safety. The opportunities identified include: making more effective use of existing facilities and capabilities for waste characterization, treatment, or disposal; eliminating self-imposed requirements that have no clear technical or safety basis; and investing in new technologies to improve existing treatment and characterization capabilities. For example, the report suggests that EM work with DOE classification officers to declassify, to the extent possible, classified materials declared as wastes. The report also suggests a new approach for treating the wastes that EM will leave in place after cleanup.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017 contained a request for a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine review and assessment of science and technology development efforts within the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM). This technical report is the result of the review and presents findings and recommendations.
Beginning with the Manhattan Project and continuing through the Cold War, the United States government constructed and operated a massive industrial complex to produce and test nuclear weapons and related technologies. When the Cold War ended, most of this complex was shut down permanently or placed on standby, and the United States government began a costly, long-term effort to clean up the materials, wastes, and environmental contamination resulting from its nuclear materials production. In 1989, Congress created the Office of Environmental Management (EM) within the Department of Energy (DOE) to manage this cleanup effort. Although EM has already made substantial progress, the scope of EM's future cleanup work is enormous. Advice on the Department of Energy's Cleanup Technology Roadmap: Gaps and Bridges provides advice to support the development of a cleanup technology roadmap for EM. The book identifies existing technology gaps and their priorities, strategic opportunities to leverage needed research and development programs with other organizations, needed core capabilities, and infrastructure at national laboratories and EM sites that should be maintained, all of which are necessary to accomplish EM's mission.
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management's (EM) mission is the safe cleanup of sites associated with the government-led development of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. While many of these legacy sites have completed cleanup, the largest and most complex sites have not been fully remediated. The cleanup of these sites is proceeding under legally enforceable agreements with timelines for hundreds of milestones. EM is reviewing alternative approaches to increase effectiveness and improve cost efficiencies of its cleanup activities, especially for sites that will have residual contamination when active cleanup is complete. This report is the summary of two workshops convened in October 2013 and January 2014 on best practices for risk-informed remedy selection, closure, and post-closure control of radioactive and chemically contaminated sites that present significant difficulty for remediation to unrestricted release. The workshop series aimed to explore best practices that promote effective, risk-informed decision making and future opportunities to improve remediation approaches and practices.In the Workshop #1 section of Best Practices for Risk-Informed Decision Making Regarding Contaminated Sites, the report examines holistic approaches for remediating sites with multiple contaminant sources and post-closure uses, and approaches for incorporating a sustainability framework into decision making regarding site remediation, closure, and post-closure control. In Workshop #2, the report focuses on post-closure controls, assessment of long-term performance of site remedies, and best practices for risk-based remediation decisions.
Across the United States, thousands of hazardous waste sites are contaminated with chemicals that prevent the underlying groundwater from meeting drinking water standards. These include Superfund sites and other facilities that handle and dispose of hazardous waste, active and inactive dry cleaners, and leaking underground storage tanks; many are at federal facilities such as military installations. While many sites have been closed over the past 30 years through cleanup programs run by the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. EPA, and other state and federal agencies, the remaining caseload is much more difficult to address because the nature of the contamination and subsurface conditions make it difficult to achieve drinking water standards in the affected groundwater. Alternatives for Managing the Nation's Complex Contaminated Groundwater Sites estimates that at least 126,000 sites across the U.S. still have contaminated groundwater, and their closure is expected to cost at least $110 billion to $127 billion. About 10 percent of these sites are considered "complex," meaning restoration is unlikely to be achieved in the next 50 to 100 years due to technological limitations. At sites where contaminant concentrations have plateaued at levels above cleanup goals despite active efforts, the report recommends evaluating whether the sites should transition to long-term management, where risks would be monitored and harmful exposures prevented, but at reduced costs.
DOE Tank Waste: How clean is clean enough? The U.S. Congress asked the National Academies to evaluate the Department of Energy's (DOE's) plans for cleaning up defense-related radioactive wastes stored in underground tanks at three sites: the Hanford Site in Washington State, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory. DOE plans to remove the waste from the tanks, separate out high-level radioactive waste to be shipped to an off-site geological repository, and dispose of the remaining lower-activity waste onsite. The report concludes that DOE's overall plan is workable, but some important challenges must be overcomeâ€"including the removal of residual waste from some tanks, especially at Hanford and Savannah River. The report recommends that DOE pursue a more risk-informed, consistent, participatory, and transparent for making decisions about how much waste to retrieve from tanks and how much to dispose of onsite. The report offers several other detailed recommendations to improve the technical soundness of DOE's tank cleanup plans.
The world's first nuclear bomb was a developed in 1954 at a site near the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Designated as the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 1981, the 40-square-mile site is today operated by Log Alamos National Security LLC under contract to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Like other sites in the nation's nuclear weapons complex, the LANL site harbors a legacy of radioactive waste and environmental contamination. Radioactive materials and chemical contaminants have been detected in some portions of the groundwater beneath the site. Under authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the State of New Mexico regulates protection of its water resources through the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED). In 1995 NMED found LANL's groundwater monitoring program to be inadequate. Consequently LANL conducted a detailed workplan to characterize the site's hydrogeology in order to develop an effective monitoring program. The study described in Plans and Practices for Groundwater Protection at the Los Alamos National Laboratory: Final Report was initially requested by NNSA, which turned to the National Academies for technical advice and recommendations regarding several aspects of LANL's groundwater protection program. The DOE Office of Environmental Management funded the study. The study came approximately at the juncture between completion of LANL's hydrogeologic workplan and initial development of a sitewide monitoring plan.
Over the past decade significant progress has been achieved in the development of waste characterization and control procedures and equipment as a direct response to ever-increasing requirements for quality and reliability of information on waste characteristics. Failure in control procedures at any step can have important, adverse consequences and may result in producing waste packages which are not compliant with the waste acceptance criteria for disposal, thereby adversely impacting the repository. The information and guidance included in this publication corresponds to recent achievements and reflects the optimum approaches, thereby reducing the potential for error and enhancing the quality of the end product. -- Publisher's description.