Headquarters

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The Environmental Management program includes approximately 700 federal employees at Headquarters and approximately 2,000 federal employees in the field. Headquarters is responsible for providing direction, resources, and priorities to the field staff for the successful completion of safe and environmentally acceptable projects and activities. The Headquarters staff acts as an information source providing analysis, options, and information to shape the Department's environmental management policies and strategies, while also advocating these programs to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and to national stakeholders. Headquarters staff also acts as a national manager, measuring performance and integrating field activities across the complex.

In many respects, Headquarters acts as a centralized manager for the program's various functions, including the waste management, environmental restoration, technology development, nuclear materials and facility stabilization, and landlord areas. Specifically, Headquarters not only develops policy and guidance for environmental management activities, but also ensures that they are carried out in a manner that protects human health and the environment. Further, Headquarters is responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining an aggressive basic and applied research and development program to provide innovative solutions to the Department's environmental problems.

PROGRAM DIRECTION

Program Direction provides funding only for federal employees. This is a departure from the 1995 Baseline Report, in which both Headquarters and Operations personnel were included in the Headquarters site summary. The Program Direction account funds salaries, benefits, travel, and training.

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

Program management and support activities at Headquarters provide general technical contractor support services for all elements of Headquarters. For the 1995 Baseline Report, transportation management, which was funded at approximately $20 million in FY 1995, was described as a separate section. This function was funded at approximately $1 million in FY 1996 and is incorporated into the program direction and management functions in the 1996 Baseline Report.

Science and Technology Development Program Area

Developing new technologies to address the environmental challenges facing the Department is an integral part of the Environmental Management program. The mission of the Technology Development program, established within the Environmental Management Office of Science and Technology, is to provide new or improved environmental cleanup technologies and systems that reduce cost and reduce risk to the environment and human health, as compared to existing baseline capabilities. This mission also encompasses developing new technologies and systems where no effective or economically viable solution exists.

To this end, the Office of Science and Technology carries out an aggressive national research and development program to meet environmental restoration, waste management, and nuclear materials and facility stabilization needs. The program conducts applied and basic research related to environmental cleanup technologies. Applied research is directed toward specific focus areas such as mixed waste tanks, contaminated soils and ground water, landfills and unneeded facilities scheduled for deactivation, and stabilization and decommissioning. Basic research is part of a teaming effort with the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Research. At a broader level, basic research concentrates on the application of essential sciences such as physics and chemistry to environmental problems.

Environmental Management Science and Risk Policy Initiative

Planning for the Science Program began 1995 in response to a congressional mandate (conference report on the FY 1996 Energy and Water Appropriations Act) to focus on long-term, basic science research as the key to developing innovative and cost-effective cleanup methods. The decision to create the program also follows through on recommendations from stakeholder groups, including environmental experts from the National Academy of Science through the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

The Office of Science and Risk Policy is responsible for developing risk policy, requirements, and guidance to ensure that risk analysis theory and processes are integrated into coherent decisionmaking processes. The goals of these processes must be to meet Departmental missions while protecting public health, work health and safety, ecosystem viability, and cultural and national resources through integrated risk analysis practices that address technical, legal, and social elements.

Environmental Management Focus Areas Initiative

Five major remediation and waste management problem areas within the nuclear weapons complex are currently the focus for action based on risk, prevalence, or need for technology development. The Technology Development program is implementing this initiative in a way that promotes broad-based coordination and integration of efforts and ensures meaningful participation from stakeholders, technology developers, user sites, regulators, and business sectors. The focus areas thus far are: high-level waste storage tank remediation, mixed waste, landfill stabilization, contaminant plumes containment and remediation, and decontamination and decommissioning. Technical management of the focus areas has been delegated to specific Operations Offices, as indicated in the following map. Further descriptions of focus area technologies and the technical needs and activities follow.

Office of Science and Technology Crosscutting Programs

The Office of Science and Technology has established "crosscutting" programs that can be used by several or all of the focus area programs.

Efficient Separations: Develops separation and treatment technologies to extract radionuclides from waste, resulting in reduced volumes and improved waste form quality. These technologies are needed to remediate sites, decontaminate and decommission facilities, and address contaminated ground water and soils.

Characterization, Monitoring, and Sensors: Develops systems to characterize, monitor, and analyze waste.

Robotics: Develops robotic systems that automate the handling and processing of waste.

Technology Integration: Fosters research and developing partnerships with key target entities (sites, users, the public, Tribes, regulators, private industry, and universities) to ensure that innovative technical solutions are acceptable and commercially available.

