|
Items in cart [4] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 11
introduction and Task
The Department of Energy's (DOE's) Environmental Management
(EM) Science Program was created by the 1 04th Congress to bring the
nation's basic science i nfrastructu re to bear on the massive envi ran men-
tal cleanup effort now underway in the DOE complex. The objectives of
the program are to
.
provide scientific knowledge that wi I I revol ution ize tech nologies
and cleanup approaches to significantly reduce future costs,
schedules, and risks;
· bridge the gap between broad fundamental research and needs-
driven appl fed technology; and
· focus the nation's science infrastructure on critical DOE environ-
mental management problems.
To meet these objectives, the EM Science Program provides three-
year awards to investigators in industry, national laboratories, and uni-
versities to undertake research on problems relevant to DOE cleanup
efforts. Project awards are competitive and are made on the basis of
merit and relevance reviews managed through a partnership between
the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which has the primary
responsibility for the cleanup mission, and the DOE Office of Science,2
which manages DOE basic research programs. A more detailed descrip-
tion of the program is provided in Appendix A.
Since its establishment by Congress, the program has held four pro-
posal competitions and has awarded about $225 million in funding,
which puts it among the largest environmental research efforts in the
federal government (see Chapter 4~. The first two proposal competitions
~ Publ ic Law 104-46, 1995.
2Formerly the Office of Energy Research.
C h a p t e r 1
OCR for page 12
were completed in fiscal years 1996 and 1997 and resulted in 202
awards totaling about $160 million. These awards covered a wide range
of problems related to cleanup of the defense complex, including sub-
surface contamination problems.3 The third proposal competition was
completed in fiscal year 1998 and resulted in 30 awards totaling about
$30 million. These awards provided funding for projects primarily relat-
ed to high-level radioactive waste and deactivation and decommission-
ing. The fourth proposal competition was completed in fiscal year 1999,
while this report was in the end stages of completion, and focused pri-
marily on subsurface contamination and low dose radiation.4
Shortly after the program was established, DOE requested advice
from the National Academies on its structure and management. In
response, the National Academies established the Committee on
Building an Effective Environmental Management Science Program,
which operated from May 1996 through March 1997 and produced
three reports.5 One of the primary recommendations made by this
committee was that DOE should
develop a science plan for the EMSP [Environmenta/ Management
Science Program1. This science plan should provide a compre-
hensive list of significant cleanup problems in the nation's nuclear
weapons complex that can be addressed through basic research
and a strategy for addressing them. (NRC, 1997b, p. 3J
This committee also recommended a near-term and a long-term
process for developing this science plan: For the near term, program
managers should develop a science plan from existing DOE docu-
ments. For the longer term, DOE shou Id consu It with its problem hold-
ers (i.e., site technical staff, managers, and stakeholder advisory groups
who have knowledge of the cleanup issues) about cleanup problems
that cannot be resolved practically or efficiently with current knowl-
edge or technologies.
3An analysis of the program's subsurface science portfolio for fiscal years 1996
and 1997 is provided in Chapter 3.
4Thirty-one awards totaling $25 million were made for projects related to sub-
surface contamination research, and eight awards totaling about $8 million were
made for low dose radiation research in cooperation with the DOE Office of
Science's Low Dose Radiation Research Program. The committee did not have an
opportunity to review the fiscal year 1999 projects.
5Bui/ding an Effective Environmenta/ Management Science Program: Initia/
Assessment (NRC, 1 996a); Letter Report on the Environmenta/ Management
Science Program (N RC, 1 996b); and Building an Effective Environmenta/
Management Science Program: Fina/Assessment(NRC, 1997b). All three reports
can be viewed at the National Academy Press Web site (http://books.nap.edu/
catalog/5557.html).
S U B S U R F A C E S C ~ E N C E
12
OCR for page 13
SIDEBAR 1.1 STATEMENT OF TASK
The objective of this study is to provide recommendations to DOE's EM Science Program on the formu-
lation of a long-term basic research' program to address subsurface contamination problems at DOE
sites.These recommendations will take into account significant subsurface contamination problems at
major DOE sites that cannot be addressed with current technologies and science knowledge gaps rele-
vant to these problems.The recommendations also will take into account the research already com-
pleted and currently in progress by other federal and state agencies and will identify areas of research
where the EM Science Program can make significant contributions to address DOE's subsurface conta-
mination problems and to add scientific knowledge generally.
Scientific research comprises a spectrum of investigative activities that are frequently classified using
artificial groupings such as basic and applied (e.g., Pielke and Byerly, 1998). In the committee's view, basic
research is defined as research that creates new generic knowledge and is focused on long-term, rather than
short-term, problems. See also NRC (1995).
In the spring of 1 998, Gerald Boyd, the then-acting director (now
director) of the Office of Science and Technology, requested that the
National Academies convene another committee of experts to advise
DOE on its first science plan for the EM Science Program, which DOE
had decided would address subsurface contamination. In response, the
current committee was formed under the joint auspices of the Board on
Radioactive Waste Management and Water Science and Technology
Board. This committee has expertise in basic research and research
management in the scientific disciplines relevant to subsurface contam-
ination problems at DOE sites.6
The statement of task for this study (see Sidebar 1.1 ) charged the
committee to provide recommendations for a science research program
for subsurface contamination problems at DOE sites, and especially to
identify areas of research where the program could make significant
contributions to DOE's cleanup efforts and add to scientific knowledge
generally. The committee held six meetings between October 1998 and
july 1999 to gather information on subsurface contamination and relat-
ed problems at six major DOE sites and to develop this report.7 The
committee also produced an interim report to advise DOE on the fiscal
year 1999 proposal call. That report is given in Appendix E.
The committee received briefings on subsurface contamination
problems at the Hanford Site (Washington), Idaho National Engineering
and Environmental Laboratory, Nevada Test Site, Oak Ridge Site
6Biographical sketches of committee members are given in Appendix C.
7See Appendix B for a summary of the information-gathering activities.
C h a p t e r l
OCR for page 14
(Tennessee), and Savannah River Site (South Carolina). The committee
toured the Hanford Site and Savannah River Site to make direct obser-
vations of the problems and obtain briefings from site personnel, and it
reviewed DOE and other documents concerning the subsurface conta-
mination problems at these sites and at the Rocky Flats Site in
Colorado. The committee did not request briefings on the Rocky Flats
Site because of time constraints and because DOE advised that its
planned cleanup activities of this site would be completed by 2006
(e.g., DOE, 1 998a).
The committee focused primarily on the scientific issues in keeping
with its collective basic-research expertise. The committee has reviewed
the subsurface contamination problems at major DOE sites (see Chapter
2) and provides recommendations on a research agenda to address
these problems (see Chapter 5~. The committee also considered the
research being sponsored by other federal programs (see Chapter 4) as
well as the projects supported in the current EM Science Program port-
folio (see Chapter 3), so that unnecessary duplication of effort can be
. . . .
mlnlmlzea.
In Chapter 6, the committee recommends a strategy for implement-
lng a research agenda, but it has refrained from making recommenda-
tions on program management, which is largely beyond its collective
expertise and was covered in detail by a previous National Academies
committee (NRC, 1 997b). The committee also comments on the level of
effort (both in time and funding) that will be required to make signifi-
cant progress on the research agenda. The committee believes that the
success of the EM Science Program will depend both on the nature of
the problems addressed and on the effort sustained in solving them.
S U B S U R F A C E S C ~ E N C E
14
Representative terms from entire chapter:
doe sites
