Synopsis

The National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 114-328) for fiscal year 2017 contained a request (see Appendix A) for a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) review and assessment of science and technology (S&T) development efforts within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM). The National Academies appointed an expert committee to carry out this review and assessment and prepare a technical report. The committee found that DOE-EM’s management of S&T development is ad hoc and uncoordinated and thus less effective than it should be.

DOE-EM relies on site contractors to identify S&T development needs and make S&T development investments focused on near-term cleanup needs, although the program’s S&T needs are primarily long term. Headquarters-directed S&T investments are small in comparison to the size of the annual DOE-EM budget for cleanup and they are not geared toward finding breakthrough solutions and technologies that have the potential to substantially reduce cleanup lifecycle costs and schedules, currently reported—and likely underestimated—to be $377 billion and 50-plus years.¹

The committee recommends that several actions be taken to improve DOE-EM’s S&T development program:

• DOE-EM should obtain an independent assessment of the cleanup program’s lifecycle costs and schedules from a government engineering organization that is specifically focused on identifying key

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¹ See discussion on DOE-EM lifecycle costs and schedules in Section 1.1 of Chapter 1.

• remaining technical risks and uncertainties. DOE-EM should use this assessment to reevaluate the adequacy of its S&T development investments to address the identified risks and uncertainties and make any necessary adjustments.

• DOE-EM should implement a formal S&T management process to successfully use S&T to complete its cleanup mission. Peer review needs to be infused throughout this process.
• A portion of the technology development effort for the DOE-EM cleanup program should focus on breakthrough solutions and technologies that can substantially reduce cleanup lifecycle costs, schedules, risks, and uncertainties. This technology development effort should be managed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), a division within DOE with a record of investing in innovative solutions for complex technical challenges. Such a program would require substantial new funding separate from the DOE-EM budget.

The committee identified several technologies and alternative approaches that might be explored by an ARPA-E-managed breakthrough S&T development program. These involve changes to the following:

1. Waste chemistry at bulk and interfacial scales to facilitate treatment and disposal.
2. Nuclear properties of waste to facilitate treatment and disposal.
3. Human involvement in cleanup activities to increase cleanup efficiencies and reduce worker risks.
4. Interrogation approaches to characterize wastes and monitor cleanup remedies and environmental impacts.
5. Modeling and visualization approaches to manage large cleanup-related data sets and improve predictive capabilities.
6. Disposal pathways to increase waste disposition options.
7. Decision-making approaches to improve the quality and durability of cleanup decisions.