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INTRODUCTION
Beginning with the Manhattan Project and extending through the Cold War, the United
States government constructed and operated a massive industrial complex to produce and
test nuclear weapons and related technologies. At its peak, this complex encompassed over
100 distinct sites in 31 states and one territory with a total area of over 2 million acres (Figure
1). However, most of the production and testing activities were carried out at six sites:
Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, Nevada Test Site, Oak Ridge Reservation, Rocky Flats
Site, and Savannah River Site (Sidebar 1). This complex produced large quantities of nuclear
explosive materials—plutonium, highly enriched uranium, and tritium—over a period of about
four decades.
Beginning in the 1980s, large parts of this industrial complex were shut down
permanently or placed on standby, and the United States government began a costly effort to
clean up the materials, wastes, and environmental contamination resulting from weapons
production activities. In 1989, Congress created the Office of Environmental Management
(EM) within the Department of Energy (DOE) to manage this cleanup effort. To date, this
clean-up program has cost U.S. taxpayers about $102 billion. This program is planned to
continue for at least another three decades and ultimately cost several hundreds of billions of
dollars.1 It is the largest single environmental cleanup program in the federal government and
arguably the largest such effort worldwide (NRC, 1999g).
From its inception, the cleanup program has faced two fundamental technical
challenges: First, to inventory and characterize the vast array of materials, wastes, and
contamination resulting from weapons production, testing, and related activities. And second,
to retrieve, treat, remediate, or dispose of these materials, wastes, and contamination. The
ultimate goal of this cleanup effort is to reduce short-term risks to site workers and longer-term
risks to the people who live near the sites or utilize site resources.2
EM has made major investments in scientific research and technology development to
obtain the needed knowledge and tools to meet these challenges. There has been a
technology development program3 within this office since its creation. However, EM
headquarters-directed investments in science and technology activities have varied
substantially over the last 18 years (Figure 2): rising from $184 million in fiscal year 1990 to
almost $410 million in fiscal year 1995, followed by a decade-long slide to $21.4 million in
fiscal year 2006. This slide was prompted by a variety of factors, including concerns about the
1
In March 8, 2007 testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy
and Water Development, Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management James Rispoli reported
that the estimated life cycle cost for the DOE cleanup program had increased to about $235 billion
owing to the addition of new projects as well as regulatory and technology development problems with
current projects.
2
As used in this report, short-, medium-, and long-term refer to time periods on the order of 1-5, 5-10,
and >10 years, respectively. Long-term can be further subdivided as follows: it usually refers to periods
on the order of 1-2 decades when used in reference to cleanup and technology development activities
and many decades to centuries when used in reference to behavior of contaminants in the environment
or the performance of waste containment and monitoring systems.
3
This technology development program has had several names: Office of Technology Development
(1990-1995); Office of Science and Technology (1995-2003); Office of Environmental Cleanup &
Acceleration (2003-2006); and Office of Engineering and Technology (May 2006 to present).
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1
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Introduction 2
FIGURE 1 Location of principal sites within the DOE complex. SOURCE: NRC (2000a).
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Introduction 3
SIDEBAR 1 THE DOE COMPLEX
Although the DOE complex encompasses over 100 distinct sites, most of the weapons
production and testing activities were conducted at six DOE sites:
The Hanford Site is located in southeastern Washington state and covers an area of about
1450 square kilometers (560 square miles). Production of materials for nuclear weapons took
place here from the 1940s until mid-1989.The site contains several plutonium production
reactors, chemical separations plants, and solid and liquid waste storage and disposal sites.
The Idaho National Laboratory, first established as the Nuclear Reactor Testing Station,
occupies 2300 square kilometers (890 square miles) in a remote desert area along the
western edge of the upper Snake River Plain. The site was established as a building, testing,
and operating station for various types of nuclear reactors and propulsion systems, and it also
manages spent fuel from the Naval Reactors program. The site was also used to dispose of
wastes from Rocky Flats and elsewhere.
The Nevada Test Site, which occupies about 3500 square kilometers (1350 square miles) in
southern Nevada, was the primary location for atmospheric and underground testing of the
nation’s nuclear weapons starting in 1951. It is also used for disposal of low-level wastes from
other DOE sites.
