Nuclear Waste Cleanup: Research and Development Opportunities (Hearing, 2022)
Summary
Record of the hearing "Nuclear Waste Cleanup: Research and Development Opportunities for the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management" before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, July 13, 2022, Serial No. 117-64. Chairman Jamaal Bowman said the focus was how targeted research and development on innovative technologies can be leveraged to perform cleanup faster and at lower cost. Ranking Member Randy Weber also gave an opening statement. Witnesses were William "Ike" White of the Office of Environmental Management, Vahid Majidi of Savannah River National Laboratory, John Plodinec of the Community and Regional Resilience Institute and Nathan Anderson of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
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“Nuclear Waste Cleanup: Research and Development Opportunities (Hearing, 2022).”
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[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP:
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S
OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 13, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-64
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-009PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma,
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin MIKE CAREY, OHIO
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
------
Subcommittee on Energy
HON. JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Chairman
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon RANDY WEBER, Texas,
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan Ranking Member
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico JIM BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina JAY OBERNOLTE, California
C O N T E N T S
July 13, 2022
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Jamaal Bowman, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 6
Written Statement............................................ 7
Statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 9
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 10
Witnesses:
Mr. William ``Ike'' White, Senior Advisor, Office of
Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 11
Written Statement............................................ 14
Dr. Vahid Majidi, Director, Savannah River National Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 22
Written Statement............................................ 24
Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director Resilience Technologies,
Community and Regional Resilience Institute
Oral Statement............................................... 38
Written Statement............................................ 40
Mr. Nathan Anderson, Director, Natural Resources and Environment,
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement............................................... 47
Written Statement............................................ 49
Discussion....................................................... 69
Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Mr. William ``Ike'' White, Senior Advisor, Office of
Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy............ 88
Dr. Vahid Majidi, Director, Savannah River National Laboratory... 95
Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director Resilience Technologies,
Community and Regional Resilience Institute.................... 98
Mr. Nathan Anderson, Director, Natural Resources and Environment,
U.S. Government Accountability Office.......................... 100
NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP: RESEARCH
AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S
OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2022
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jamaal Bowman
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bowman. Good morning. This hearing will now come
to order. Without objection, the Chairman is authorized to
declare recess at any time.
Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note that,
today, the Committee is meeting both in person and virtually. I
want to announce a couple of reminders to the Members about the
conduct of this hearing. First, Members and staff who are
attending in person may choose to be masked, but it is not a
requirement. However, any individuals with symptoms, a positive
test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask
while present.
Members who are attending virtually should keep their video
feed on as long as they are present in the hearing. Members are
responsible for their own microphones. Please also keep your
microphones muted unless you are speaking.
Finally, if Members have documents they wish to submit for
the record, please email them to the Committee Clerk, whose
email address was circulated prior to the hearing.
Good morning, and thank you to our panel of expert
witnesses for joining us today to discuss nuclear waste cleanup
managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of
Environmental Management (EM). The focus of the discussion
today will be on how targeted research and development (R&D) on
innovative technologies can be leveraged to perform cleanup
faster and at lower cost.
Some of the nuclear waste we're talking about today was
generated almost 60 years ago when the global nuclear arms race
during the cold war spun out of the Manhattan Project. The
majority of the legacy nuclear waste that the Department is
responsible for is from government-sponsored weapons
development and production. However, the Manhattan Project was
also the genesis for peaceful uses of nuclear technology such
as nuclear energy. Some of the legacy nuclear waste is also
from government-sponsored research and development to further
these peaceful purposes. Regardless of the defense or
nondefense application, the government has an obligation to the
American people to responsibly manage and dispose of this
legacy waste.
So why are we talking about this on the Science Committee
when our legislative jurisdiction is over civilian research and
development? This is because the Science Committee is all about
finding and applying scientific solutions. So the budget for
the nondefense portion of the Office of Environmental
Management is only a little over 4 percent of the budget for
the entire office. Much of the science we can use to improve
the cleanup process is the same. And when we're learning from
experts in the field, many of which are here today, that the
lifecycle cost estimates for the remaining cleanup activities
are growing to the order of half a trillion dollars or more, it
would be irresponsible of us to not look at the science.
Unfortunately, the budget dedicated to research and development
has shrunk from 5 percent of the budget a few decades ago to
only 1/3 of a percent in recent years.
The good news is we have a good idea of the work that needs
to be done. The experts before us have all closely reviewed the
DOE's Office of Environmental Management. The analyses have
been complete, the reports published. They all have the same
conclusions and recommendations. We must look at opportunities
for improvement across the cleanup enterprise holistically, and
we must increase our investment in research and development of
innovative technologies that can be widely used to enable more
efficient cleanup. I look forward to hearing our witnesses
today go into detail on proposals to do just that.
Before I close, I want to acknowledge the impressive work
that the Office of Environmental Management has done to date.
Thankfully, the Department has successfully completed a lot of
their work here, as only 15 sites out of the 107 remain. I was
especially pleased to see the work at the Brookhaven National
Lab in my home State of New York finish up successfully just
this year.
This is a tough job. I want to recognize that and thank
those of you who work to make it better. With that said, thank
you all again for being here today, and I look forward to this
discussion.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Bowman follows:]
Good morning, and thank you to our panel of expert
witnesses for joining us today to discuss nuclear waste cleanup
managed by the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental
Management. The focus of the discussion today will be on how
targeted research and development on innovative technologies
can be leveraged to perform cleanup faster and at a lower cost.
Some of the nuclear waste we're talking about today was
generated almost sixty years ago when the global nuclear arms
race during the Cold War spun out of the Manhattan Project. The
majority of the legacy nuclear waste that the Department is
responsible for is from government-sponsored weapons
development and production. However, the Manhattan Project was
also the genesis for peaceful uses of nuclear technology, such
as nuclear energy. Some of the legacy nuclear waste is also
from government-sponsored research and development to further
these peaceful purposes. Regardless of the defense or non-
defense application, the government has an obligation to the
American people to responsibly manage and dispose of this
legacy waste.
So, why are we talking about this on the Science Committee,
when our legislative jurisdiction is over civilian research and
development? This is because the Science Committee is all about
finding and applying scientific solutions. Though the budget
for the non-defense portion of the Office of Environmental
Management is only a little over 4% of the budget for the
entire office, much of the science we can use to improve the
cleanup process is the same. And when we're learning from
experts in this field--many of which are here today--that the
lifecycle cost estimates for the remaining cleanup activities
are growing to the order of half a trillion dollars or more, it
would be irresponsible of us to not look to the science.
Unfortunately, the budget dedicated to research and development
has shrunk from 5% of the budget a few decades ago to only 1/3
of a percent in recent years.
The good news is we have a good idea of the work that needs
to be done. The experts before us have all closely reviewed
DOE's Office of Environmental Management. The analyses have
been complete, the reports published. They all have the same
conclusions and recommendations. We must look at opportunities
for improvement across the cleanup enterprise holistically, and
we must increase our investment in research and development of
innovative technologies that can be widely used to enable more
efficient cleanup. I look forward to hearing our witnesses
today go into detail on proposals to do just this.
