Building an Effective Environmental Management Science Program: Final Assessment (1997)

BUILDINGAN EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SCIENCE PROGRAM:

INITIALASSESSMENT

Committee on Building an Environmental Management Science Program

Virtual Commission on Environmental Management Science

National Research Council

NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS

Washington, D.C. 1996

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance.

This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by the Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

The work was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Contract No. DE-FC01-94EW54069/R. All opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Energy.

Additional copies of this report are available from:

National Research Council

Virtual Commission on Environmental Management Science

2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., HA 456

Washington, DC 20418

202-334-3066

Copyright 1996 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

JOHN F. AHEARNE, Chair, Sigma Xi, and Duke University. Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

EDWARD M. ARNETT, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

STANLEY I. AUERBACH, SENES Oak Ridge, Inc., Oak Ridge. Tennessee

EDWARD J. BOUWER, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Marland

JOHN I. BRAUMAN, Stanford University, California

NAOMI H. HARLEY, New York University Medical Center, New York

DEREK R LOVLEY, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

GENE G. MANNELLA, Gas Research Institute (retired), Potomac, Maryland

NORINE E. NOONAN, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne

GREGORY R CHOPPIN, Florida State University, Tallahassee

DONALD J. DEPAOLO, University of California, Berkeley

GEORGE M. HORNBERGER, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

KEVIN D. CROWLEY, Study Director*

TAMAE MAEDA WONG, Senior Staff Officer†

SUSAN B. MOCKLER, Research Associate*

PATRICIA A. JONES, Project Assistant*

ERIKA L. WILLIAMS, Project Assistant

JOSHUA A. CHAMOT, Intern*

PERRY L. McCARTY, Chair, Stanford University, California

RICHARD A. CONWAY, Union Carbide Corporation, South Charleston, West Virginia

DONALD J. DEPAOLO, University of California, Berkeley

DAVID J. GALAS, Darwin Molecular Corporation, Bothell, Washington

MICHAEL C. KAVANAUGH, ENVIRON Corporation, Emeryville, California

ROYCE W. MURRAY, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

STEPHEN RATTIEN, Executive Director

The Committee on Building an Environmental Management Science Program is a joint activity of the Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems; Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources; Commission on Life Sciences, and Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964. under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William A. Wulf is interim president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government, and upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and interim vice-chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.

This is the first of three reports by the Committee on Building an Environmental Management Science Program The committee was established by the National Research Council to help the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management improve the effectiveness of its Environmental Management Science Program—a mission-directed, basic research program to support cleanup of the nation's nuclear weapons complex. The department announced this program in a Federal Register Notice in February 1996 and received more than 800 proposals from researchers at universities, national laboratories, and industry. The department is in the final stages of proposal review and expects to make award decisions in July 1996. In this initial assessment, the committee has restricted its findings and recommendations to the department's near-term needs as it completes the review of these proposals and develops the FY 1997 program plan. These near-term issues are well represented by the questions that constitute the statement of task for this first committee report:

• How can basic research be used to help DOE-EM to complete its mission successfully in the next few decades?

• How can a basic research program help add value to DOEEM's cleanup efforts?

• What kinds of technical challenges would likely benefit from a program in basic research?

• How can the research program take advantage of the unique capabilities of U.S. universities and federal labs?

• How can the research program take advantage of research efforts and capabilities in other DOE programs and other federal agencies?

• What, if any, additional areas of research should be included in the FY 1997 program announcement as the DOE EMSP evolves?

The committee's future reports will address the longer-term science and management needs of this program and will be issued later this year.

In 1995, the 104th Congress directed the Department of Energy (DOE; see Appendix E for list of acronyms) to establish a basic research program to support its mission to clean up the nation's nuclear weapons complex. DOE established the Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) in response to this mandate. This program is managed jointly by the department's Offices of Energy Research (ER) and Environmental Management (EM) and is designed to bridge the gap between ''fundamental research" and "needs-driven applied research" in order to promote the development of new and improved cleanup technologies.

At the request of the DOE, the National Research Council established the Committee on Building an Environmental Management Science Program to advise DOE on ways to increase the effectiveness of this new research program. This report, the first of three that will be issued by the committee over the next seven months, provides an initial assessment of the EMSP that focuses on the fiscal year (FY) 1996 proposal competition and the FY 1997 program plan.

Given the size, scope, and long-term nature of the cleanup mission—DOE estimates that this effort will cost $230 billion and require 75 years—the committee views the establishment of this mission-directed, basic research program as both an urgent and a prudent investment for the nation. Although the EMSP will not solve all of EM's cleanup problems, a properly structured and managed program could help address many of EM's technical challenges by stimulating the development of new waste characterization, remediation, and management technologies or reducing the uncertainties in the application of current technologies; by enabling the development of new methods to reduce the volume or toxicity of secondary wastes; and by providing a better understanding of risk to help prioritize cleanup activities and reduce hazards to people and the environment.

The DOE faces at least three significant challenges in establishing a basic research program that has real long-term value to the cleanup mission:

1. Attracting the best researchers to the program: Many of the nation's top scientists and their graduate students currently are not involved in research of direct relevance to the EMSP, although they have the background and skills necessary to do work at the forefront in this area. Fundamentally, the DOE will need to demonstrate a long-term commitment to this research program before scientists will redirect their research and graduate student training activities to the program's concerns.

2. Obtaining the best research ideas: In order to obtain the "best" (i.e., meritorious and relevant) basic research in the EMSP, researchers must become knowledgeable of EM's research needs, both its generic needs and its site-specific needs. Additionally, a process must be established for identifying meritorious proposals for funding and, as a corollary, a process for providing useful feedback to researchers who are unsuccessful in obtaining funding for their research ideas.

3. Transferring research results to potential research users: For the EMSP to contribute to the long-term cleanup mission, effective mechanisms must be found to transfer the results of the research to the "users"—technologists in government, industry and academia who can utilize this knowledge to develop new or improved cleanup methods.

The DOE initiated the EMSP on an accelerated schedule in response to congressional actions, and the 1996 proposal competition is well under way. The review process that DOE has outlined to the committee seems reasonable and should lead to the support of scientifically meritorious proposals that are relevant to the long-term cleanup mission. The committee offers the following advice to DOE as it completes the review process:

• In making award decisions in this first round, DOE should focus first on scientific merit and then on potential relevance to the cleanup mission, and should place less emphasis on the "anticipated" institutional funding allocations announced in the program notice. In this regard, DOE should relax its initial allocation of $20 million for proposals from national laboratories and $20 million for proposals from academia and industry to the extent allowed by the law, and, instead, should allocate funds to support the most scientifically meritorious and relevant work, regardless of the institution of origin. Similarly, in evaluating the merit of collaborative research proposals, DOE should focus on the potential value added by the nature and scope of the proposed collaborations, not only on the number or size of institutional or researcher commitments to a particular project.

• Successful proposals should be funded fully "up front" to help ensure the stability and continuity of the research projects and to establish a solid foundation on which a stable, long-term program can be built.

• The committee believes that the FY 1997 program plan will be a major—and perhaps the defining—step in shaping this program. In particular, it will be important for DOE to establish a focus for the EMSP that builds on. but does not duplicate or divert funding from, existing ER programs in order to improve the usefulness of the research to the long-term cleanup mission. To ensure the program's long-term success, the committee recommends that DOE

• with the advice of the research and research-user communities, prepare concise written technical summaries of the critical barriers to the solution of cleanup problems and basic research needs for wide circulation to the research community;

• postpone until later this year the release of the 1997 program notice until it has had time to identify and incorporate the "lessons learned" from the FY 1996 proposal competition and to think more carefully, using the advice of this committee where appropriate, about how the program should be structured and managed; and

• seek to increase the budget for this program to FY 1996 levels, recognizing that the additional funds are likely to be reallocated from existing programs within DOE-EM, in order to provide level funding, which is necessary to establish a stable, long-term research program.

In the committee's judgment, the long-term success of this program is highly dependent on the continuing partnership between EM, which understands the cleanup problems and research needs, and ER, which, through its mission to manage the department's basic research programs, understands how to select and manage research. The committee strongly endorses the efforts made by EM and ER staff to work together and encourages them to continue their efforts to build an effective Environmental Management Science Program.

