Accelerate DOE "cleanup" programs...

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

...BEFORE the LNT is overturned!?  :-)

Friends,

Is DOE/official-Washington worried that the LNT will be refuted before they
can spend/waste massive public funds on 'make-work' cleanup programs for no
public benefit? So they're pushing for more funds earlier? (And hiring
public-advocacy-instigators, like CCRI, etc., to make local
'citizen-participation' programs more aggressive. Which is, of course,
received well by political interests want more federal $$ in the region - esp.
like Brookhaven, where there's no, or incompetent, DOE support for any more
quality nuclear research.)

It's clear: DOE cleanup work should be redirected to only actual hazards, with
research and program planning for other hazards (and uses for radionuclides)
pending resolving the LNT-justified extreme cleanup standards, and shifting
the closed NCRP and BRER, and rad protection regulation roles, to biology and
health roles, especially to bypass/eliminate the 'radiation research study
section' of NIH to approve all radiation research.

I'd appreciate your comments.

Regards, Jim
muckerheide@mediaone.net
========================

Billions Spent, Billions More Needed to Clean Nuclear Weapons Sites

 By Cat Lazaroff

 WASHINGTON, DC, January 26, 2000 (ENS) - Cleanups at nuclear weapons
facilities around the

United States are proceeding, but not nearly fast enough, according to two
reports released this week. A nonprofit group and a federal agency both say
the nation should be doing more to remove contaminated soil, water and
groundwater, stored radioactive and hazardous wastes and excess bomb making
materials. 

 At the DOE's Savannah River Site and other nuclear weapons facilities,
contaminated areas like this former wastewater basin are in urgent need of
cleanup (All photos courtesy Savannah River Site)

 Efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy to clean up contamination at its
former nuclear weapons facilities have been hampered by inadequate oversight
of projects and contractors, an unclear mission, and uncertainty over which
facilities will have a future DOE mission, says the independent research
organization Resources for the Future (RFF). 

 Meanwhile, a federal oversight agency reports that the slower than expected
cleanups are largely due to inadequate funding. 

 Cleaning up the nation's former nuclear weapons facilities is one of the
costliest and most difficult legacies of the Cold War, says RFF. More than $50
billion has been spent since 1989 to clean up sites where nuclear weapons were
produced during the Cold War, making it the largest environmental project the
U.S. has ever undertaken. 

 Department of Energy (DOE) officials estimate that the cleanup will cost an
additional $150 billion to $200 billion over the next 70 years. Despite the
money and time spent, it is difficult to discern what real progress has been
made, or whether the cleanup is focused on the right goals, RFF says in its
report, "Cleaning Up the Nuclear Weapons Complex: Does Anybody Care?" 

 "The [DOE's] Office of Environmental Management program has largely escaped
the kind of sustained scrutiny paid to other environmental issues by
advocates, the media, Congress and administrations of both parties," the RFF
report notes. 

[photo-caption]Technologies like this air stripper help remove contaminants
from groundwater 

 Congress and the Executive branch should take immediate steps to clarify the
DOE's environmental goals, step up oversight of the program, and decide which
former weapons sites should be permanently closed, the report says. 

 "Given that most of the cleanup lies well in the future, meaningful change
today could bring benefits for decades to come," said RFF senior fellow Kate
Probst, lead author of the study. Probst has been working on the report for
the past five years. 

 Because RFF blames many of the problems on poor oversight of the Office of
Environmental Management, the report urges a clarification of that office's
mission as the first step toward a better cleanup system. The DOE must
separate the Office's environmental and economic transition functions and
clearly articulate its core missions, the report says. 

 In addition, Congress or the president should create an independent
commission to evaluate the current organizational structure in the Office of
Environmental Management and identify needed reforms. The commission should
focus on establishing a clear mission, streamlining lines of authority,
encouraging greater internal and external accountability, and protecting the
environmental management program from parochial interests. 

 One key question it should address is whether the environmental management of
former nuclear weapons sites belongs in the DOE, RFF says. 

[photo-caption]Sampling wells are drilled to monitor the movements of
underground contamination plumes 

 The Office's cleanup work has become an important job creation and economic
transition vehicle in communities that once housed weapons facilities. In the
early 1990s, for example, DOE's environmental management program employed more
people at these sites than were employed there at the height of the Cold War. 

 There are now almost 36,000 contractors are employed by DOE to fix the
environmental problems left by five decades of nuclear weapons production. 

 The U.S. stopped producing nuclear weapons 10 years ago, but uncertainty
about future uses of former weapons facilities makes it difficult to set
appropriate cleanup goals, the RFF report says. It suggests that Congress
should enact legislation, modeled on the Base Closure Realignment Act, that
defines a process for deciding which sites will have future missions and which
will be closed - a step that ultimately could speed cleanup and crystallize
environmental goals at each site. 

 Currently, the government is devoting much of its cleanup resources to closed
plants, rather than to those that will remain operational, RFF says. 

 "At these sites, where the local community knows that DOE no longer will be
providing jobs after the cleanup is complete, the focus of local, state and
DOE efforts is on getting the cleanup done as quickly as possible and moving
on to life without DOE," the report notes. 

These Water Treatment Units at the Savannah River Site can remove some
radioactive contaminants, but not tritium. Treated water is pumped back
underground to allow tritium to degrade naturally 

 Congress should require the Department to issue reports every year that
document the extent of contamination at each site, the alternatives for
cleanup, money spent and the progress that has been made, RFF says. 

 Changes are also needed in internal accounting and budgeting procedures to
clarify how money is spent, and to improve the accountability of the program's
federal employees as well as its 36,000 prime contractors. Independent audits
conducted over the past decade have revealed that the department has wasted
millions of dollars on mismanaged or misguided projects, RFF says. 

 This week, a federal report also called attention to money problems in the
DOE's management of environmental cleanups. Specifically, the report by the
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board noted that "the most common reason
given for failure to meet schedules has been insufficient financial support." 

 In 1994, the Board sent the DOE a recommended schedule for the cleanup and
stabilization of radioactive materials at nuclear weapons sites across the
country. The Board's 2000 report to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson notes
that "the Board is concerned that severe problems continue to exist," and that
the progress being made in cleaning up these sites "does not reflect the
urgency that the circumstances merit and that was central to the Board's
recommendation." 

 The DOE should advise Congress and the President that more funds are needed
to ensure safe and swift cleanups, the Board said, and prioritize currently
available funds to stabilize the riskiest sites. 

 Oak Ridge National Laboratory is loaning the Savannah River Site a mobile lab
to help the DOE monitor radioactive contaminants 

 The Board cited particular concerns over radioactively contaminated liquids.
At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, for example, about 34,000 liters
of plutonium contaminated solution, 14,400 liters of a solution of americium
and curium, and 6,000 liters of a neptunium solution still must be removed
from holding tanks. 

 "In the Board's view, materials remaining in liquids generally poses the
greatest hazard, because of higher possibility of dispersal and because of
potential criticality," the report notes. The Board recommends stabilizing the
liquid wastes at the Savannah River Site as a top priority. 

 The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is responsible for independent,
external oversight of all activities in DOE's nuclear weapons facilities
affecting nuclear health and safety. 

 The Resources for the Future report is available at: http://www.rff.org/. The
group has also posted a guide to Internet resources from organizations that
research and monitor the cleanup of nuclear weapons sites, available at:
http://www.rff.org/nuclearcleanup/Default.htm 

 The report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board is available at:
http://www.dnfsb.gov/recomnd.htm, under 2000-1, Prioritization for Stabilizing
Nuclear Material.
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