Before I close, I want to acknowledge the impressive work
that the Office of Environmental Management has done to date.
Thankfully, the Department has successfully completed a lot of
their work here, as only 15 sites out of 107 remain. I was
especially pleased to see the work at the Brookhaven National
Lab in my home state of New York finish up successfully just
this year. This is a tough job. I want to recognize that, and
thank those of you who work to make it better.
With that said, thank you all again for being here today,
and I look forward to this discussion.
Chairman Bowman. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Weber for an
opening statement.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental
Management, or EM as we call it, the largest environmental
cleanup program in the world has been charged with the
formidable task of managing the environmental legacy of the
cold war. This means cleanup of nuclear contamination resulting
from decades of weapons testing and government-sponsored energy
research. Their work includes treating millions of gallons of
radioactive waste, decommissioning contaminated buildings, and
remediating contaminated soil as well as groundwater. It's a
big job without a doubt.
But while EM has made great progress, completing cleanup at
92 of 107 sites across the country, the estimated cost of these
activities has more than doubled in the last decade. That means
the lifecycle cost for cleanup activities at the remaining 15
sites could reach as high as $720 billion with a B. It is
absolutely critical that we get these costs under control.
The 15 remaining cleanups are estimated to take decades. If
we don't address costs--our costs and liabilities, they will
only continue to grow. In other words, things are only going to
get worse unless we make some changes. In fact, the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) added the Federal Government's
environmental liabilities to its quote, ``high-risk list,'' end
quote, in 2017, meaning EM's programs are among the most
vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. And it
has remained on this list ever since.
But today's hearing will focus mainly on the positives by
exploring strategies for EM to leverage innovation that will
shorten cleanup times and help it perform its decontamination
work safely, more efficiently, and hopefully at a cheaper cost
to the taxpayer.
As part of our efforts to encourage EM's use of R&D to
address the greatest challenge at remaining cleanup sites,
Congress has called on both the National Academies and GAO to
address strategies to improve EM's efforts. In its 2019
assessment, a National Academies committee found that EM's
management of its science and technology (S&T) activity is
uncoordinated across its sites. It also found that EM
demonstrated, quote, ``little to no interest,'' end quote, in
science and technology development that could contribute to the
development of breakthrough technologies. That certainly sounds
like a huge missed opportunity to me.
In GAO's 2021 report, they reported some alarming findings
such as the lack, the lack, of a common definition of R&D for
EM and no systematic efforts to track expenditures, much less
prioritize needs across the EM complex. Furthermore, GAO found
that EM lacked any systematic method for evaluating the
investments in R&D that the EM did make.
But hopefully today's hearing is the first step in a
brighter outlook for the future. I look forward to hearing
about the recommendations from GAO and the National Academies,
as well as EM's efforts to implement them. In addition, I want
to encourage EM to better collaborate with other relevant
program offices across the Department, the Office of Science,
the Office of Nuclear Energy, and other programs that DOE are
already tackling today's toughest research challenges and
pursuing cutting-edge technologies. It would certainly make
sense that these offices, including the world-class facilities
at the national labs, coordinate and collaborate with EM to
reduce cleanup costs in time.
And on that note, I look forward to hearing how the
Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), EM's only national
laboratory, is supporting cleanup efforts across the country.
In managing this lab, Battelle Memorial Institute has partnered
with five universities and two small businesses. I hope we can
identify other opportunities for stakeholders to collaborate in
addressing those same environmental cleanup challenges.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today,
your expertise on this issue. And, Mr. Chairman, with that, I
yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Bowman.
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental
Management or ``E-M'', the largest environmental cleanup
program in the world, has been charged with the formidable task
of managing the environmental legacy of the Cold War. This
means cleanup of nuclear contamination resulting from decades
of weapons testing and government-sponsored energy research.
Their work includes treating millions of gallons of radioactive
waste, decommissioning contaminated buildings, and remediating
contaminated soil and groundwater.
This is a big job, without a doubt. But while EM has made
great progress completing clean up at 92 of 107 sites across
the country, the estimated cost of these activities has more
than doubled over the last decade.
That means the lifecycle costs for cleanup activities at
the remaining 15 sites could reach up to $720 billion.
It is absolutely critical that we get these costs under
control. The 15 remaining cleanups are estimated to take
decades. If we don't address our costs and liabilities, they
will continue to grow. In other words, things are only going to
get worse if we don't make some changes.In fact, the Government
Accountability Office added the federal government's
environmental liabilities to its ``High Risk List'' in 2017,
meaning EM's programs are among the most vulnerable to fraud,
waste, abuse, and mismanagement. It has remained on this list
ever since.
But today's hearing will focus mainly on the positives by
exploring strategies for EM to leverage innovation that will
shorten cleanup times and help it perform its decontamination
work safely, more efficiently, and hopefully at a cheaper cost
to the taxpayer.
As part of our efforts to encourage EM's use of R&D to
address the greatest challenges at remaining cleanup sites,
Congress has called on both the National Academies and GAO to
assess strategies to improve EM's efforts.
In its 2019 assessment, a National Academies committee
found that EM's management of its science and technology
activities is uncoordinated across its sites. It also found
that EM demonstrated ``little to no interest'' in science and
technology development that could contribute to the development
of breakthrough technologies. That certainly sounds like a huge
missed opportunity to me.
In GAO's 2021 report, they reported some alarming findings,
such as the lack of a common definition of R&D for EM, and no
systematic efforts to track expenditures or prioritize needs
across the EM complex. Furthermore, GAO found that EM lacked
any systematic method for evaluating the investments in R&D
that it did make.
But hopefully today's hearing is the first step in a
brighter outlook for the future. I look forward to hearing more
about the recommendations from GAO and the National Academies,
as well as EM's efforts to implement them. In addition, I want
to encourage EM to better collaborate with other relevant
program offices across the Department.
The Office of Science, the Office of Nuclear Energy, and
other programs at DOE are already tackling today's toughest
research challenges and pursuing cutting-edge technologies. It
would certainly make sense that these offices, including the
world-class facilities at the National Labs, coordinate and
collaborate with EM to reduce cleanup costs and time.
And on that note, I look forwarding to hearing how the
Savannah River National Laboratory, EM's only National
Laboratory, is supporting cleanup efforts across the country.
In managing this Lab, Battelle Memorial Institute has partnered
with five universities and two small businesses.
I hope we can identify other opportunities for stakeholders
to collaborate in addressing environmental cleanup challenges.
I thank all of our witnesses for being here today and
lending your expertise on this issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Weber.
If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
point.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
Good morning to our panelists, and thank you to
Subcommittee Chairman Bowman for holding this hearing.
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental
Management represents nearly one-fifth of DOE's annual budget.