The Department of Energy's (DOEs) Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) was created by mandate of the 104th Congress¹ to focus the nation's research infrastructure on the department's environmental cleanup mission:

A working partnership between the Office of Environmental Management (EM) and the Office of Energy Research (ER) was begun in 1994 to establish a basic research program focused on EM needs. The importance of basic scientific research to the cleanup mission has been established in several reports, most recently the report of the Galvin commission, entitled Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National

Laboratories (DOE, 1995a), and the National Research Council (NRC, 1996) report entitled Improving the Environment: An Evaluation of DOE's Environmental Management Program:

The EMSP is a long-term research program designed to bridge the gap between fundamental research and needs-driven applied technology development (see Appendix A). The objective of this program is to generate new knowledge that will lead to less costly, more innovative cleanup technologies and will reduce risks to workers, the public, and the environment. An important focus of the program is the development of new knowledge to deal with problems that are intractable by using current tech

nologies and to inspire "breakthroughs" in areas critical to the EM cleanup mission.

The first EMSP proposal announcement targeted to university and industry researchers was published in the February 9, 1996, Federal Register (Volume 61, No. 281; see Appendix B). As a result of this announcement, and a similar solicitation directed at national laboratory researchers. the program received about 2,200 preproposals and, subsequently, 810 full proposals on topics ranging from bioremediation to sensor development. DOE is now in the process of reviewing these proposals and expects to make awards later this year.² A description of the FY 1996 EMSP and review process is given in Appendix A.

In a letter to Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Under Secretary of Energy Thomas P. Grumbly requested the assistance of the NAS in advising DOE on ways to increase the effectiveness of this research program. The Committee on Building an Environmental Management Science Program was established under the auspices of the National Research Council (NRC) to undertake this work. During this 10-month study, the committee will issue three reports that address both the science and the management needs of the program.

The issues facing DOE in establishing and managing an effective EMSP are well represented by the questions that constitute the statement of task for this first committee report:

• How can basic research be used to help DOE-EM complete its mission successfully in the next few decades?

• How can a basic research program help add value to DOEEM's cleanup efforts?

• What kinds of technical challenges would be likely to benefit from a program in basic research?

• How can the research program take advantage of the unique capabilities of U.S. universities and federal labs?

• How can the research program take advantage of research efforts and capabilities in other DOE programs and other federal agencies?

• What, if any, additional areas of research should be included in the FY 1997 program announcement as the DOE EMSP evolves?

In addressing these questions in this first report, the committee has restricted its findings and conclusions to near-term needs of the EMSP, in order to provide timely advice to DOE for use in completing the review of this year's proposals and in developing the FY 1997 program, consistent with the committee's compressed schedule for information gathering and deliberation. Longer-term science and management needs of the program will be addressed in the second and third reports, which will be issued later this year. The project schedule is described later in this report.

Information used to develop this report was obtained by the committee during two meetings at which it received briefings from DOE, from university, national laboratory, and industry researchers (Appendix C) and from the committee's review of previous NRC and DOE reports relevant to this program.

Fifty years of nuclear technology and weapons development have produced both positive and negative legacies for the nation. Nuclear technology contributed to national security during the Cold War, but the treatment and disposition of radioactive and chemical wastes were a secondary concern to the production of nuclear weapons. These weapons production efforts have left the nation with contaminated soil, surface water, and ground water, as well as large volumes of radioactive and chemical wastes, that are a hazard to human health and the environment.

The DOE is the agency responsible for managing the nuclear weapons complex, including more than 120 million square feet of buildings and facilities and 2.3 million acres of land that were used for the research, production, and testing of nuclear weapons (DOE, 1995c). The department's cleanup challenge is huge in scope and includes³ 3,700 contaminated sites in 34 states and territories; more than 100 million gallons of radioactive and mixed wastes stored in 322 tanks; 3 million cubic meters of radioactive or hazardous buried wastes; 250 million cubic meters of contaminated soils from landfills and plumes; more than 600 billion gallons of contaminated ground water; and about 1,200 facilities that require decontamination and decommissioning. As an example, there are approximately 215 million curies of radioactivity in the 177 storage tanks at the Hanford site (Gephart and Lundgren, 1995). Innovative characterization and remediation technologies will be required to characterize and stabilize this waste

over the long-term to keep it from further contaminating the local environment.

Cleanup of the weapons complex is necessary to protect human and environmental health, but such cleanup will be difficult and expensive. Based on the use of existing technologies and cleanup approaches, DOE's current estimate of cleanup costs is $200 billion to $350 billion, with a midrange estimate of $230 billion, over 75 years (DOE. 1995b).⁴ Of this total. DOE estimates that $112 billion will be spent for waste management, $65 billion for environmental restoration, $22 billion for nuclear material and facility stabilization, $12 billion for technology development, and the remainder for activities such as program management and planning and annual monitoring (DOE, 1995b). This estimate does not include costs for problems that DOE believes cannot be solved with current technologies, such as cleanup of the large volumes of contaminated soil and ground water that exist at many sites.

According to DOE, the most urgent and high-risk tasks are the stabilization and maintenance of a large number of nuclear facilities and materials (DOE, 1995b), including the prevention of material leaks, explosions, theft, terrorist attack, and avoidable radiation exposures. The inherent difficulties associated with the handling and storage of radioactive materials, in addition to the vast quantity and varied forms of this waste, suggest that comprehensive cleanup will be a formidable goal.

The DOE established the Office of Environmental Management (EM) in 1989 to manage this cleanup effort. Within this office, programs were established in environmental restoration, waste management, nuclear material and facility stabilization, and technology development and were charged with the following six goals (DOE, 1995b): (1) eliminate and manage urgent risks; (2) emphasize health and safety for workers and the public; (3) establish a system that is managerially and financially in control; (4) demonstrate tangible results; (5) focus technology development on identifying and overcoming obstacles to progress; and (6) establish a stronger partnership between DOE and its stakeholders (i.e., those groups that have a "stake" in the process and outcome of cleanup, including workers, regulators, and communities around the sites).

Many of EM's cleanup problems cannot be solved or even managed efficiently and safely with current technologies, in part owing to their

tremendous size and scope. However, cleanup would benefit greatly from the involvement of basic researchers, as noted in a recent NRC report (NRC, 1996, pp. 6-7):

The DOE-EM cleanup mission has been called the world's largest civil works project (e.g., Blush and Heitman, 1995; Zorpette, 1996) and is in many ways more demanding scientifically and technically than the effort to develop nuclear weapons, which began with the Manhattan Project. As noted in the previous section, the nation lacks the scientific and technical know-how to address many of the most pressing cleanup problems and is confronted with the prospect of spending large sums of taxpayer funds simply to prevent the further spread of contamination. A research program could add significant value to EM's cleanup mission by producing new knowledge that will stimulate the development of technologies and methods to improve the effectiveness and lower the costs and risks of cleanup.

As noted in the introduction of this report, Congress directed DOE to develop a science program that would utilize the "existing basic research infrastructure within the Department and the Office of Energy Research" and would take "advantage of [federal] laboratory and university expertise." EM already supports activities that could be classified as research or research and development (R&D) through its Office of Science and Technology (EM-50). The conference report language suggests that this new research program should support a kind of research that is distinctly different from that currently supported by EM-50.

The program notice (Appendix B) states that the objective of the program is to "'[b]ridge the gap' between broad fundamental research that

has wide-ranging applicability . . . and needs-driven applied technology development . . . ." This program would probably be recognized by most scientists as a mission-directed, basic research program. The program is "mission-directed" in that research will be supported only in certain high-priority areas dictated by DOE's cleanup challenges. The program is "basic" in that it is focused on the investigation of fundamental physical. chemical, geological, and biological processes and phenomena, with no specific technology in mind and no established time horizon for payoff.⁵

The committee believes that a properly structured and managed mission-directed, basic research program can produce knowledge that would add significant value to EM's technology development efforts. Such knowledge, if properly applied, could help address the following technical challenges:

• Characterization. remediation. and management of radioactive and chemical wastes: Basic research may help stimulate the development of new technologies and reduce the uncertainties involved in the application of current technologies.

• Secondary wastes: Basic research may lead to the development of new methods to reduce the volume and toxicity of the secondary wastes generated by cleanup.

• Risk: Basic research may provide a better understanding of risk which would help EM prioritize its cleanup activities and reduce hazards to workers, the public, and the environment.