TANKS FOCUS AREA

The Tanks Focus Area will provide technologies to safely and efficiently remediate 332 underground storage tanks that have been used to process and store over 100 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste. Only small quantities of the waste have been treated and disposed. Further, many of the tanks have exceeded their life expectancies, and some tanks are leaking. The Tanks Focus Area is concentrating on the problems at four locations: the Hanford Site, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, and Savannah River Site.

Technologies are needed to characterize, retrieve, and pre-treat the waste before radioactive components are immobilized, as well as to ensure a safe working environment in and around the tanks. Specific technology needs and activities in five major areas have been identified:

Safety: Demonstrate tank leak detection, monitoring, and inspection systems.

Characterization: Demonstrate advanced hot cell analytical techniques, in situ characterization systems, and process monitoring and control technology.

Waste Immobilization: Demonstrate and gain acceptance for immobilization/vitrification techniques for secondary and low-level waste.

Waste Pre-treatment: Demonstrate supernate, sludge, and solid-liquid separation.

Waste Retrieval and Tank Closure: Demonstrate enhanced and alternative waste retrieval processes and tank closure.

MIXED WASTE FOCUS AREA

The Mixed Waste Focus Area is a national program that is implementing an integrated, systematic approach to developing customer-identified treatment systems for the Department's national inventory of low-level mixed waste. New technologies are needed to improve or introduce treatment for an estimated 174,000 cubic meters (227,940 cubic yards) of mixed waste in accordance with state and federal regulations, and in cooperation with national and local stakeholders.

The technical objectives of this focus area are aimed at supporting national technology needs by demonstrating and delivering technologies and systems capable of treating or supporting the treatment of mixed waste. The technology needs have been classified into four areas:

Characterization System Product Development: Development efforts will emphasize improving current systems for pre-treatment, treatment, and post-treatment certification activities. Future characterization systems will provide improvements in the areas of radiological characterization, alpha assessment, and nonintrusive assay. Anticipated benefits include improved waste analysis that provides more reliable characterization information and substantially reduces radiation exposure to workers and the environment.

Treatment System Product Development: Development activities will emphasize improving hazardous component destruction, enhancing treatment system containment, and complying with regulatory standards. Future systems will provide broader capabilities, better performance, and more reliable final waste forms than existing systems. Initial development of waste treatment technologies has focused on systems that primarily involve high temperature, thermal treatment processing for the large majority of the mixed waste in the complex.

Effluent System Product Development: Emphasis in the development of off-gas treatment systems will focus on satisfying emission limits imposed by state and federal regulations, which will be key to the implementation of the baseline technologies. The Mixed Waste Focus Area is particularly concerned with technology development to ensure the destruction of chlorinated hydrocarbons such as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, and furans.

Final Waste Form Product Development: The key to ultimate disposal of treated mixed waste will be the form in which the mixed waste is left after treatment. Development of final waste forms will be initially defined based on the type of treatment, but ultimately, the disposal sites will dictate the final waste form. The development of technologies that favor a final waste form acceptable to the disposal site is emphasized.

LANDFILL STABILIZATION FOCUS AREA

Landfills at Department facilities contain over three million cubic meters (3.9 million cubic yards) of buried waste, the majority of which is located at seven different sites. The waste is buried on pads or in trenches, sumps, ponds, pits, cribs, heaps and piles, auger holes, caissons, and sanitary landfills. The types of waste being addressed by the Landfill Stabilization Focus Area include transuranic waste, low-level radioactive waste, hazardous waste, Greater-Than-Class-C radioactive waste, mixed hazardous/transuranic waste, and mixed hazardous/low-level waste. About half of the waste was disposed of before 1970, when regulations permitted commingling of hazardous and radioactive materials. Most of the hazardous and radioactive buried waste is problematic because containers have been breached, creating a threat to the surrounding environment and the public. Technology needs are in six categories.

Assessment: Determine boundaries of landfill waste; identify and locate specific waste forms, such as drums, large metal objects, and voids; characterize waste and determine constituent concentrations; focus on nonintrusive technologies.

Containment: Improve surface barriers or caps to prevent migration or leaching of contaminants; develop vertical and horizontal barriers using advanced materials.

In Situ Treatment: Develop techniques to alter physical, chemical, and/or toxicological properties to achieve contaminant immobilization.

Disposal: Develop innovative methods to improve landfill performance and cost-effectiveness.

Retrieval: Develop remote-operated equipment to retrieve radioactive and/or mixed waste and specialized dual-arm robotics techniques for hot spot retrieval.

Treatment: Develop pre-treatment techniques to minimize waste; primary treatment methods involving thermal, chemical, biological, and physical processes; and ancillary treatment systems associated with feed streams, process diagnostics, and secondary waste.