Its mission is so important: to clean up the federal properties
where nuclear development activities conducted during the 20th
century resulted in contamination. This mission is rooted in an
important part of American history: this week in 1945, the
United States performed the Trinity Test--the first ever
detonation of a nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project helped
the United States change the course of World War II and in
turn, the course of global history.
Communities like Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River
stepped up in support of the Manhattan Project, developing and
testing nuclear materials in secret. These communities
sacrificed so much for the war effort. Other sites across the
country were established a few years later to fulfill both
national security and commercial nuclear power objectives. In
the decades to follow, it became clear that these early days of
nuclear innovation left a complex legacy of radiological
contamination. It is only right that the federal government
apply the same intellectual firepower and passion to research
and innovation for addressing our nation's remaining fifteen
cleanup sites.
But unfortunately, it seems like these research activities
have not been a priority for DOE over the past couple of
decades. Less than half a percent of the overall budget for
DOE's Office of Environmental Management is dedicated to
science and technology development. The U.S. Government
Accountability Office and the National Academies of Science,
Engineering, and Medicine have found that DOE does not have a
formal system for evaluating and organizing its cleanup-related
research activities across the agency complex. DOE also does
not have a clear strategy for targeting its science investments
in this area.
I do want to acknowledge how much the Office of
Environmental Management has accomplished in its 30-year
history, having successfully completed cleanup at 92 sites. And
I also appreciate that very little about DOE's remaining
cleanup mission is simple. Each site has a different set of
cleanup needs, because the nuclear activities conducted at each
site and the resulting waste profiles are all distinct.
That said, targeted research and development here could
ultimately save a significant amount of taxpayer money. DOE
estimates the lifecycle costs for completing its cleanup
mission at somewhere between $488 billion and $723 billion
dollars. If DOE can foster strategic partnerships with
industry, researchers in the academic community, and the
national labs, I feel confident we will see more innovative
solutions that can help reduce these costs.I want to thank
Ranking Member Lucas, Ranking Member Weber, and their staff for
partnering with me and Chairman Bowman on such an important
topic. We worked together to develop provisions for the DOE
Science for the Future Act that would direct the Biological and
Environmental Research program to study the contaminants that
the Department is working to address. And we worked closely
together in organizing this hearing during a very busy
legislative session.
Thanks again to our witnesses for appearing here today, and
I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. At this time, I would like to introduce
our witnesses. Mr. William White is the Senior Advisor for the
Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, or
EM. Prior to being appointed in November 2021, he has served as
the Acting Assistant Secretary for EM and as Senior Adviser to
the Under Secretary for Science. And before joining EM, he
served as the Chief of Staff and Associate Principal Deputy
Administrator for DOE's National Nuclear Security
Administration (NNSA).
Dr. Vahid Majidi is the Director of Savannah River National
Laboratory. As DOE's Environmental Management laboratory, SRNL
provides scientific and technological direction and program
support for the Nation's legacy waste cleanup program. In
previous senior positions in the Federal Government, Dr. Majidi
recently reported to the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the U.S.
Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has more than 30 years of
experience in the areas of chemistry, measurement science, and
technology, national and homeland security, science and
technology policy, and nuclear nonproliferation.
Dr. John Plodinec served as Vice Chair on the National
Academies Committee on the Independent Assessment of Science
and Technology for the Department of Energy's Defense
Environmental Cleanup Program. Dr. Plodinec's career has
spanned nearly 50 years in research and development. His work
on radioactive waste characterization and glass processing was
an integral part of the design of the Defense Waste Processing
Facility at the Department of Energy's Savannah River site, the
Nation's first facility to incorporate high-level nuclear waste
in glass. He has regularly been consulted by several of the DOE
sites by DOE headquarters and by external groups such as the
Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board and the Nuclear Waste
Technical Review Board.
And last but certainly not least, Mr. Nathan Anderson
serves as a Director in the U.S. and International Nuclear
Security Group and Cleanup Group at the Government
Accountability Office. His work contributes to assessments of
two high-risk areas--DOE project and contract management and
the U.S. Government's environmental liabilities. Mr. Anderson
previously served as an Assistant Director, where he led a
suite of projects examining DOE nuclear waste cleanup issues.
He also helped lead GAO's work for the International
Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions Working Group on
Environmental Auditing, which culminated in a framework to help
National Audit Offices with fewer resources design and
implement audits for environmental issues.
Thank you all for joining us today. As our witnesses should
know, you will have 5 minutes for your spoken testimony. Your
written testimony will be included in the record for the
hearing. When you all have completed your spoken testimony, we
will begin with questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to
question the panel. We will start with Mr. White. Mr. White,
please begin.
TESTIMONY OF MR. WILLIAM ``IKE'' WHITE, SENIOR ADVISOR,
OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. White. Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and
Members of the Subcommittee, it's an honor to appear before you
today to represent the Department of Energy's Office of
Environmental Management.
EM is focused on its commitment to clean up the
environmental legacy of the national defense programs that
helped end World War II and the cold war. This work helps
address the government's responsibilities to the communities
that played such an important role in U.S. history. More
importantly, it helps position them to continue to grow and
thrive in the future.
Today, we've completed cleanup activities at 92 of 107
sites and most recently completing legacy work at Brookhaven in
New York. These historical accomplishments were enabled by the
significant investments Congress has made in the EM program and
aided by technology development and research.
Today, EM is continuing to advance the cleanup mission by
achieving impactful progress across the country. More than 200
transuranic waste shipments were received last year at the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, bringing the
total to more than 13,000 shipments safely transported. That
includes shipments from Los Alamos where the team has certified
and completed 30 shipments to WIPP just last year.
At the Hanford Site in Washington State we've begun large-
scale treatment of radioactive tank waste at the Tank-Side
Cesium Removal System, another project we recently completed
ahead of schedule and under budget. Demolition of the Building
326 uranium process building was just completed, marking the
most significant cleanup milestone to date at the Portsmouth
site in Ohio. The activation and decommissioning is also
advancing at sites like West Valley Demonstration Project in
New York.
And technology R&D plays a role in these and other
priorities. By leveraging the expertise of the national labs,
other DOE offices, industry, and academia, EM routinely deploys
technology advancements in the areas of tank waste cleanup,
soil and groundwater remediation, facility decommissioning,
decontamination, and worker safety. Multiple national
laboratories have been involved in efforts that have led to
innovative environmental monitoring systems that provide long-
term protection at our legacy soil and groundwater
contamination sites. Applied R&D efforts have led to
advancements in the area of air filtration and treatment to
better protect workers as they perform their cleanup work.
Testbed initiatives are being used at multiple sites to
evaluate technologies to address higher priority program needs.
Technology R&D has also accelerated tank waste treatment at the
Savannah River Site, and that may have application at other
sites as well. And more energy-efficient and sustainable
methods for safeguarding groundwater have been developed and
deployed.