The committee can imagine several specific cleanup problems that could be addressed through a focused program of basic research. Basic research in chemistry, for example, could stimulate the development of new instruments and analytical methods to help characterize the 55 million gallons of hazardous and radioactive wastes that exist in the tanks at the Hanford site. Similarly, basic research in geoscience and engineering science on flow and transport phenomena could lead to a better understanding of subsurface flow processes, which in turn could improve the effectiveness of

efforts to stabilize and remediate contaminated ground water. Basic research in the biological sciences could stimulate the development of new or improved biological agents to break down chemical waste or sequester radioactive waste, thereby improving the effectiveness of waste treatment and reducing the volume of secondary wastes generated during cleanup.

The committee believes that the Department of Energy and the nation should view funding for the EMSP as a long-term investment that will provide payoffs over the life of the cleanup mission in terms of both lower risks (to workers, the public, and the environment) and costs and of improved effectiveness. This investment is not unlike the R&D investments made by successful for-profit, private-sector firms, which recognize that R&D is essential to long-term survival and prosperity. The committee notes that DOE's first-year investment in the EMSP is modest compared to many private-sector R&D efforts-the department's investment represents about 0.8 percent of EM's annual budget, and the total EM investment in R&D represents about 6.6 percent of its budget.⁶ By comparison, ''high-technology" manufacturing firms (e.g., computing, electronic, communication, instrumentation, and pharmaceutical firms) spend between about 7 and 12 percent of net sales on R&D.⁷

The committee emphasizes that DOE's investment in the EMSP will not solve all of its cleanup problems and needs to be viewed as "risky" in financial terms, in that there is no absolute guarantee of any quantifiable return and, moreover, it may be difficult to track precisely the returns on dollars invested. However, in the context of a long-term mission of EM, where many of the most serious remediation problems are technically challenging-and exorbitantly expensive to solve with current knowledge and technologies-the investment in basic research is viewed by the committee as both prudent and urgent. The risks inherent in supporting basic research in the EMSP are small in comparison to the potential payoffs.

The EMSP is being established at a time of tumultuous change in the partnership between the scientific research enterprise and society. New public funds for scientific research are becoming scarce, and scientists are increasingly being held accountable for the benefits that their research conveys to society (NRC, 1993; Office of Science and Technology Policy, 1994). At the same time, the intellectual challenge of research on environmental problems, and the importance of such research to the nation, increasingly are being recognized by the nation's best scientists. A properly focused and managed EM scientific program could attract the nation's top researchers, promote the training of the next generation of environmental scientists, and thereby serve as an important driver for environmental research in the United States.

The strength of the U.S. research community lies in the depth and diversity of its talent and its institutions; this is particularly true i the disciplines relevant to DOE's cleanup mission. DOE, however, faces at least three significant challenges in bringing this considerable talent to bear in the EMSP and obtaining research that has long-term value to its cleanup mission:

1. attracting the best researchers,

2. obtaining the best research, and

3. transferring research results to potential research users.

The committee plans to devote considerable attention to these issues during the course of its study, and it offers some preliminary comments on these points in the following sections.

The objective of the EMSP is to foster "knowledge breakthroughs"⁸ that will be of long-term value to cleanup of the weapons complex. Although a properly managed basic research program can produce such breakthroughs, it is difficult, if not impossible, to predict where these

will occur, and the breakthroughs themselves may not even be recognized until long after the research is completed. The committee believes that the EMSP is most likely to stimulate knowledge breakthroughs of value to DOE through a "bottom-up" process in which the nation's best scientists are encouraged to submit research proposals. Thus, the committee notes, and endorses, DOE's decision to encourage submission of proposals from researchers in a wide range of disciplines and institutions (Appendix B) in the FY 1996 program.

Many of the nation's top scientists and their graduate students currently are not involved in research of direct relevance to the EMSP, although they have the background and skills necessary to do work at the forefront in this area. Fundamentally, the DOE will need to demonstrate a long-term commitment to this research program before scientists will redirect their research and graduate student training activities to the program's concerns. The redirection of a research program is a significant undertaking with long-term career implications. It can require several years of sustained effort for one to become familiar with a new research field and conversant in its literature. In some cases, it can also require substantial financial commitments, both on the part of the scientists and their institutions, to upgrade equipment and facilities. The nation's top scientists will be unwilling to make such shifts without a high-level of confidence that funding will be available over the long-term to support research and graduate student training.

The nation's best scientists can be found in a broad spectrum of research institutions—universities, industry, national laboratories, and other federal agencies—and these researchers and their institutions have unique strengths that can be tapped for the EMSP:

• National laboratory researchers: Many national laboratory researchers are familiar with the weapons complex and the cleanup mission, and they possess specialized knowledge, equipment, and analytical and monitoring capabilities. Many of these researchers also are experienced in working in large teams that may be useful to address certain types of multidisciplinary problems.

• Industry researchers: Industry researchers share many of the talents of their national laboratory counterparts—access to specialized knowledge and equipment, and experience in working in multidisciplinary team environments. Some also have a familiarity with the cleanup mission and problems. In addition, many industrial researchers have experience working on mission-directed research and working at the interface between research and application.

• University researchers: University researchers are at the forefront in many of the fundamental scientific disciplines—biology, chemistry, engineering, geoscience, and physics—where advances in knowledge are likely to provide large future payoffs to the cleanup mission. Through their training of graduate students, university scientists will produce the nation's future generations of researchers, which, if properly nurtured, could become a "committed cadre" of researchers for the EMSP.

• Researchers at other federal agencies: Many federal "mission" agencies have considerable research talent and capabilities in specific areas that are relevant to EM's research needs. Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), for example, are performing "cutting-edge" research on many problems related to ground water monitoring and remediation, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) researchers are at the forefront in certain areas of health effects research.

In addition, other nations are dealing with radioactive waste and chemical cleanup problems, and the international research community has expertise in both generic basic research and site-specific, problem-oriented research of potential value to the EMSP.

The long-term success and effectiveness of the EMSP will depend to a large extent on the degree to which the program is able to tap into this community of researchers, and a particular challenge for DOE will be to find ways to involve this community as the program evolves. In the near term, this community can be tapped by encouraging collaborative "networking" among researchers, which may or may not involve direct research funding from the program but could involve carefully targeted opportunities such as workshops, seminars, and fellowships. The committee notes that precedents for such collaborative activities already exist in many of DOE's programs. For instance, there is a long history of collaborations of university faculty and graduate students with national laboratory science groups. These collaborations were begun soon after the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission, a precursor agency to DOE, for the very reason that it was deemed essential to train and educate new researchers in the fields of science opened by atomic energy. Graduate and postgraduate training in collaboration with university faculty is a long-standing tradition at many DOE research laboratories. National laboratory researchers have also established productive working relationships with a variety of federal agencies.

The FY 1996 program notice (Appendix B) encourages collaborations among researchers in universities, national laboratories, and industry,

where appropriate. The committee recognizes, and endorses in principle, the importance of collaboration between researchers, but points out that collaborations can extend beyond the university-industry-laboratory triad and can take a variety of forms—ranging from informal communication among researchers working on single-investigator projects, to teams of researchers working in close coordination on complex, multidisciplinary projects. The committee notes that much of the nation's best science continues to be done by single investigators working on individual projects. In order to build an effective EMSP, DOE must find ways to identify and encourage the appropriate types of value-added collaborations that will help it address the full range of its research needs. In future reports, the committee will consider ways to optimize the usefulness of collaborative activities to the EMSP.

In order to obtain the "best" (i.e., meritorious and relevant) basic research in the EMSP, researchers must become knowledgeable of EM's research needs, both its generic needs and its site-specific needs. The FY 1996 program notice (Appendix B) lists a broad range of generic research needs and serves as a good starting point for informing the research community. Some of ER's reports and research solicitations—for example, Basic Research for Environmental Restoration (DOE, 1990) and the program solicitation Natural and Accelerated In-Situ Bioremediation Program (DOE, 1995d)-—can also serve this function. Additionally, DOE has developed a great deal of written documentation on cleanup needs that could also serve to inform the research community—for example, Estimating the Cold War Mortgage. The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report (DOE, 1995b); the focus area reports (DOE, 1995ei); and more problem-specific reports such as the Hanford Tank Cleanup: A Guide to Understanding the Technical Issues (Gephart and Lundgren, 1995). Much of the information in these reports, however, addresses near-term needs and is not organized or written to be easily accessible to researchers.