The Oak Ridge Reservation covers an area of approximately 155 square kilometers (60
square miles) and is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of Knoxville, Tennessee. The
reservation has three major facilities: the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Y-12 Plant, and
the K-25 Plant. The laboratory was originally constructed as a research and development
facility to support plutonium production technology. The Y-12 Plant was built to produce highly
enriched uranium by electromagnetic separation; and the K-25 Plant, formerly known as the
Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, also was created to produce highly enriched uranium for
nuclear weapons. The reservation has waste disposal sites and contaminated buildings and
soil.
The Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site was situated on about 2.4 square kilometers
(~600 acres) within a 24 square kilometer (6,000 acre) tract near Denver, Colorado, and
contained more than 400 manufacturing, chemical processing, laboratory, and support
facilities which were used to produce nuclear weapons components. Production activities once
included metalworking, fabrication and component assembly, and plutonium recovery and
purification. Operations at the site ceased in 1989 and site cleanup was completed in 2006.
The Savannah River Site, located near Aiken, South Carolina, covers an area of about 800
square kilometers (300 square miles).The site was established in 1950 to produce special
radioactive isotopes (e.g., plutonium and tritium) for use in the production of nuclear weapons.
The site contains plutonium and tritium production reactors, chemical processing plants, one of
which is still operating, and solid and liquid waste storage sites.
Other Sites. Among the more than 100 other sites, the Paducah Plant (Kentucky) and
Portsmouth Plant (Ohio) contain large gaseous diffusion plants for enriching uranium that will
eventually be decommissioned. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico hosts
an underground repository for disposal of transuranic waste from defense activities.
Source: Updated from NRC (2000a)
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Introduction 4
8,000
EM Budget
7,000 S&T Budget
6,000
Budget Authority (Millions)
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Fiscal Year
FIGURE 2 Federal budget authority for the DOE-EM cleanup program (squares) and the
DOE-EM headquarters-directed science and technology (S&T) program (triangles). After DOE-
EM adopted project-based budgeting in the early 2000s, some of the headquarters-directed
S&T investments were moved to the sites. The S&T budget shown in the figure does not
include these site expenditures. SOURCES: NRC (1999g) and DOE-EM.
effectiveness of the program4 as well as changing administration priorities. In the past five
years, the program has focused almost exclusively on short-term technology development
needs to support accelerated site cleanup.
There has been recent renewed interest in cleanup science and technology
development, both within upper DOE management and in Congress. This interest was inspired
in part by a congressionally mandated NRC study (NRC 2006a) that evaluated DOE’s plans
for retrieval and onsite disposal of certain wastes stored in tanks at the Hanford, Idaho, and
Savannah River Sites (Figure 1). The report from that study recommended (NRC 2006a, p. 6-
7) that DOE initiate a targeted, aggressive, and collaborative research and development
(R&D) program to support its efforts to retrieve waste and clean and close tanks in which this
waste is currently being stored. It further recommended that this R&D program last for 10
years with funding on the order of $50 million per year. This study prompted DOE to request
additional funding for science and technology development for its cleanup program in fiscal
4
See NRC (1999g) for references and discussion.
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Introduction 5
year 2007, which in turn prompted Congress to request that DOE prepare a technology
roadmap.5
5
The fiscal year 2007 House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill contains the following
language: Technology Development and Deployment. The Committee recommendation provides
$31,389,000, an increase of $10,000,000 over the budget request. The EM technology development
program funding has declined over the years, while at the same time, many technological challenges
continue to face the program. For example, the National Research Council's 2005 report on `Improving
the Characterization and Treatment of Radioactive Wastes', recommends that `an improved capability
for environmental monitoring would strengthen EM's plans to leave waste and contaminated media at
DOE sites', and, `Monitoring systems at EM closure sites have been estimated to be some 25 years
behind the state-of-art.' The Committee directs the increase to address the technology short-falls
identified by this report. The Committee supports an increased, expanded technology development
program, and directs the Department to prepare an EM technology roadmap, that identifies technology
gaps that exist in the current program, and a strategy with funding proposals to address them. The
report is due to the Committee by January 31, 2007.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
square miles