While steady progress continues across all sites, the EM
mission has decades to go at some sites and accounts for at
least $400 billion in environmental liabilities. Given the
magnitude of the remaining cleanup mission, EM must keep
developing innovative approaches to accelerate progress,
increase efficiency, and protect human health and the
environment. I appreciate the support provided by Congress and
the recommendations offered by the Government Accountability
Office, the National Academies of Science, and others.
As we work to enhance our R&D efforts, EM takes a
comprehensive approach to prioritizing all of its cleanup work,
including the associated technology development. For example,
one of EM's top priorities is addressing Hanford's tank waste
mission, which represents one of the Department's largest
financial and environmental liabilities. That's why EM is
leveraging the expertise of our Savannah River National
Laboratory and the entire network of national laboratories for
environmental management and stewardship to develop an R&D
roadmap for accelerating the Hanford tank waste mission.
Utilizing increased funding, EM is also expanding our
partnerships with minority serving institutions (MSI). This
enables us to add a technology curriculum and a research grant
partnership involving EM minority serving institutions and the
national laboratories.
EM is committed to maximizing the benefit of the available
R&D investments while maintaining the momentum of cleanup
progress, meeting regulatory milestones, and bringing EM sites
closer to completion. In partnership with the national
laboratories, EM is conducting a holistic EM technology review
to ensure that the labs have overall unity of effort, that they
are efficient, and that they provide maximum value.
I appreciate the Subcommittee's interest in utilizing
technology development to enhance the environmental cleanup
mission, and I look forward to working with Congress on ways to
build on the ongoing improvements we have in this area. I thank
you for your time and look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. White.
Next, we will have Dr. Majidi.
TESTIMONY OF DR. VAHID MAJIDI, DIRECTOR,
SAVANNAH RIVER NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. Majidi. Good morning, Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member
Weber, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting
Savannah River National Laboratory to testify and discuss our
mission to highlight the value of our work to our Nation.
Savannah River National Laboratory is the only national
laboratory stewarded by the Department of Energy's Office of
Environmental Management. Additionally, we make significant
contributions toward the Office of Legacy Management (LM) and
National Nuclear Security Administration programs, including
nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation activities. Battelle
Savannah River Alliance, or BSRA, is charged with the
management and operation of our laboratory. Our experience and
deep understanding of challenges associated with Department of
Energy's cleanup mission is rooted in 7 decades of resolving
our Nation's most complex nuclear material processing problems.
Our laboratory provides applied science and engineering
innovations for DOE's 15 active cleanup sites and 101 post-
closure management sites. Savannah River leads the Network of
National Laboratories for Environmental Management and
Stewardship. This network coordinates science and technology
solutions for both EM and LM.
This fiscal year, SRNL led a team in analysis of
supplemental treatment approaches for Hanford low-activity
waste. We updated the complex wide soil and groundwater
technical targets to develop a national groundwater management
strategy for EM, and we're creating an R&D roadmap for
accelerating and reducing risk for the Hanford waste tank
treatment mission. We're also providing recommendations for
long-term actions to mitigate risks for legacy management
sites.
Our main mission is to provide modern and practical
solutions to environmental cleanup and long-term surveillance
and maintenance problems. This includes our latest work on
assessing the climate vulnerabilities of EM and LM sites. When
appropriate, we work across different program offices to bridge
the need for research and development, for example, extracting
unique isotopes for nonproliferation programs will also benefit
DOE's Office of Science, EM, and other NNSA programs. The
Advanced Research Projects Agency--Energy, or ARPA-E, is
funding SRNL to use our expertise in glass and ceramics in
partnership with the recycling and manufacturing sector to
create more durable cement and other advanced materials.
University partnerships are critical to our success, and we
leverage them to develop our future work force. Cleanup and
remediation projects are designed to meet local stakeholder
needs. As such, we purposefully work with many stakeholders and
train our work force to understand the impact of technology
within the regulatory requirement domain. Since 2014, the
Office of Environmental Management's Minority Serving
Institution Partnership Program has been executed by Savannah
River National Laboratory. We work with five other national
laboratories to provide internship and support to historically
Black colleges and universities (HBCU) and minority serving
institutions. Most recently, we have expanded the program,
providing funding for postdoctoral research and graduate
fellows.
To accelerate cleanup mission, our laboratory provides
processing, remediation, and closure approaches with a rigorous
data-driven foundation. We develop high-impact technologies to
overcome barriers, while minimizing waste production in the
disposition of nuclear materials. We focus on remediation
strategies using passive technologies to reduce cost in the
long-term maintenance. We pioneer innovations to reduce long-
term monitoring costs through integration of sensor networks
and by providing high-fidelity assessment.
Mr. Chairman, Savannah River National Laboratory's
expertise and innovative spirit uniquely positions the lab to
help the Department of Energy accelerate cleanup activities and
realizing a reduction in liabilities and costs. Thank you again
for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to take any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Majidi follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Majidi.
Next, we will have Dr. Plodinec.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN PLODINEC,
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR RESILIENCE TECHNOLOGIES,
COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL RESILIENCE INSTITUTE
Dr. Plodinec. Thank you. Slight technical glitch there. My
thanks to--back out of there a little bit--Chairman Weber--
excuse me, Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and the rest
of the Subcommittee. You have my written testimony. I'm going
to, in my oral testimony, try to make three points that I think
are very important for the discussion today.
First, it was clear to our committee that there are
opportunities for science and technology developments that
could reduce costs, quicken cleanup, and reduce risk. We found
that EM, however, did not have a comprehensive program at that
time to identify or capture them. The committee identified
seven areas where S&T developments could reduce costs, and
those are shown on the control knobs graphic on page 5 of my
written testimony.
Let me mention just one, chemistry. Chemical separations
are and will continue to be of great importance to EM
throughout the dispositioning of tank waste. Over the last few
years, tremendous progress has been made in such subfields as
micro-separations in accelerated chemical processing. If these
advances were deployed for processing liquid waste,
particularly in the tanks, advances in these areas could
increase efficiency, reduce the cost and the time required.
But that brings me to my second point. That positive return
on these public investments in science and technology can only
occur, can only occur if they are deployed at the DOE sites.
That means that EM's cleanup contractors have to deploy them.
That's relatively easy at the start of a particular project or
contract. It becomes more and more difficult as facilities are
built and processing starts and as contracts approach their
completion. Further, cleanup contracts themselves are focused
on maximizing cleanup within the life of the contract, not on
finding potential solutions for waste streams not included in
the contract.
That brings me to my third point, the importance of what I
call the technology tailor. In the innovations literature this
is often called a knowledge broker or the gatekeeper, but these
terms don't reflect what has to happen within the DOE EM
context. EM's biggest cleanup challenges, the ones where S&T
can really have a big return on investment, pose complicated,
often wicked problems that are multidimensional, multifarious
for that matter, and require stitching together pieces from
several technologies and testing the combined fabric if you
will and making alterations so that the proposed solutions
actually fit EM's needs. Thus, the technology tailor plays a
crucial role by translating science into operations. The
National Academies committee saw instances where technology
tailoring had occurred but saw no evidence at that time that
the importance of this tailoring function was recognized by EM.