To improve the communication of EM's problems to researchers, the committee recommends that DOE prepare concise written technical summaries of its basic research needs for the research community. Such summaries should contain information on the critical barriers to the solution of EM's problems, arranged both by site and by problem focus. In preparing these summaries, the DOE should seek the advice of the research

and research-user communities to ensure that the summaries reflect EM's highest-priority needs and that the research questions are framed properly. These summaries should be produced for wide circulation to the research community and should be updated as appropriate to reflect current needs.

The committee also recommends that DOE consider other ways to give researchers information about contaminated sites, for example, by providing site-specific briefings to researchers on problems and needs so that they can familiarize themselves with the cleanup challenges and establish lines of communication with the "problem holders" and potential users of their research, or by supporting informal interactions between researchers at national laboratories and those in universities who are studying similar problems, through mechanisms such as workshop and seminar programs at cleanup sites or national laboratories.

In soliciting research proposals for the EMSP, DOE should take advantage of the potential value added from field research conducted at non-DOE sites. A number of DOE's waste problems are "generic" in nature, such as ground water contamination by chlorinated solvents, petroleum hydrocarbon mixtures, and certain heavy metals. Opportunities for field-scale research on these problems exist at sites managed by the USGS, EPA, and the Department of Defense (DOD), among others. Research projects that utilize appropriate non-DOE "testbeds" can provide understanding that can be transferred directly to cleanup of the weapons complex.

Another significant management challenge for getting the best research is establishing a process for identifying meritorious proposals for funding and. as a corollary, a process for providing useful feedback to researchers who are unsuccessful in obtaining funding for their research ideas. DOE faces a dual challenge in this effort: it must have a process that can identify research ideas that are both scientifically meritorious and relevant to EM's cleanup mission. Peer review,⁹ of course, should be an integral part of identifying scientifically meritorious proposals, and the committee notes that this process is being used by DOE to evaluate the proposals it received in FY 1996 (Appendix A). The best process for establishing relevance to cleanup is less clear to the committee. The committee comments on this process in more detail later in this report.

For the EMSP to contribute to the long-term cleanup mission, effective mechanisms must be found to transfer the results of the research to the "users"—technologists in government, industry, and academia who can utilize this knowledge to develop new or improved cleanup methods. An important component of this transfer process is the open publication of research results using the traditional venues of national and international scientific meetings and peer-reviewed journals. These conventional publication outlets work well for communication of research results within the scientific community, but they may work less well for reaching those involved in technology development. In its future reports, the committee will consider the potential benefits of more dedicated dissemination activities—for example, workshops that bring together researchers and the users of research, and special DOE or independent publications to announce research results that can be developed and implemented rapidly to give valuable near-term technology payoffs. The committee will pay close attention to the balance between the costs and benefits of these special dissemination activities, given the budget and human resource limitations for the EMSP.

The committee's statement of task directed it to address the question of how the EMSP could take advantage of research efforts and capabilities in other DOE programs and other federal agencies. The committee offers some preliminary comments directed to this issue in this section.

The EMSP was created very quickly by DOE i response to congressional mandate, and it is the committee's impression that the program was established without much planning for coordination with existing ER programs—such as the "core" research programs in basic energy sciences or cross-cutting research programs such as the Natural and Accelerated In-Situ Bioremediation (NABIR) program (DOE, 1995d). These ER programs are vital to the department's long-term mission and are an important part of the nation's basic research portfolio. The committee believes that it will be important for DOE to establish a focus for the EMSP that builds on—but does not duplicate or divert funding from these existing ER programs in order to improve the usefulness of the research to the long-term cleanup mission.

The DOE must also become cognizant of other federal and nonfederal research efforts in order to obtain access to a broader researcher and knowledge base, to improve the focus of the EMSP, and to reduce needless duplication. The committee is aware of several research programs that are potentially relevant to the EMSP. including the following examples:

• The joint DOE, EPA, National Science Foundation (NSF), and Office of Naval Research program in bioremediation.

• The joint EPA and NSF program in water and watersheds

• EPA research programs addressing risk, ecological assessment, and hazardous waste.

• NSF "core" research programs in the physical and social sciences, and NSF interdisciplinary programs focused on environmental problems.

• Research programs of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (part of the National Institutes of Health complex).

• DOD research programs.

• Research sponsored by nonfederal organizations (e.g., the Gas Research Institute). The committee will be gathering information on such programs and will comment on effective coordination strategies in future reports.

The process for reviewing proposals and making awards in the FY 1996 EMSP is well under way. Congressional action required DOE to initiate the FY 1996 program on an accelerated schedule, which may not have allowed researchers adequate time to educate themselves about EM's cleanup problems and research needs or to prepare proposals that were fully responsive to, or addressed the full breadth of, problem areas outlined in the program notice (Appendix B). The FY 1996 schedule also presented significant challenges to both ER and EM in managing the review process (Appendix A). Future competitions (in FY 1997 and beyond) offer important opportunities to reflect on the experience of the FY 1996 program and to give further careful consideration to both the content and the process of the EMSP.

In the FY 1996 program notice, DOE provided several criteria for evaluating proposals and making awards (Appendix B), including (1) scientific and technical merit (e.g., assessment of the potential for addressing problems identified in the program notice and of relevance to the cleanup mission) and (2) appropriateness of the approach. In making award decisions in this first round, the committee recommends that DOE focus first on scientific merit and then on potential relevance to the cleanup mission and place less emphasis on the "anticipated" institutional funding allocations announced in the program notice (Appendix B; see also footnote 2). In this regard, the committee knows of no scientific justification for DOE's allocation of $20 million for proposals from national laboratories and $20 million for proposals from academia and industry—and in fact believes that this allocation could prevent DOE from funding the most meritorious and relevant proposals. The committee strongly recommends that the DOE relax this allocation to the extent allowed by the law, and award funds to support the most scientifically meritorious and relevant work, regardless of the institution of origin. Additionally, when evaluating the merit of collaborative research proposals, the committee encourages the DOE to focus on the potential value added by the nature and scope of the proposed collaborations, not only on the number or size of institutional or researcher commitments to a particular project.

The review process that DOE outlined for the FY 1996 program (Appendix A) seems reasonable to the committee, particularly given the short time frame for decision making. The original plan called for external reviews to assess scientific and technical merit by using panels of scientists. Following external review, EM program managers were to review the proposals for relevance and to prioritize them for EM management.¹⁰ The committee had some initial concerns that this process could have diluted the quality of the science because the "relevance" review appeared to be a somewhat separate process. Based on a briefing it received at its May meeting, however, the committee now understands that the proposals are to be judged first for scientific quality; the group of most meritorious proposals then will be reviewed for relevance by knowledgeable EM managers assisted by ER staff (Appendix A ). The committee endorses such a joint effort because it will serve to keep scientific and technical merit "front and center" in the review process while giving proper weight to the important criterion of relevance. The committee intends to revisit the review process

in its entirety after completion of the FY 1996 competition and to suggest improvements if appropriate.

The committee recommends that, once award decisions are made, successful proposals be funded fully "up front." The committee recognizes that full funding may, indeed, decrease the absolute number of proposals that can be supported in this round but nevertheless believes that full funding is necessary for the following four reasons:

1. To establish a solid foundation on which a stable, long-term program can be built.

2. To ensure that projects funded in the first round will be completed on schedule and that research results will be available to potential users in the near term.

3. To free-up funding for new starts in FY 1997, which, as noted previously, will be essential to convince the nation's best scientists to redirect their current research efforts in order to become familiar with EM's research needs and to submit research proposals.

4. To provide opportunities to support high-quality proposals in the FY 1997 program. The committee expects that the proposals submitted to the program in FY 1997 will be of higher quality, on average, than proposals in this year's competition, because researchers will have more time to learn about EM's needs and prepare proposals.

In short, full funding will accelerate the establishment of what the committee has referred to as a "committed cadre" of the nation's top researchers scientists knowledgeable of EM's problems and needs who produce research results that have long-term value to the cleanup mission.

The committee understands that there may be special administrative issues with regard to providing full funding for proposals where the principal performer is a national laboratory. The committee believes, however, that mechanisms can and must be found to enable full funding for all performers.

The committee also believes that it will be important for DOE to review the progress of the projects it funds on a periodic basis to ensure that they remain focused and that appropriate progress is being made. The committee notes that some ER programs have established processes for such reviews and a process for discontinuing support of unproductive projects. The committee will examine the usefulness of these and other review mechanisms in future reports.

