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Appendix A Statement of Task
A Review of Decontamination and Decommissioning Technology Development Programs at DOE
Committee on Decontamination and Decommissioning
National Research Council
Board on Radioactive Waste Management
The Department of Energy has estimated that the cost of cleaning up the nation's atomic weapons complex will be hundreds of billions of dollars and will require decades to complete. The Department has therefore assigned to its OST the task of developing innovative technologies that will make the cleanup of the weapons complex, including D&D of complex facilities, less costly, quicker, and less hazardous to workers, the public, and the environment.
The NRC Committee on Decontamination and Decommissioning will review the approaches used by the DDFA of OST to assess their utility and effectiveness. To this end, the committee will study how the DDFA selects and evaluates alternative D&D technologies and the methods of seeking deployment of the selected technologies by those charged with the actual cleanup work. The Committee will review the Large-Scale Technology Demonstration Project processes, and may review other techniques employed by the OST to enhance utilization of innovative cleanup technologies as they apply to the DDFA.
The Committee will review the processes that the DDFA is using to compare the advantages anticipated from technology development programs within DOE to existing cleanup processes that are available commercially. The Committee also will evaluate applicability and effectiveness of technology development activities in the DDFA.
The Committee will issue a report at the end of the study.
