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Appendix A List of Recommendations from A Review of Decontamination and Decommissioning Technology Development Programs at the Depar~nent of Energy COMMITTEE ON TECHNOLOGIES FOR DECONTAMINATION AND DECOMMISSIONING PETER B. MYERS, Chair, Consultant, Washington, D.C. PATRICIA ANN BAISDEN, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California SOL BURSTEIN, Wisconsin Electric Power Company (retired), Milwaukee JOSEPH S. BYRD, University of South Carolina (retired), Lexington BRUCE CLEMENS, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia FRANK CRIMI, Lockheed Environmental Systems (retired), Saratoga, California MILTON LEVENSON, Bechtel International (retired), Menlo Park, California RAY 0. SANDBERG, Bechtel Corporation (retired), Moraga, California ALFRED SCHNEIDER, Georgia Institute of Technology (retired), Dunwoody, Georgia LINDA WENNERBERG, Environmental Business Systems, Dorchester, Massachusetts RECOMMENDATIONS The DDFA should improve its strategic planning. A comprehensive strategic plan, with specific objectives and goals, is essential for decision making in successful management of the DDFA. A high priority should be assigned to updating the 1995 draft Strategic Plan to reflect DOE's current priorities, scope, schedule, and budget. The plan should be widely disseminated to senior managers to provide a common basis for development and use of associated management and implementation plans. The Strategic Plan should be updated and reissued periodically as DOE policies, procedures, and objectives evolve. 49
so TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT Top management in the Office of Science and Technology (OST) should evaluate and prioritize the technology needs of the operating sites, and needs must be prioritized and communicated from each site up to OST. After verification and evaluation of actual, as opposed to perceived, technology gaps that cannot be satisfied by existing technology, OST must prioritize the remaining candidate projects for implementation within the constraints of the available budget. This is a "top-down" management function and cannot be delegated. This is absolutely essential to ensure that technology project selection will yield an advantageous return in cost, schedule, and personnel safety. OST and the DDFA should link all actions and funding to the prioritized needs. All actions (selection of technologies to be demonstrated, implementation of demonstrations, establishment of rankings for budgetary purposes) and funding by the OST must be supported by "top-down" prioritized actual needs of D&D cleanup projects in progress or scheduled for implementation. The DDFA should define a reasonable target end state for each D&D technology. To establish performance goals, DDFA should take the initiative to define and propose end states that would be reasonable for specific DOE D&D activities. These steps are necessary to provide a justification for DDFA to develop new technologies (where baseline technologies cannot reach a specified end state) or to benchmark new technologies that are claimed to be "faster, cheaper, and better" than the baseline. All proposed demonstration projects should be reviewed by DDFA to ensure Hat the definition of the desired end state for each demonstration project is clear, complete, and consistent with the latest changes in DOE strategic plans and negotiated site planning and operations. The DDFA should improve its approach to introducing and gaining acceptance of demonstrated technologies. The Large Scale Demonstration Program (LSDP) was designed to introduce and gain acceptance by site managers of innovative technology into D&D activities within the DOE complex. Each site already has established methods for performing D&D activities and sites appear reluctant to take on the perceived risk of adopting alternative methods. OST and DDFA should develop and apply a uniform and consistent approach to comparative technology assessments across all projects. The comparative assessments should be based on a standard methodology that prevails across the various programs, sites, and projects. The committee recommends that DDFA refine its cost estimating methodologies for baseline and alternative technologies so that cost comparisons are meaningful and can be fully documented. Methodologies for incorporating non-economic criteria (safety, human factors,
APPENDIX A 51 waste generation, degree of maturity, and technological risk) should also be standardized. The DDFA should be more aware of technologies developed in the private, academic, and foreign sectors. The DDFA should develop a well-defined and effective procedure to identify and disseminate information on technologies commercially available in the United States and abroad that can be brought to bear on D&D problems within the DOE complex. To achieve this the DDFA should increase its interactions not only with the national laboratories but also with private industry and international organizations, develop more regional diversity in its contacts with universities, and make its technology needs and programs more visible and comprehensible to private industry. The DDFA should communicate its program results in a more effective and timely manner. Failure to provide adequate communication of the results of the demonstrations, tests, or assessments to prospective end users in a timely manner and in sufficient detail greatly reduces the prospects for acceptance and deployment of new technologies. The DDFA should establish a better connection between university and industry programs and prioritized long-term studies. As part of its long-term strategy, DDFA should become more familiar with programs sponsored by or in progress at universities, industrial organizations, and other government organizations that may be applicable to D&D activities.