For researchers whose proposals are unsuccessful in attracting funding in this first competition, DOE should make a special effort to encourage their continued participation by providing written feedback (e.g., written reviews and summaries of panelist comments) that will help improve their future submissions to the program. The EMSP activity is fragile. and DOE needs to take special care not to discourage well-qualified and competent researchers in this formative stage. DOE should continue and even expand its outreach efforts to improve the understanding and appreciation of the magnitude of EM problems and EM research priorities by the national and even international scientific and technical communities. As noted earlier, the committee will address outreach activities in a future report.

The EMSP has been jointly implemented by the DOE Offices of Environmental Management and Energy Research, but it is not yet clear to the committee what the long-term management structure of the program will be. The committee views this partnership between EM and ER as being vital to the long-term success of the EMSP, because it combines ER's expertise in research selection and management with EM's knowledge of cleanup problems and research needs. In the committee's view, the program should continue to build on the strengths of these two DOE offices to identify meritorious long-term research that is relevant to the EM cleanup mission.

The FY 1997 program plan will be a major-and perhaps the defining-step in shaping the scope and ensuring the success of the EMSP. Consequently, the committee strongly recommends that DOE postpone, until later this year, the release of the 1997 proposal solicitation¹¹ until it has had time to identify and incorporate the ''lessons learned" from the FY 1996 proposal competition and to think more carefully, using the advice of this committee where appropriate, about how the program should be structured and managed.

As it develops FY 1997 program plans, DOE also needs to think carefully about funding levels. The committee believes that level funding is a minimum requirement to establish a stable, long-term research program that attracts highly relevant proposals from the nation's top researchers

and notes with concern that the FY 1997 funding request for this program is only $38 million,¹² $12 million less than is available in FY 1996 (see footnote 2). The committee strongly recommends that DOE seek to increase the budget for this program to FY 1996 levels, recognizing that the additional funds are likely to be redirected from existing programs within DOE-EM.

In its future meetings and reports, the committee will address several issues of direct relevance to development of the FY 1997 EMSP, including the following:

• Articulation of research needs: The committee's statement of task directed it to advise DOE on additional areas of research that should be included in the FY 1997 program announcement. In view of the committee's recommendation that the DOE postpone the release of the program notice until later this year, the committee has decided to defer the consideration of this question to a future report in order to provide additional time for information gathering and deliberation. The committee plans to provide advice to the DOE on ways to identify and articulate its research needs in the program notice.

• Outreach to the research community: As noted earlier, the committee will consider ways in which DOE can improve outreach—both long and short term—to the research community and thereby improve the quality and relevance of the proposals submitted to the program.

• Program management: The committee will explore various models for managing the EMSP, drawing on the experiences of other federal and nonfederal institutions that manage "mission-linked" research programs. Such models might include field management with procurement authority, centers of excellence, consortia, and other cooperative arrangements. Additionally, the committee will consider the usefulness of advisory committees to keep the program focused and relevant to the long-term needs of the cleanup mission. The committee will consider the role of program management for ensuring that the program's research portfolio reflects an appropriate balance of problems, approaches, and levels of risk.

• Proposal evaluation: The committee will consider ways in which DOE can improve its evaluation of proposals through "scientific merit" and "mission relevance" reviews in order to identify projects that are likely to provide the greatest long-term payoffs to the cleanup mission.

ER and EM face a formidable challenge in structuring and managing the EMSP to attract the best researchers and research ideas and to capitalize on the existing research infrastructure of the nation. This initial assessment of the EMSP has identified several major issues relevant to this challenge that will require the future attention of the committee. To examine these issues further, two panels of the committee will be established: the Panel on Science will focus on the science needs of the program, and the Panel on Management will evaluate the management structure and process.

The Panel on Science will obtain information on EM research needs and the basic research activities of other DOE programs and federal agencies in order to produce a report that addresses the following questions:

• How can science needs most effectively feed into the development of the EMSP research agenda?

• How can the program be structured to take advantage of research efforts and capabilities in other relevant DOE programs and federal agencies?

• How can the program be structured to broaden the community of researchers that can be called upon to address environmental problems?

• What areas of basic research are likely to provide the best payoffs for EM cleanup efforts over the next few decades?

• What additional areas of research should be included in future program notices as program evolves?

The Panel on Management will examine research program management and assessment in government and industry in order to produce a report that addresses the following questions:

• How can DOE evaluate the quality of the basic research it supports and the impact of this research on its cleanup mission?

• How can DOE identify changing needs for basic research as the program evolves?

• How should the program be structured and operated to assist the DOE in overall reduction of cleanup costs, risks, waste generation, and time requirements?

• How can the program be structured to take advantage of the unique capabilities of U.S. universities and federal labs?

The committee plans to meet at least three more times in the summer and fall of 1996 to gather information, deliberate on the issues, and write reports. A future meeting will be dedicated to a workshop at which panel members will have an opportunity to obtain information from and to question a broad group of invited university, national laboratory, industry. DOE, and other federal agency staff on the issues articulated above. The panels will issue final reports in late 1996.

Blush, S.M., and Heitman, T.H. 1995. Train Wreck Along the River of Money: An Evaluation of the Hanford Cleanup. Report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, March.

Gephart, R. E., and Lundgren, R. E. 1995. Hanford Tank Clean up: A Guide to Understanding the Technical Issues. PNL-10773. Richland, Washington: Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

National Research Council (NRC). 1993. Science, Technology, and the Federal Government: National Goals for a New Era. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. 1994. Alternatives for Ground Water Cleanup. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. http://www.nap.edu/nap/bookstore/0309049946.html

National Research Council. 1995. Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

National Research Council. 1996. Improving the Environment: An Evaluation of DOE's Environmental Management Program. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

National Science Board. 1996. Science and Engineering Indicators. NSB 96-21. Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.

Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). 1994. Science in the National Interest. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 1990. Basic Research for Environmental Restoration. DOE/ER-0482T. Office of Energy Research.

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995a. Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories. Prepared by the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (Galvin commission). Washington, D.C.

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995b. Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report. DOE/EM0232. Office of Environmental Management. http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr/index.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995c. Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production in the United States and What the Department of Energy Is Doing About It. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management. http://www.em.doe.gov/circle/index.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995d. Natural and Accelerated In-Situ Bioremediation Program. DOE/ER-0659T. Office of Energy Research, Office of Health and Environmental Research. http://www.er.doe.gov/production/oher/nabir/contents.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995e. Contaminant Plumes Containment and Remediation Focus Area: Technology Summary. DOE/EM-0248. Office of Environmental Management Technology Development. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995f. Decontamination and Decommissioning Focus Area: Technology Summary. DOE/EM-0253. Office of Environmental Management Technology Development. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995g. Landfill Stabilization Focus Area: Technology Summary. DOE/EM-0251. Office of Environmental Management Technology Development. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995h. Mixed Waste Characterization, Treatment, and Disposal Focus Area: Technology Summary. DOE/EM-0252. Office of Environmental Management Technology Development. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

U.S. Department of Energy. 1995i. Radioactive Tank Waste Remediation Focus Area: Technology Summary. DOE/EM-0255. Office of Environmental Management Technology Development. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

Zorpette, G. 1996. Hanford's nuclear wasteland. Scientific American 274(5).

The Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) was initiated at the direction of the U.S. Congress, as noted in the introduction to this report. On February 9, 1996, the EMSP was announced jointly by the Offices of Energy Research (ER) and Environmental Management (EM). The program announcement (Program Notice 96-10; see Appendix A) was published in the Federal Register and on the World Wide Web, and a similar notification was sent to the national laboratories. As indicated in the program announcement, the objectives of this basic science program are to

• provide scientific knowledge that will revolutionize technologies and cleanup approaches to significantly reduce future costs, schedules, and risks;

• "bridge the gap" between broad fundamental research that has wide-ranging applicability, such as that performed in DOE's Office of Energy Research, and needs-driven applied technology development, conducted in EM's Office of Science and Technology; and

• focus the nation's science infrastructure on critical DOE environmental management problems.

By the preproposal deadline of February 28, 1996, DOE had received 2,200 applications. The preproposals were reviewed by ER research program managers and EM staff to determine whether the projects involved medium- to long-term basic research and were responsive to one or more of the priorities identified in the program announcement. After this review, 775 applicants were encouraged to submit full proposals. By May 8, 1996, DOE received 810 full proposals, of which approximately 270 were received from DOE laboratories and 540 from outside the DOE system, including universities and private organizations. A large number of multi-investigator and multi-institution proposals were also received.