However, I must say, Dr. Majidi's testimony indicates that the
importance of this crucial element of a comprehensive S&T
program is beginning to be realized, recognized, and that's a
very positive development.
With that I'll stop. Thank you for your attention. I'm
ready to answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Plodinec follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Plodinec.
And finally, we will have Mr. Anderson.
TESTIMONY OF MR. NATHAN ANDERSON,
DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT,
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Mr. Anderson. Chair Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, Members
of the Subcommittee, good morning. I'd much prefer to be with
you in person, but the COVID bug finally bit me a few days ago,
hence my virtual participation.
Research and development has played a central role in
Federal efforts to clean up massive amounts of radioactive and
hazardous waste produced by more than 75 years of nuclear
weapons production and energy research. Advances in R&D have
enabled DOE's Office of Environmental Management to carry out
this cleanup using safer, more efficient, and more effective
approaches.
But the proportion of EM's budget specifically designated
for R&D has generally declined since 2000. At the same time,
DOE's environmental liabilities, the estimated costs to clean
up radioactive and hazardous waste are now over $500 billion.
In recent years, the growth in these lifecycle costs on average
have significantly outpaced annual spending on efforts to
address them, creating a situation not unlike an interest-only
mortgage. We need to look at smarter ways of doing business to
chip away at the principal.
My testimony today discusses our findings and
recommendations from two recent reports on the Department of
Energy's Office of Environmental Management. Our findings have
implications on the outcomes and effectiveness of investments
in R&D. Specifically, I'll discuss the extent to which EM
coordinates R&D across the complex, prioritizes R&D efforts,
and has sustained a consistent leadership commitment, which can
help an R&D program.
Regarding EM's coordination of R&D, it's important to note
that EM has a number of players involved in these activities,
including EM's network of national labs, 15 cleanup sites, its
technology development office, and other offices such as the
Office of Science. In our October 2021 report we found that
coordination amongst these different entities was a mixed bag
with some positives and some challenges. Positives include EM's
ability to clarify roles and responsibilities such as through
the national lab network to help ensure the right people and
groups are often at the table.
Challenges include identifying and tracking resources used
for R&D and defining and measuring outcomes for such
investments. For example, EM doesn't have internal systems to
track R&D expenditures throughout the complex or monitor their
effectiveness. Of the nearly $300 million, broadly
characterized as annual funding for R&D, we were unable to
track investments for about $180 million.
Regarding prioritization, we found that EM's technology
development office had not taken a comprehensive approach to
prioritizing R&D for nuclear cleanup. In the absence of a
comprehensive approach, individual EM sites and DOE
laboratories developed their own methods for making
prioritization decisions.
It's also important to note that the way that money is
allocated for R&D and restrictions on spending result in
pressures to direct resources to address immediate operational
needs. As a result, there can be pressure to divert resources
away from forward-looking R&D efforts that could bring long-
term efficiencies. Prior studies of EM's R&D efforts have
identified concerns about EM's level of investment in
breakthrough research in favor of incremental research.
Better coordination and prioritization tie in to my third
point about the need for enhanced and committed leadership
within DOE and EM, which may also enhance the effectiveness of
its R&D efforts. And let me be clear, this is an area where
Congress can help. To set the stage, EM has experienced
frequent turnover in its top leadership positions since it was
established in 1989. In the last 2 decades, there have been
five Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretaries and nine Acting
Assistant Secretaries or Senior Advisors. Frequent turnover has
created challenges for achieving the Department's complex and
long-term cleanup mission, such as difficulty in building
relationships with States and local communities, inconsistent
and incomplete initiatives, and a focus on short-term actions
over long-term priorities.
In addition to frequent turnover in leadership, EM's
position within DOE's organizational structure has been
unstable. EM has reported to DOE's Deputy Secretary and three
Under Secretaries at different points throughout EM's history.
Earlier this year, we recommended Congress establish a term
appointment for EM's top leader and create a new DOE Under
Secretary position for environmental cleanup.
Chair Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and Members of the
Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement. I'd be
pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this
time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
And I just want to note for the record that each witness'
testimony was well under 5 minutes. That's incredible.
Congratulations to all of you.
At this point, we will begin our first round of questions.
The Chairman recognizes himself for 5 minutes. I'm going to try
to get through three questions. Let's see if we can make it.
Mr. White, thank you again for joining us today. In its
October 2021 report, GAO noted some actions that DOE should be
taking to maximize the potential of EM science and technology
activities. I'm hoping you can give us a status report on a
couple of those.
First, GAO found that EM did not have a common definition
of R&D for DOE programs, contractors, and other stakeholders to
use. This makes it hard to coordinate or even fully evaluate
the research activities associated with environmental cleanup.
Has DOE since developed and shared a common definition for R&D
through the EM complex? If not, do you have an estimated date
of completion?
Also, GAO also found that EM does not have an internal
system to systematically track cleanup-related R&D expenditures
across DOE, which seems related to the lack of a definition for
R&D. Has DOE made any progress toward establishing such an
internal tracking system? Do you have an estimated date of
completion for this?
Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm happy to report
that we have in fact established a definition for research and
development that we've promulgated across the EM complex. We
did that last year. We've also developed and put in place a
data base to track our technology development activities across
the EM enterprise. To date, we've only populated that data base
with the activities that we fund directly out of our
headquarters technology development program, which is the
smallest part of it. By the end of the year, I expect we will
have taken our first shot at pulling in all of the sort of
applied R&D-stage activities that occur at our different sites.
Chairman Bowman. Awesome. Mr. Anderson, since we're talking
about the recommendations from your report, do you have
anything to add to our dialog on this?
Mr. Anderson. The one thing I would add is, you know, that
EM we found had taken a bit of an ad hoc approach to managing
its R&D portfolio. You know, our recommendations are aimed at
enhancing coordination and improving prioritization, all with
an eye toward developing smarter ways to chip away at that $500
billion liability. We're heartened to hear that EM agreed with
our recommendations, and we look forward to seeing the steps
taken to implement them.
Chairman Bowman. Next question is for Dr. Majidi on
diversity in the work force. Thanks for your testimony. You
mentioned that Savannah River National Laboratory has supported
EM in managing its Minority Serving Institutions Partnership
Program, which provides internship funding and support to HBCUs
and other MSIs through the competitive research award process
and also funds postdoctoral research and graduate fellows. Can
you please talk to us about the importance of a diverse talent
pool in the areas of environmental management and how the MSI
Partnership Program is helping to develop a diverse work force
for DOE labs?
