Advice on the Department of Energy's Cleanup Technology Roadmap Gaps and Bridges (2009) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Findings and Recommendations
5 Findings and Recommendations
Pages 117-136
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site cleanup, Congress requested that the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) develop an Engineering and Technology Roadmap. As EM began work on the Roadmap, the DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management and the EM Office of Engineering and Technology (OET)
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From page 118... ...
Deciding how clean is clean is continually evolving among DOE, its regulators, and public citizens. One example of evolving cleanup objectives is determining the degree to which tank waste heels must be removed in order that the residue can be defined as "waste incidental to reprocessing," which can be left on DOE sites, rather than defined as "high-level waste," which must be disposed in a specially licensed geologic repository.
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From page 119... ...
This involves, first, maintaining a core of personnel who have first-hand knowledge of site cleanup needs, how they have developed, and previous lessons learned; and, second, managing accumulated information and knowledge. Knowledgeable Personnel Few who are active today will see the end of the site cleanup program, and more to the point, many of today's site-knowledgeable personnel are retiring.
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From page 120... ...
All four sites visited by the committee cited challenges in maintaining continuity in technical staff with the experience required to analyze, plan, and implement activities to clean up the DOE sites. Challenges are being encountered in recruiting technical personnel ranging from technicians performing cleanup operations and supporting R&D to Ph.D.-level staff performing science, technology, and design activities.
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From page 121... ...
Observation 2: By identifying the highest cost and/or risk aspects of the site cleanup program, the EM roadmap can be an important tool for guiding DOE headquarters investments in longer-term R&D to support efficient and safe cleanup. As it continued its deliberations after issuing the interim report, and especially after considering the information presented at its April 2008 meeting on leveraging EM investment, the committee concluded that road See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/egovstrategy.pdf.
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Notably the EM roadmap provides no time lines for its initiatives or connections between the initiatives and EM site cleanup milestones. This is rather like drawing a map by simply listing cities without placing them geographically on the map or showing highway interconnections.
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. Renewed national interest in nuclear energy and advanced fuel cycles will provide increasing opportunities for synergy among EM, other DOE offices, and the private sector.
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RECOMMENDATION 1: EM's Office of Engineering and Technology should update its 2008 Roadmap to include performance metrics and time lines for accomplishing its R&D initiatives to ensure that results are useful and timely to meet EM's site cleanup milestones. RECOMMENDATION 2: The DOE Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management should require periodic, future updates of the Roadmap to ensure that it remains current with major mid- to long-term milestones in
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RECOMMENDATION 3: The EM Office of Engineering and Technology, with support of the Secretary of Energy and the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, should engage other federal organizations (e.g., Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency) and DOE offices (e.g., Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of Legacy Management)
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From page 126... ...
Bridging EM's Science and Technology Gaps FINDING: The unique chemical, physical, and radiological properties of waste and contamination at the EM cleanup sites and the unique subsurface characteristics of the sites themselves require special capabilities of the sites and their associated national laboratories to sustain long-term R&D for EM's 30-year cleanup program. These special capabilities include qualified, experienced personnel and facilities for radiochemical, engineering, and field experiments.
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RECOMMENDATION 6: The EM Office of Engineering and Technology, with support from the Secretary of Energy and the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management, should lay out in its Roadmap programs that include research in the following: • Radiochemistry of EM wastes and contaminants; • Long-term performance of cementitious materials; • Retrieval technology for high-level waste; • Alternative and advanced waste forms and production methods; • Rheology of waste sludges and slurries; • Long-term behavior of in-ground contaminants; • Advanced sensors, detectors, and data transmission technology for subsurface monitoring; • Advanced near-surface engineered barrier systems to control contaminant release to the environment; and • Surface characterization of solid materials. These research programs are discussed below.
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From page 128... ...
Examples include: • Use of engineered grouts to fill tanks and pipelines from which waste has been retrieved at the Hanford, Idaho, and Savannah River sites; • Use of engineered grouts to stabilize low-activity wastes (LAW) resulting from tank waste processing; • Injection of grouts into the subsurface to stabilize legacy waste disposals and provide a barrier to contaminant migration; • Use of concrete for surface structures (e.g., pads, vaults)
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From page 129... ...
Gaps WP-4 and WP-5 in Chapter 2 describe the need to develop advanced waste forms that have higher waste loadings, advanced production methods that have a higher throughput, treatment methods that remove interfering components that either compromise performance or 10 The gap numbers refer to the gaps set forth in Chapter 2.
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From page 130... ...
. These gaps identify a need to locate, understand, and predict the long-term behavior of inground contaminants as an essential component of the successful application of both barrier and "cocooning" strategies.
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These examples illustrate the contextual system changes that can affect the temporal behavior of inground contaminants. An ability to reduce uncertainties in predictions of long-term behavior of inground contaminants through improvement in technologies and approaches to characterizing, conceptually modeling, and predicting the critical hydrologic, geochemical, and biogeochemical processes affecting DOE's inground contaminants at appropriate spatial scales is important for EM's cleanup mission.
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From page 132... ...
Advanced sensors that can measure the isotopic composition of nuclear materials, especially fissile materials, in the presence of a high neutron or gamma-ray background would have applications to the waste processing and facility deactivation and decommissioning gaps identified in Chapter 2. Advanced Near-Surface Engineered Barrier Systems to Control Contaminant Release to the Environment EM has made and will continue to make extensive use of near-surface engineered barriers to reduce water infiltration and contaminant mobilization at closed waste disposal sites and partially demolished or dismantled facilities (reactors, reprocessing plants)
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From page 133... ...
The committee's first finding is that the EM Engineering and Technology Roadmap can be a key tool to ensure that key personnel and infrastructure remain available to EM during the site cleanup program. A corollary to this finding is that a key role for OET is to manage the Roadmap, that is, to ensure that roadmapped R&D stays on track to provide new, reliable, technologies that are appropriate and timely for use by cleanup contractors.
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From page 134... ...
A cooperative effort might be to develop an overall cleanup roadmap to which OET's technology roadmap can be linked.11 By ensuring that its technology development is directly relevant to the cleanup, OET can establish its role within EM of resolving critical cleanup knowledge and technology gaps, ensuring the maintenance of essential capabilities and infrastructure, and managing the knowledge and technology bases needed to complete the 30year cleanup mission. • OET will have to take the initiative to coordinate ("leverage")
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From page 135... ...
CONCLUSION The fiscal year 2007 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Report directed DOE to prepare a technology roadmap that identifies technology gaps in the current DOE site cleanup program. For assistance with its roadmapping activity DOE's Office of Environmental Management turned to the National Academies, which empaneled a committee to undertake the study described in this report.
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