The committee understands¹² that proposal review is being carried out in a two-step process—the first to assess scientific "merit" and the second to assess program "relevance"—that is being managed jointly by ER program managers and EM staff. Merit review is being obtained through

the use of peer review panels, comprised of scientists from industry, national laboratories, and universities, organized along disciplinary lines (Table A-1)¹³, consistent with normal ER practices. The panels will discuss each of the proposals before them, and the panelists will provide individual ratings of each proposal as must fund, should fund, or do not fund. Following the panel meetings, federal ER program managers will determine an overall rating for each proposal.¹⁴

All of the proposals receiving overall ratings of must fund for scientific merit will be put forward for relevance review. Additionally, the proposals that received a strong recommendation of should fund will be put forward for review in case additional funds are available. This review will be undertaken by a panel of EM program managers from DOE headquarters and field offices who are knowledgeable of EM's needs and priorities. Federal ER program managers will participate in these reviews. The relevance review is scheduled for July 9, 1996, in Washington, D.C.

In July 1996, the Director of the Office of Energy Research will make final decisions on the awards with the concurrence of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology, Office of Environmental Management. Award funds will be obligated by the end of FY 1996. Program administration will be provided through DOE's Idaho field office.

Office of Energy Research

Office of Environmental Management

Federal Register: February 9, 1996 (Volume 61, Number 28)

Notices: Pages 4975-4978

From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

Energy Research Financial Assistance Program Notice 96-10;

Environmental Management Science Program

AGENCY: Department of Energy (DOE).

ACTION: Notice inviting grant applications.

SUMMARY: The Offices of Energy Research (ER) and Environmental Management (EM), U.S. Department of Energy, hereby announce their interest in receiving grant applications for performance of innovative, fundamental research to support the management and disposal of DOE radioactive, hazardous chemical, and mixed wastes.

This basic research should contribute to environmental management and restoration actions that would decrease risk for the public and workers, provide opportunities for major cost reductions, reduce time required to achieve EM's mission goals, and, in general, should address problems that are considered intractable without new knowledge. This program is designed to inspire "breakthroughs" in areas critical to the EM mission through long-term research and will be managed in partnership with ER. ER's well-established procedures, as set forth in the Energy Research Merit Review System, as published in the Federal Register, March 11, 1991, Vol. 56, No. 47, pages 10244-10246, will be used for merit review of applications submitted in response to this notice. DATES: Potential applicants are strongly encouraged to submit a brief preapplication. All preapplications, referencing Program Notice 96-10, should be received by DOE by 4:30 p.m. EST, February 28, 1996. A response discussing the potential program relevance of a formal application generally will be communicated to the applicant within 15 days

of receipt. The deadline for receipt of formal applications is 4:30 p.m., EDT, May 8, 1996, in order to be accepted for merit review and to permit timely consideration for award in fiscal year 1996. ADDRESSES: All preapplications, referencing Program Notice 96-10, should be sent to Ms. Bobbi Parra, Office of Health and Environmental Research, ER-74, U.S. Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Road. Germantown, Maryland 20874-1290, 301-903-3316, fax 301-903-8519. or by the internet e-mail address bobbi.parra@oer.doe.gov.

After receiving notification from DOE concerning successful preapplications, applicants may prepare formal applications and send them to: U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Research, Grants and Contracts Division, ER-64, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown Maryland 20874-1290, Attn: Program Notice 96-10. The above address for formal applications must also be used when submitting formal applications by U.S. Postal Service Express Mail, any commercial mail delivery service, or when hand carried by the applicant. Please note that notification of a successful preapplication is not indication that an award will be made in response to the formal application.

It is anticipated that up to $20,000,000 will be available for grant awards during FY 1996 that will enable innovative fundamental research contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds. Multiple-year funding of grant awards is expected and is also contingent upon the availability of funds. Award sizes are expected to be on the order of $100,000-$300,000 per year for total project costs for a typical three year grant.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. Michelle Broido, Office of Health and Environmental Research, ER-74, Office of Energy Research, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, Maryland 20874-1290. Telephone: (301) 903-3281, or Dr. Carol Henry, Office of Science and Risk Policy, Office of Environmental Management, 1000 Independence Avenue S.W., Washington, DC 20585, Telephone: (202) 586-7150.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Office of Environmental Management, in partnership with the Office of Energy Research, is initiating an Environmental Management Science Program to fulfill DOE's continuing commitment for the cleanup of DOE's environmental legacy. Funding to initiate this program was established in the Conference Report accompanying the FY 1996 Energy and Water Development Appropriation Bill.

The need to build a stronger scientific basis for the Environmental Management effort has been established in a number of recent studies and reports. Among the important observations and recommendations made by the Galvin Commission (''Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories," February 1995) are the following:

• Provide scientific knowledge that will revolutionize technologies and clean-up approaches to significantly reduce future costs, schedules, and risks; and

• "Bridge the Gap" between broad fundamental research that has wide-ranging applicability such as that performed in DOE's Office of Energy Research and needs-driven applied technology development that is conducted in EM's Office of Science and Technology; and

• Focus the Nation's science infrastructure on critical DOE environmental management problems.

Basic research is solicited for areas of concern to the Department's environmental management programs including but not limited to: chemical characterization of wastes and contaminants on an atomic and molecular level; development of knowledge of the physical and chemical behavior of such species; physical and chemical basis for waste separations and treatment; characterization and modeling of multi-phase chemical systems in natural systems, waste tanks and process streams; and monitoring, controlling, and assessing these processes. Understanding the fate of contaminants already in the environment includes the identification of the biological and geochemical reactions that sequester or degrade

contaminants; understanding colloids or complexes of associated contaminants; and quantifying the impacts of geologic heterogeneity on the effectiveness of various remediation strategies. Indirect characterization of the geological environment by geophysical techniques provides the basic structural information essential in planning and monitoring remedial actions. Also important are studies to characterize flow and reactive transport through fractured and porous rocks and soils, and to characterize the physiological, biochemical, and genetic mechanisms for the uptake, transport, and sequestering of inorganic ions and organic molecules related to the use of plants and microorganisms for the cleanup of hazardous wastes.

Advances in information and monitoring technologies will also allow evaluation of progress in addressing these problems and devising new solutions. In the future, the focus will be on increasing efficiency in terms of materials and energy use. Better means of monitoring and controlling present system operations will significantly improve process efficiency and reduce waste outputs.

Specific examples illustrating the general subject areas, above, are found in the background section of this document.

Applicants in this program are strongly encouraged to collaborate with researchers in industry and/or the DOE National Laboratories, when appropriate, and to incorporate cost sharing and/or consortia wherever feasible. Grant applications are encouraged from all disciplines.

Formal applications will be subjected to formal merit review (peer review) and will be evaluated against the following evaluation criteria codified at 10 CFR 605(d).

1. Scientific and/or Technical Merit of the Project

2. Appropriateness of the Proposed Method or Approach

3. Competency of Applicant's Personnel and Adequacy of Proposed Resources

4. Reasonableness and Appropriateness of the Proposed Budget.

Examples of the considerations associated with determining the scientific and/or technical merit of the project include, but are not limited to:

• Potential for addressing problems identified by DOE, with meaningful progress within the proposed time frame.

• Benefits and merits of an application e.g. public purpose, time savings, extent of applicability, cost and risk reduction.

DOE shall also consider, as part of the evaluation, program policy factors such as an appropriate balance among the program areas.

Note, external peer reviewers are selected with regard to both their scientific expertise and the absence of conflict-of-interest issues. Nonfederal reviewers may be used, and submission of an application constitutes agreement that this is acceptable to the investigator(s) and the submitting institution.

The brief preapplication, in accordance with 10 CFR 600.10(d)(2), should consist of two to three pages of narrative describing the research objectives and methods of accomplishment together with a brief summary of the principal investigator's publication and research background. The preapplications will be reviewed relative to the scope and research needs of the DOE's Environmental Management Science Program by qualified DOE program managers from both ER and EM. Telephone and FAX numbers are required parts of the preapplication, and electronic mail addresses are desirable.

Information about the development, submission of applications, eligibility, limitations, evaluation, the selection process, and other policies and procedures may be found in 10 CFR Part 605, and in the Application Guide for the Office of Energy Research Financial Assistance Program. The Application Guide is available from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Research, ER-74, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, Maryland 20874-1290. Telephone requests may be made by calling (301) 903-3316. Electronic access to ER's Financial Assistance Application Guide is possible via the World Wide Web at: http://www.er.doe.gov/production/grants/grants.html.