Dr. Majidi. Thank you, sir. One of the challenges in any
S&T area today is bringing in more and more diverse voices to
solve technical challenges. Through EM's vision, we are
executing the Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program
in a number of different ways. First, we partner with minority
serving institutions to provide technical guidance and
supporting analysis of technical programs that they are
performing. Then, we have an internship program that every year
we bring interns not only to our laboratory, but to other
national laboratories as well, so that the interns get a full
flavor of what is going on around the entirety of the DOE
complex. We have started a postdoctoral program where we bring
in brilliant young scientists, and we mentor them at the
laboratory to let them know exactly how the science for EM is
done. And finally, we're starting a graduate fellowship program
to bring in additional graduate students from minority serving
institution programs.
The diversity is very important to us because most of our
diverse work force are the ones that are most impacted by many
of the national activities that is in their backyard. They
understand what is the impact of technology, what is the impact
of cleanup in their own backyard so they can speak on behalf of
the stakeholders because they're stakeholders and help us
develop a better technology platform.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you so much for that response. And
before I yield to Ranking Member Weber, I just want to mention
for follow up, I would love to know what science education
should look like in our K to 12 school systems, particularly in
low-income and marginalized communities, to help prepare
students for, you know, postsecondary opportunities in this
space. We have about 20 seconds. Do you have any comment on
that?
Dr. Majidi. No, that's a very rich topic, sir. And I'll be
happy to sit down and tell you about all the programs that we
have in place. We live in a neighborhood that has lots of
underprivileged school systems, and we are working with a
laboratory and EM to reach to those.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Weber for 5
minutes.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Majidi, in your testimony, you mentioned a couple of
things that are right at the heart of today's hearing. First,
you say Savannah River has been working with other national
labs to help develop an integrated technology development
framework, primary objective being to provide a good balance of
early concept R&D with ready-to-deploy technologies. But at the
same time you mentioned that Savannah River receives limited
funding from the Office of Science on EM-related research. And
that's not the best thing for us to hear necessarily because
there's no one better--in the world better at early concept R&D
than the Office of Science. I think you'd agree with that. It's
no secret that when DOE offices worked closely together,
everyone benefits.
So, Dr. Majidi, what would your recommendations be to
ensure the Office of Science is right there with you from the
start and best helping progress in that environmental
management field?
Dr. Majidi. Yes, thank you very much for this question.
Historically, the Office of Science has not played a
significant role at our laboratory. Over the past few years,
specifically, over the past 3 years, we have had more and more
engagement with the Office of Science. And I know that--I will
also attest to the fact that this engagement with Office of
Science has significantly increased.
We have a number of programs that are coordinated
throughout the Department, including the Office of Science.
We've had three specific funding opportunities from Office of
Science that benefits the laboratory and fundamental research.
To be perfectly frank, our laboratory in the past has not been
incredibly competitive in the Office of Science domain because
we've had applied science and technology rather than
fundamental technologies. As we mature with our new management
and operation companies, our goal is to in fact increase our
interactions with the Office of Science and ensure that that
fundamental research does weave into our program. We are
partnering with ARPA-E to fund our programs both in EM and in
the fusion program. So the laboratory, as it's maturing, is
engaging more and more programs across the DOE.
Mr. Weber. Glad to hear you bring that up because that was
actually part of my next question. To see you mentioned
partnerships funding through ARPA-E. The Energy Act of 2020
specifically gave, as you know, ARPA-E the ability to fund
projects in management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive
waste and spent nuclear fuel. So, with that in mind, can you go
into a little bit more detail what ARPA-E is good at and what
other programs like the Office of Nuclear Energy might be
better suited for?
Dr. Majidi. Well, again, thank you for funding ARPA-E
because they're funding us and it's certainly very helpful.
I'll start with a quick story. For many decades, EM has
funded our laboratory, as well as other laboratories, to
develop glass and ceramics for immobilizing nuclear waste. We
are quite good at immobilizing nuclear waste, and we have lots
of expertise in glass and ceramics. So a few years back, I
challenged all of our scientists who are working in glass and
ceramics. OK. What is the next step? What's next for glass and
ceramics? And we in fact invested internally through
Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Fund, or LDRD,
what's the next challenge for glass? And we came up with a
number of different ideas. This engineered cellular magmatics,
which is basically taking glass and recycling them, not by
putting more energy, but by putting mechanical energy and
chemistry to alter the nature of the glass and use it as a more
fundamentally more useful construction material. That led into
ARPA-E investment that allows us to create a next generation of
more enduring cement with a lower carbon footprint. We are
partnering, thanks to ARPA-E, with both industry and academia
to push that concept forward and ultimately commercialize it.
So the fact that ARPA-E is a player in this game has been a
gamechanger for our laboratory.
Mr. Weber. Well, thank you for that. So would you agree
that nuclear waste management cannot be conducted solely by
ARPA-E and requires a cross-cutting department effort? And if
money wasn't an object, how would you do that?
Dr. Majidi. Well, sir, I will leave that up to the
Department certainly when it comes to the money, but the
collaboration amongst program managers is absolutely essential.
And the laboratory plays a game to bring the program managers
as well. So I mentioned--I haven't quite mentioned but that we
have a program called Mark-18 that brings NNSA, EM, Office of
Science all together for a particular focus on a mission that
benefits everybody.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. The gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici,
is now recognized.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Chairman Bowman and Ranking Member
Weber, and thank you to our witnesses.
I am from Oregon, honored to represent a district in the
northwest part of the State. So I'm going to focus my questions
on Hanford. And to set the stage, Hanford in south central
Washington is about a 586-square-mile site, about the size of
Rhode Island, where they store about 56 million gallons of
radioactive waste in old tanks not too far from the Columbia
River and also not too far from the Cascadia Subduction Zone
where we're overdue for a massive earthquake.
So with this effort, there are approximately 8,000 workers
involved, and in 2021, the Washington State Department of
Commerce released a report that expressed concerns for the
health of the Hanford work force because of short-term and
long-term exposure to hazardous materials. According to the
report, about 1/3 of the work force indicated long-term
exposure to hazardous materials, and nearly 60 percent reported
being involved in an exposure event.
So I'm going to start with Dr. Majidi. In your written
testimony, you highlight research that would minimize worker
exposure to hazardous materials. So how can investments in
research and technological innovations increase workplace
safety? And what role does your lab play in sharing these
developments across the cleanup sites nationally?
Dr. Majidi. Thank you for your question. A few years ago,
Environmental Management asked the laboratory to put together
the national network of laboratories for environmental
management missions, and I am the permanent Chair of this
organization. And the Co-Chair rotates amongst five other
national laboratories. This network is utilized by EM and by
the sites to reduce the risk in a number of different programs.
So, for example, EM asked us to review technology development
program, and we completed the review by putting a team together
and provided various recommendations and suggestions. We
identified R&D to accelerate Hanford tank waste mission, how do
we do it faster and cheaper? We use technology--we did a review
on using technology for remaining soil and groundwater for
remediation of Hanford and other sites.
