Building an Effective Environmental Management Science Program Final Assessment (1997) / Chapter Skim
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CHAPTER 2: VALUE OF THE EMSP TO THE CLEANUP MISSION
CHAPTER 2: VALUE OF THE EMSP TO THE CLEANUP MISSION
Pages 20-26
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From page 20... ...
is responsible for cleanup of the nation's nuclear weapons complex, a vast network of industrial sites established during the Second World War and the Cold War to develop, test, and produce nuclear weapons.) The EM cleanup mission is massive in scope: it includes 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.2 The Department estimates3 that cleanup of the weapons complex will cost between about $190 billion and $265 billion and take several decades to complete; these estimates do not include costs for dealing with "intractable" problems such as the large volumes of contaminated soil and ground water around the complex.4 Many of EM's cleanup problems cannot be solved or even managed efficiently arid safely with current technologies, In part owing to their 'DOE, 1995, 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 (Washington, D.C.: DOE)
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From page 21... ...
There is a need to involve more basic science researchers in the challenges of the Department's remediation effort. The importance of basic research to the EM cleanup mission was highlighted in the report of the Task Force of Alternative Futures for the Department of Energy National Laboratories,6 also known as the Galvin report.
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The committee agrees with these assessments and believes that a basic research program focused on EM's most difficult cleanup problems may have a significant long-term impact on the EM mission. Basic research may provide new knowledge to allow the Department to attack cleanup problems that are currently Intractable or exorbitantly expensive using current technologies; it may lead to the development of better technologies to allow cleanup to be accomplished at lower costs or with fewer hazards to workers and the public; it can improve understanding of risks, and how to discuss them with local stakeholders; and it may lead to the development of new or improved technologies that will allow cleanup to a higher state than is presently possible, thereby making sites available for less restrictive uses.
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There certainly is no shortage of interesting problems related to EM's mission. Indeed, the committee believes that a basic research program focused on EM's problems could transcend the EM program and be useful In the much larger scientific and environmental arenas.
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Knowledge of the behavior of colloids in ground water has led to explanations for why some contaminants can migrate great distances in ground water. This is an example of how basic research on colloid movement and interaction with contaminants has improved our characterization of the risk.
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The EMSP is designed to feed into a much larger technology development program within EM. i4 The EMSP is different in several respects from other federal basic research programs, including other DOE programs, that support fundamental research related to hazardous materials in the environment and environmental management (e.g., Table 3.1~.
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From page 26... ...
As with any basic research program, there are no guarantees of quantifiable returns, and, indeed, it may be difficult to track precisely the returns on dollars invested. However, the sheer magnitude of the cleanup mission and its estimated cost, coupled with the technological challenges, make the investment in EMSP both prudent and timely, even urgent.
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