The justification for such a program is grounded in the long-term costs for the Environmental Management program estimated at $200-350 billion over 75 years; in 10 years at current budget projections, $60 billion will have been spent, with over two thirds of the program yet remaining. This is the largest legacy from the Cold War of any other Federal program, dwarfing the Department of Defense's DOD's legacy by ten-fold. The Office of Environmental Management is responsible for waste management and cleanup of DOE sites. The EM operations have been historically compliance-based and driven to meet established goals in the shortest time possible using either existing technologies or those that could be developed and demonstrated within a few years. The Office of Energy Research addresses fundamental, frequently long-term, research issues related to the many missions of the Department. The Environmental Management Science Program will use ER's experience in managing fundamental research to address the needs of technology breakthroughs in EM's programs.

This research agenda has been initiated for Fiscal Year 1996, along with a development process for a long-term program within the Office of Environmental Management, with the objective of providing continuity in scientific knowledge that will revolutionize technologies and clean-up approaches for solving DOE's most complex environmental problems.

Specific examples of areas of interest for research under this solicitation are:

• Advanced characterization methods that accelerate treatment and immobilization of high-level wastes. Pretreatment and separation methods that lead to a significant reduction in the amount of immobilized high-level waste requiring long-term isolation. Innovative separations for solids and for liquids, needed to significantly reduce projected high-level waste volume.

• In-situ characterization of dense non-aqueous phase liquid to allow comparative risk assessments of alternative treatment methods. In situ immobilization of subsurface contaminants to reduce pump and treat costs. Permeable in situ treatment barriers and factors governing in situ treatment processes to replace unsatisfactory, extant alternatives for treatment of large plumes. Degradation and extraction methods for radioactive and hazardous contaminants from soil/water. Dissolution of

water-soluble sludge; washing of water soluble sludge, with recovery of cesium, strontium, technetium.

• Characterization of heterogeneous wastes needed to optimize decontamination and decommissioning recycling alternatives. Surface stabilization to reduce the ultimate waste volume and to enhance recycling. Selective and non-selective removal of contaminants from surfaces or bulk materials. Recycling of valuable commodities into general commerce.

• Non-destructive and in situ characterization methods to characterize the hazard of landfills. Innovative immobilization and transformation concepts that significantly reduce the cost of remediation. Ex-situ separation and treatment concepts to rapidly and safely destroy or immobilize landfill constituents.

• Emission-free destruction of organic wastes. Off-gas treatment that eliminates emissions in the environment that exceed Environmental Protection Agency requirements. Non-thermal treatment concepts for mixed waste. Bioremediation, enzymatic reactions, enzyme redesign, genetic engineering, microbial gene sequencing.

• Plutonium behavior in mixed matrices. Long-term monitoring concepts for plutonium.

• New concepts for waste stabilization of spent nuclear fuel. Long-term monitoring and performance assessment of spent nuclear fuel. Physics and chemistry of radionuclides in mixed matrices.

• Specialized waste forms. Performance assessment concepts for nuclear waste disposal.

• Ecology. Comprehensive understanding of the flow and use of materials and energy in our environmental system and the implications of those flows with respect to the environment. Ecosystem restoration and management; conduct monitoring, modeling, and process research to improve understanding of threatened and damaged ecosystems, technologies to restore the productivity and quality of these ecosystems.

• Biomarkers and sensors of exposure to contaminated media. Multi-site epidemiology studies. Effort to address current health concerns while continuing to conduct research that will promote a better future understanding of the relationship between exposure and health impacts.

The program will be competitive and offered to investigators in universities or other institutions of higher education, or other non-profit or for-profit organizations, non-Federal agencies or entities, or unaffiliated individuals. Apart from this notice, the program also will be offered to DOE national laboratories and other Federal laboratories, which will compete separately for appropriated funds. To ensure that the program is

mission-oriented and that its achievements are recognized and used by EM, the Environmental Management Science Program will be closely integrated with EM's Technology Development Focus Areas and will also be closely coordinated with the Office of Energy Research to ensure use of broad-based fundamental research and development supported by that office.

Details of the programs of the Office of Environmental Management and the technologies currently under development or in use by the Environmental Management Program can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.em.doe.gov and at the extensive links contained therein. These programs and technologies should be used as guidance when considering areas of research to be proposed.

The United States involvement in nuclear weapons development for the last 50 years has resulted in the development of a vast research. production, and testing network known as the nuclear weapons complex. The Department has begun the environmental remediation of the complex. encompassing radiological and nonradiological hazards, vast volumes of contaminated water and soil, and over 7,000 contaminated structures. The Department must characterize, treat, and dispose of hazardous and radioactive wastes that have been accumulating for more than 50 years at 120 sites in 36 states and territories. By 1995, the Department had spent about $23 billion in identifying and characterizing its waste, managing it, and assessing the remediation necessary for its sites and facilities. The Department estimates that the remedial actions at Department sites (not including groundwater cleanup, currently operating facilities and Naval facilities) could cost a total of $200-350 billion and take at least 75 years to complete. According to the estimates of the total program cost, 49% would go to waste management and 28% to environmental restoration. 10% to nuclear material and facility stabilization, and 5% to research and technology development with the remaining 8% for activities such as site security, transportation, and other landlord activities. The estimated life cycle costs over 75 years for the seven highest cost problem areas within the programs in descending order are as follows:

• Decommissioning

• High Level Waste

• Remedial Actions

• Low Level Waste

• Transuranic Waste

• Mixed Low Level Waste

• Spent Nuclear Fuel

Environmental Management is also responsible for conducting the program for waste minimization and pollution prevention for the Department. The variety and volume of the Department's current activities make this effort a challenge itself. In some cases, fundamental science questions will have to be addressed before a technology or process can be engineered. For example, improved understanding of the principles of pollutant transport in groundwater is required for important advancement in the development of effective groundwater-remediation technology. There is a need to involve more basic science researchers in the challenges of the Department's remediation effort.

Note: World Wide Web locations of these documents are provided where possible. For those without access to the World Wide Web, hard copies of these references may be obtained by writing Dr. Carol Henry at the address listed in the contacts section.

DOE. 1995. Closing the Circle on Splitting of the Atom: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production in the United States and What the Department of Energy is Doing About It. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis, Washington, DC. http://www.em.doe.gov/circle/index.html

DOE. 1995. Estimating the Cold War Mortgage: The 1995 Baseline Environmental Management Report. Volume I, March 1995. U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Washington, DC. http://www.em.doe.gov/bemr/index.html

DOE. 1995. Environmental Management 1995: Progress and Plans of the Environmental Management Program. The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Washington, DC. http://www.em.doe.gov/em95/index.html

DOE. 1995. Risks and the Risk Debate: Searching for Common Ground "The First Step". The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Washington, DC. http://raleigh.dis.anl.gov:81/cgi-bin/dispdoc-retum.pl?rrd+I

DOE. 1995. Technology Summary Reports, June 1995 (Rainbow Books) http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

DOE. 1995. Office of Science and Technology EM-50. http://www.em.doe.gov/emnet5.html

National Academy of Sciences. Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology. 1995. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. http://ww.nas.edu/nap/online/fedfunds/

National Commission on Superfund Members. Final Consensus Report of the National Commission on Superfund. March 1994. Keystone Center and the Environmental Law Center of Vermont Law School. N/A

National Environmental Technology Strategy. Bridge to a Sustainable Future. April 1995. National Science and Technology Council, Washington, DC. http://iridium.nttc.edu/env/envstrat.txt

National Research Council. Improving the Environment: An Evaluation of DOE's Environmental Management Program. 1995. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. N/A

Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories. February 1995. Task Force on alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories, Washington, DC. http://www.doe.gov/html/doe/whatsnew/galvin/tf-rpt.html

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Complex Cleanup: The Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production, February 1991. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. N/A

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number for this program is 81.049, and the solicitation control number is ERFAP 10 CFR Part 605.