So we as a whole look at sites that EM and LM is
responsible for and, when specifically merited, we bring other
national laboratories together as a team and fundamentally look
at those specific problems and trying to provide
recommendations to the EM program office.
Ms. Bonamici. And, Dr. Majidi, when you talk about
reducing--or using technology----
Dr. Majidi. Yes.
Ms. Bonamici [continuing]. For safer work, I assume that
means reducing the human exposure
Dr. Majidi. That's exactly a part of it.
Ms. Bonamici. OK. So, Mr. White, I'm a Member of the Spent
Nuclear Fuel Solutions Caucus, so I'm committed to working with
our local communities, my colleagues in Congress, and the
Office of Environmental Management to develop a long-term
storage solution for spent nuclear fuel that protects the
environment and public health. I assume you're familiar with
the GAO report that Mr. Anderson discussed today?
Mr. White. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. Bonamici. So in your written testimony, you mentioned
Hanford, and you talk about the storage and disposal of spent
nuclear fuel is a top cleanup priority for the Office of EM.
You also mentioned expediting the cleanup. So the last report
that I saw--and hopefully you can update me on this--was
intended to be about a 30-year project but now they're
projecting about 75 years. Can you give us an update on how
long you expect the Hanford cleanup to take?
Mr. White. How long it takes depends in part on exactly
what we do to do the cleanup, and that's something that we're
still working through. But I would say on the order of 6
decades would be a good guess. I mean that--but again, there's
a lot of uncertainty associated with that number.
Ms. Bonamici. How often do you update that number based on
the technologies that are being developed?
Mr. White. We update the number based on a number of
different factors, right? It depends on what--how you
characterize the number. If you evaluate it as part of an
environmental liability, those numbers get updated on an annual
basis. When we redo lifecycle cost analysis work, those get
updated from time to time, and we most recently had the Corps
of Engineers, for example, do an independent lifecycle cost
analysis for that work and update their expectations. When we
do a system plan every couple of years working with our
regulator, we redo the system plan for the waste there based on
what our current expectations are for regulatory requirements,
and we'll update the number based on what that is. We're
currently involved at the moment, for example, in holistic
negotiations with the State of Washington Department of Ecology
on what the cleanup plan might look like. And whatever comes
out of that set of discussions with the State of Washington
would also drive another look at what we expect that timeframe
to be.
So I know that's not a simple or straightforward answer,
but there's a lot of different ways that we do that, depending
on what the use of the number is going to be.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I'm out of time. I just want
to express, you know, concern about what was originally
supposed to be a 30-year project turning into a now 6-decade
project and the number of people and the risks up there. And I
yield back. I may be submitting additional questions for the
record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from California, Mr. Garcia,
is now recognized.
Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to our
witnesses.
I represent northern L.A. County and parts of Ventura
County, and within my district, we have the Santa Susana Field
Lab, which I know is on your radar for many reasons. It's an
ongoing project with long-term commitment. And so we have a
whole lot of questions relative to that that we'll probably
submit offline, but I just wanted to kind of get your sense--
and I think the question is primarily for Dr. Plodinec and Mr.
Anderson. But as we're looking at these projects and we're
looking at the technology to support these cleanup efforts, can
you walk me through what the relationship is right now and what
the forum looks like between the Federal Government and then
some of the State governments and even down to the local
community government level with regards to the requirements for
the cleanup? And I know that it's--every site is different,
every cleanup effort is sort of bespoke relative to the toxins
and the exposure and the environmentals around it. But the
requirements seem to change frequently. The levels of--and the
thresholds of the cleanup seem to be a moving target. And so
how much of that is driven by the States? How much is that is
defined by the Federal Government, your offices, and what does
that forum look like? What--how do--how does--how do the
multiple levels of government coordinate what the sort of exit
criteria is for these various cleanup projects? Mr.--Dr.
Plodinec, we can start with you.
Dr. Plodinec. Well, probably I am not the right person to
answer that question. I would suggest that that's--probably
really falls into the bailiwick of Mr. White. I would say that
one of the areas that we identified as an--as a research
opportunity was in fact decisionmaking in--with--in areas of
great uncertainty such as you've identified. This is an area
where it's not physical science, it's actually social science.
But a lot of advances have been made and are continuing to be
made that could really help DOE in its decisionmaking
processes.
Mr. Garcia. And, Mr. White--and I appreciate that, Dr.
Plodinec. Mr. White, did you want to either amplify or add to
those comments there?
Mr. White. Well, I mean, just briefly, I think, as you
pointed out, are--the framework that we use for cleanup at each
of the different sites typically depends on a--on an agreement
that we have with the State regulator and usually with the
Environmental Protection Agency. We normally call it a triparty
agreement. Those agreements take different forms at different
sites. And, you know, over time, depending on what's in the
agreement and what the state of technology advancement is and
what we discover as we do the cleanup, will add or amend or
change those agreements.
You know, the exact nature of the cleanup work and the
standards that we try to achieve at each site does, in fact,
depend in large part on the agreements that we reach within
those parties that have regulatory authority at any given
place.
Mr. Garcia. Do you find the States either amicable or
amenable or malleable for that matter to data from other
projects that you're providing them that's based on the science
and the previous best practices and lessons learned from other
cleanups in other States or do they--you know, in California,
we're kind of notorious for having high bars when it comes to
environmental regulations, and things like this are usually--
and I'm assuming California is one of the tougher States in
terms of meeting the requirements and getting to a point where
you can disposition this cleanup effort. But are the States
actually open to seeing the science and the techniques used in
other cleanups and then basing their strategies and their
cleanups, you know, models around that information? Or what do
you see?
Mr. White. I would say that varies quite a bit across the
country from State to State and from regulator to regulator. I
mean, certainly, as you think about the opportunities that you
have for making cleanup work faster or more effectively, one of
the challenges that we face is working to convince all of the
stakeholders involved in that cleanup activity, including our
State regulators, that the better way of doing something that
we think exists is not just a way of doing something that would
be cheaper and reduce lifecycle costs but actually be more
effective from a cleanup perspective and meet the standards for
the protection of the public and the environment that we're all
shooting toward collectively.
Mr. Garcia. Yes, OK. Well, I appreciate that. And I
appreciate Dr. Plodinec's comments. I think we can't just throw
more money at the technology side of this. We have to also--you
know, the social sciences and the behavioral sciences and being
able to negotiate these with the States is very important. And
in some cases, there's not there's not enough money to satisfy
some of these regulators. So I appreciate your guys' efforts,
and I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from California, Mr.
McNerney, is now recognized.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Chairman, thank the witnesses.
Hey, I'm thrilled to hear about the the advances that are being
made here. This is very exciting.
Dr. Plodinec, in your testimony, you discuss the need to
focus resources on long-term science and technology that could
reduce the cost and duration of cleanups. Can ARPA-E support
new breakthrough R&D on cleanup technology?