During FY 1996, technologies are being developed and/or demonstrated in the following product lines, which coincide with the dominant contaminants and geological characteristics of landfills: transuranic/mixed, low-level and other waste in arid and humid soils. Technologies in these product lines will provide new or improved capabilities for landfill containment and in situ stabilization, nonintrusive characterization of sites and waste, retrieval and treatment systems, verification and monitoring systems, and improved disposal systems.

CONTAMINANT PLUMES CONTAINMENT AND REMEDIATION FOCUS AREA

The Plumes Focus Area is developing technologies to address contaminated soil and ground water associated with certain priority contaminants found at many Department of Energy sites, including radionuclides, heavy metals, and dense nonaqueous phase liquids. Technologies for cleaning up contaminants common to the Department and other agencies, such as volatile organic compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, and other organic and inorganic compounds, will be developed by leveraging resources through interagency programs and cooperation with industry. The Plumes Focus Area also will provide environmental management users effective methods to contain contaminant plumes.

The Plumes Focus Area has organized its technical work in three coordinated technology product lines to address the Department's major plume problems:

Dense Nonaqueous Phase Liquids: Pilot-scale demonstrations of systems to characterize and remediate subsurface contaminant pools or liquid contaminants trapped in saturated and unsaturated fractured rock.

Metals and Radionuclides: Pilot- and full-scale tests of systems to characterize and remove or immobilize metals in aquifers and soils.

Organics: Completion or transfer of enhanced removal techniques, bioremediation for in situ destruction, and off-gas treatment.

Within each product line, a number of technologies are currently in development. For the 1996 Baseline Report, 21 site assessment technologies, four containment technologies, and eight remediation technologies have been demonstrated, and 11 have been transferred or commercialized.

DECONTAMINATION AND DECOMMISSIONING FOCUS AREA

The Decontamination and Decommissioning Focus Area is developing technologies to address 7,000 contaminated buildings requiring deactivation and 700 contaminated buildings requiring decommissioning. In addition, over 550,000 Metric Tons (605,000 tons) of metal and 23 million cubic meters (30.1 million cubic yards) of concrete exist in contaminated buildings. Over 180,000 Metric Tons (197,000 tons) of metal currently in scrap piles require disposition. The major concerns of this focus area are the high safety and health risks associated with working in aging and contaminated facilities and the high costs associated with facility deactivation and surveillance and maintenance using baseline technologies. Technologies are needed to characterize, deactivate, survey and maintain, decontaminate, dismantle, and dispose of surplus facilities and their contents.

Technology development activities center around large-scale demonstrations, each of which incorporates improved technologies identified as high-priority needs by the customers. Customers are also committed to considering all technologies for eventual deployment. This strategy provides side-by-side comparison of improved technologies with existing commercial (baseline) technologies. The focus area is organized as follows:

Demonstrations and Industry Approach: Provide full-scale demonstrations of a suite of improved technologies alongside baseline technologies under real world conditions as part of an actual ongoing decontamination project; implement deactivation and decontamination projects through industry solicitations such as a Program Research and Development Announcement. The large-scale facility demonstrations will be representative of facility types throughout the Department that may require decontamination and decommissioning. The first large-scale demonstrations are the Chicago Pile 5 Reactor, Fernald FEMP Plant 1 Processing Facility, and the cocooning of the C-Reactor at the Hanford Site.

Facility Deactivation: Provide enhanced removal methods for nuclear fuel, draining and/or de-energizing systems, and removal of stored radioactive and hazardous material to put facilities in a safe and stable condition. Reduce surveillance and maintenance costs incurred throughout the Department because of delays in the decontamination and decommissioning of facilities and reduce costs associated with worker risk by promoting technology development for remotely operated characterization, surveillance, maintenance, and dismantlement systems.

Facility Decontamination: Emphasize innovative technologies to remove radioactive and/or hazardous contamination from facilities and equipment to achieve a stated end condition.

Facility Dismantlement and Material Disposition: Emphasize processes and technologies for (1) disassembly and/or demolition of facilities, components, and equipment for satisfactory interim or long-term disposal, with emphasis on reducing costs with remotely operated technologies; (2) destruction of associated toxic, radioactive, or other hazardous waste; and (3) recycling or free release of materials as permitted. The focus area will work to facilitate the development of an accepted and complete policy on release standards for contaminated materials.

BUDGET AND LIFE-CYCLE COSTS

The budget for the Technology Development program is currently $325 million per year for applied research and technology development, excluding transportation, infrastructure, risk, and science-related activities. The program is projected to remain at this level for most of its duration and is projected to have a life span of 20 years (1989 to 2009). The overall cost is estimated to be in the range of $6 to $7 billion.