Issued in Washington, DC January 31, 1995. John Rodney Clark, Associate Director for Resource Management, Office of Energy Research. [FR Doc. 96-2877 Filed 2-8-96; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P

MEETING 1

Saturday. May 11

Sunday. May 12

MEETING 2

Saturday. June 15

Sunday. June 16

AHEARNE, John F.—Dr. Aheame received his B.S. and MS. degrees from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in plasma physics from Princeton University. He has served as commissioner and chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, system analyst for the White House Energy Office. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense. He currently is the director of the Sigma Xi Center for Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, and a lecturer in public policy at Duke University. Dr. Aheame is a member of the Department of Energy's Environmental Management Advisory Board and the National Research Council's Board on Radioactive Waste Management, and has served on a number of the National Research Council's committees examining issues in risk assessment. His professional interests are reactor safety, energy issues, resource allocation, and public policy management. He is a fellow of the American Physics Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of Sigma Xi, the Society for Risk Analysis, the American Nuclear Society, and the National Academy of Engineers.

ARNETT, Edward M.—Dr. Arnett earned a B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. He is professor emeritus of chemistry at Duke University and has held prior professorships at the University of Pittsburgh and Western Maryland College. His expertise is in organic and physical organic chemistry. He is a Guggenheim fellow and has received numerous awards, including most recently the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the American Institute of Chemists Distinguished North Carolina Chemist Award. Dr. Arnett is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

AUERBACH, Stanley I.—Dr. Auerbach earned his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. in zoology from Northwestern University. Dr. Auerbach retired as director of the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1990. His research interests

include radiation ecology ecosystem analysis and radioactive waste cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Dr. Auerbach's former academic positions include lecturer and adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee and visiting professor at the University of Georgia. He has served on or chaired several National Research Council committees, boards, and commissions since 1961. He is a member of the American Institute for Biological Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ecological Society of America, British Ecological Society, International Union of Radioecologists, and Health Physics Society.

BOUWER, Edward J.—Dr. Bouwer received his B.S.C.E. from Arizona State University in civil engineering and his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering and science from Stanford University. He is currently a professor of environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include biodegradation of hazardous organic chemicals in the subsurface, biofilm kinetics, water and waste treatment processes, and transport and fate of bacteria in porous media. He serves on the board of directors for the Association of Environmental Engineering Professors and on the editorial boards for The Journal of Contaminant Hydrology and Biodegradation. He has served on three past National Research Council committees.

BRAUMAN, John I.—Dr. Brauman earned a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Brauman is the J.G. Jackson-C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He began his career at Stanford University in 1963 as an assistant professor. His research interests include physical and organic chemistry, gas phase ionic reactions, electron photodetachment spectroscopy, and reaction mechanisms. He is the recipient of many awards from the American Chemical Society, including the Award in Pure Chemistry, the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award. Dr. Brauman is a Guggenheim fellow and an honorary fellow of the California Academy of Sciences; he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Chemical Society. He has served on several National Research Council committees.

HARLEY, Naomi H.—Dr. Harley holds a B.E. in electrical engineering from the Cooper Union and an APC in management from the New York University Graduate Business School. She received an M.E. in nuclear engineering and a Ph.D. in radiological physics from New York University Dr. Harley is a research professor of environmental medicine at the New York University Medical Center where she also serves on the Medical Isotopes Committee. Her expertise is in radiation carcinogenesis, and her major research interests include measurement of inhaled or ingested radionuclides, modeling of their fate within the human body, and the calculation of the detailed radiation dose to the cells specific to carcinogenesis. She is a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and an adviser to the U.S. Delegation of the United Nations Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Dr. Harley is a member of the editorial board of Environment International, and a fellow of the Health Physics Society; she holds three patents at New York University for radiation detection devices.

LOVLEY, Derek R.—Dr. Lovley received a B.A. in biological sciences from the University of Connecticut, an M.A. from Clark University, and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Michigan State University. He is a professor of microbiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research interests comprise the physiology and ecology of novel anaerobic microorganisms, molecular analysis of anaerobic microbial communities, and bioremediation of metal and organic contamination. He is an associate editor for Anaerobe and is on the editorial boards of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Microbial Ecology, and FEMS Microbiology Ecology.

MANNELLA, Gene G.—Dr. Mannella earned a B.S. from Case Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He retired in 1994 as senior vice president of business operations, at the Gas Research Institute, headquartered in Chicago. He has also served as director of the Washington office of the Electric Power Research Institute, vice-president and general manager of Mechanical Technology, Inc., and senior vice-president at the Institute of Gas Technology. Dr. Mannella has held several positions in government agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,

Department of Transportation, and Energy Research and Development Administration (predecessor to the Department of Energy). He has authored numerous technical papers and served on several committees and boards including the Washington Coal Club.

NOONAN, Norine E.—Dr. Noonan received her B.A. from the University of Vermont, summa cum laude, in zoology/chemistry, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in cell biology and biochemistry from Princeton University. She is vice president for research and dean of the Graduate School at Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Prior to joining Florida Tech in October 1992, Dr. Noonan was chief of the Science and Space Programs Branch of the Energy and Science Division, Office of Management and Budget. In this capacity, she was responsible for the legislative programs and combined budgets. Before becoming branch chief, Dr. Noonan was senior budget and program analyst for the branch for four years. She was an American Chemical Society Congressional Science Fellow for the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation; a research associate professor of biochemistry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; an expert consultant for the Subcommittee on Science Research and Technology; and associate professor of physiological sciences at the University of Florida, College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Noonan is a member and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is also a member of the American Society for Cell Biology, Sigma Xi, and Phi Beta Kappa.

SILVER, Leon T.—Dr. Silver earned a B.S. in civil engineering from the University of Colorado, an M.S. in geology from the University of New Mexico, and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He is the W.M. Keck Foundation Professor for Resource Geology at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and his expertise is in petrology and geochemistry. Dr. Silver was a public works officer in the U.S. Naval Civil Engineer Corps from 1945 to 1946 and held several positions at the United States Geological Survey before he joined CalTech. He has served on numerous National Research Council committees, including his current membership of the Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications. Dr. Silver is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

CHOPPIN, Gregory R.—Dr. Choppin received a B.S. in chemistry from Loyola University. New Orleans, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas. Austin. He is currently the R.O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University. His research interests involve the chemistry of the f-elements, the separation science of the f-elements, and concentrated electrolyte solutions. During a postdoctoral period at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, he participated in the discovery of mendelevium, element 101. His research and educational activities have been recognized by the American Chemical Society Award in Nuclear Chemistry. the Southern Chemist Award of the American Chemical Society, the Manufacturing Chemist Award in Chemical Education, a Presidential Citation Award of the American Nuclear Society, and honorary D.Sc. degrees from Loyola University and the Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden).

DEPAOLO, Donald J.—Dr. DePaolo earned a B.S. with honors from the State University of New York, Binghamton, and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. He is professor of geochemistry and director of the Center for Isotope Geochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to arriving at Berkeley in 1988, Dr. DePaolo held a professorship at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a recipient of the F.W. Clarke Medal of the Geochemical Society, the J.B. MacElwane Award of the Geophysical Union, and the Mineralogical Society of America Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

HORNBERGER, George M.—Dr. Hornberger received an undergraduate degree in civil engineering, but subsequently trained as a hydrologist at Stanford University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in 1970. Dr. Hornberger is currently the Ernest H. Er Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia. He joined the University of Virginia's Environmental Sciences Department in 1970 and served as department chairman from 1979 to 1984. Dr. Hornberger has been the recipient of numerous awards, including election to the first group of fellows of the Association for Women in Science. He was cited for ''exemplary commitment to the achievement of equity for women in science

and technology." Dr. Hornberger received the John Wesley Powell Award from the U.S. Geological Survey and is also a member of the American Geophysical Union. He is the editor of Water Resources Research, the nation's premier journal for publications in the hydrological sciences. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1996.

DOD

United States Department of Defense

DOE

United States Department of Energy

DOE-EM (EM)

United States Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management

DOE-EMSP (EMSP)

United States Department of Energy, Environmental Management Science Program

DOE-ER (ER)

United States Department of Energy. Office of Energy Research

EM-50

United States Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Office of Science and Technology

EPA

United States Environmental Protection Agency

FY

Fiscal Year

GPO

Government Printing Office

H. R.

House of Representatives Bill

NABIR

Natural and Accelerated In-Situ Bioremediation Program

NAS

National Academy of Sciences

NRC

National Research Council

NSF

National Science Foundation

OSTP

Office of Science and Technology Policy

PNL

Pacific Northwest Laboratory

R&D

Research and Development

USGS

United States Geological Survey