Dr. Plodinec. In our opinion, they could. I have to
clarify, though, what our thinking was and what's really behind
the words. We did not see ARPA-E as the solution. We saw them
as able to take responsibility for projects that had been
identified by the independent assessment as areas of high
potential return on investment and then be able to, as rapidly
as possible, develop solutions for those areas. We did not see
them as trying to, A, do the targeting per se or to be the ones
who would actually, to use my term, be the technology tailor
that would then take those from ARPA-E into operations. As
always, the--given the site-specific nature of many of these
problems, there's got to be some some cutting and pasting if
you will so their particular technical solution can actually
fit a particular DOE need.
Mr. McNerney. Well, you've mentioned return on investment
now and earlier in your opening testimony. Is there any spinoff
from this technology, say, to reprocessing nuclear waste from
nuclear power plants or long-term storage of nuclear waste from
nuclear power plants or other significant areas?
Dr. Plodinec. Well, as you know, we're not currently in our
country doing reprocessing. But if we were, there certainly--
because of the nature of the chemical separations processes,
there is the potential for a lot of spillover. If we were to do
that--I think more importantly, though, for things--for
example, like potentially cleaning up mill tailings,
potentially cleaning up the effluence from fossil-fueled power
plants, there are--there is some potential for that.
But I'd also mentioned that there's also a potential for
beneficial reuse of some of those materials, particularly from
power plants because, as you all know, one of the problems we
face as a country is that precious materials needed for things
such as clean energy, solar cells, et cetera, we just don't
have a lot of that in our country. And there is some of this
that are in some of the waste streams that are not DOE's
necessarily but where the DOE technology could potentially play
a big role.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you for that. Mr. Anderson, do you--
you've mentioned that you think the budgets haven't kept up
with the costs. Do you think that $25 million in annual
research funding is sufficient to develop the kind of
transformational technology that EM envisions?
Mr. Anderson. Well, it's hard to make the case that the
problem is just funding. And the reason why I say that is
because when we did our evaluation, we found that EM couldn't
exactly identify how much money went to R&D. You know, yes,
there is a relatively small and a certainly smaller percentage
that was directly appropriated to it, but when we look at the
entire suite of funds that may have been made available for
R&D, it was approaching $300 million. One hundred and eighty
million dollars of that larger, you know, chunk of money wasn't
able to be tracked. We asked the sites, we asked the labs, you
know, what was this spent on, and there was a--you know, there
was a breakdown in the internal controls at that point. And
hence, that led to our recommendation that EM needs to be able
to identify and track all sources of funding going to R&D. So
before I make the case that, you know, more money is needed,
let's look at what was done with what they had. And maybe
centralizing and prioritizing that pot of funds available that
is already being spent on R&D is the first step.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
Mr. White, how significant is delaying action on the
environmental remediation as contaminants spread in the soil
and groundwater?
Mr. White. Certainly, time is a big factor that we
consider. It depends on the specific situation and how fast the
contaminants are moving in the soil and groundwater. But that's
something that we work with our national laboratories to make
sure that we understand and model, and then depending on the
situation, time is often a concern.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to yield
back.
Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Baird, is
now recognized.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate you
and Ranking Member Weber putting this kind of a session
together. And I always appreciate the expertise that we have
with our witnesses.
And so my first question goes to Dr. Plodinec. And today,
you know, we've been talking about the growing cost of cleanup
and especially facing the Office of Environmental Management.
In your testimony and the report from the National Academies
note that the environmental management could reduce their costs
through investing in strong science and technology programs.
And I think we've made reference to that here already today.
But my question is this. In implementing the recommendations in
the report do you have any additional suggestions for EM on how
to ensure this science and technology program could identify
opportunities for cost savings and incorporating this
consideration into prioritizing the research and development
needs? Mr. Plodinec?
Dr. Plodinec. That's a loaded question. Thank you for it.
Let me try to answer it within the context of our report
itself. One of the things that's important in terms of return
on investment is targeting. That's before you actually are
doing R&D. It's deciding where is the technology effort, where
should it be aimed at? And it's nice to say, OK, we're aiming
at, you know, reducing costs. But really, it's what are those
major cost components? All right. If you look at the DOE budget
submission for 2023, there are three--EM's budget submission, I
should say. There are three major components. The first, the
largest is tank waste, OK? That's an area we got to talk about
a great deal within the NAS (National Academies of Sciences)
Committee. It drives both DOE EM's costs and schedule. I'll
come back to that in a second. Second is D&D, in other words,
decontaminating facilities and then demolishing them.
The third largest component is site support. This is a very
large and hidden component if you will in terms of our thinking
because what it involves are things like HEPA (high-efficiency
particulate air) filtration, keeping the lights on, the power
on. It's truly a--continuing long term probably a fairly fixed
cost, but it's a big component that it's there that needs to be
considered.
OK. If we look at D&D as an example, our committee when we
went out to--and I won't name the site. So a first-class job
being done using about third-class technology, lots of--there
was a testbed. There was lots of testing to make sure that
people weren't going to be contaminated in this D&D enterprise.
But the highest tech being used was actually a bobcat
excavator. Getting the person out of the potentially
contaminated site involves technologies such as robotics, such
as advanced monitoring and interrogation techniques. They don't
always--they don't have to be things like, you know,
radiometers. They could be light techniques. But again,
developing those kinds of technologies, but it's an idea to get
people out of the loop because robots, for example, they don't
need time off. They don't need--since they don't have a head
and a breathing apparatus, they can work 6 or 8 hours, instead
of, you know, 2 or 3 at a time. So those are the kinds of
technologies that should--that needs to--that we believe needed
to be targeted because they were the ones that had the great
potential return on investment. Great question. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Baird. Well, thank you, and a great answer.
My next question goes to Mr. White. And I'm just going to
give you the chance to hear more about EM's efforts to ensure
it is getting the best return on investment for R&D. And so to
that end, the GAO recommended that EM deploy a system to
collect comprehensive R&D data and evaluate the outcomes
through the EM complex. So my question, can you share more
about EM's efforts to implement that recommendation? And is
this something that the R&D dashboard you mentioned in your
written testimony would address? Mr. White?
Mr. White. Thank you, Congressman. Yes, the dashboard I
mentioned earlier is part of the system that does, in fact,
address that recommendation. I will point out the--you know,
the point of collecting the data and understanding better what
our R&D programs look like across the country by collecting the
data is so that we can, in fact, better manage it, right,
whether it's looking at how we collaborate with other parts of
the Department, looking at opportunities to do that, looking at
challenges that we have, looking at gaps that may exist in our
R&D program. So that is still an ongoing work in progress, the
question of how we now manage that data and best use that data
to improve the program.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. And I'm out of time. And, Mr.
Anderson, I had a question for you, but thank you. But I'm out
of time, so I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Casten,
is now recognized.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our
witnesses.
So I have to start this because I'm going to get cranky
here. And I want to be very clear that I'm a big fan of nuclear
energy, and I'm a huge fan of the Department of Energy, so
don't take any of this as criticism of either. My crankiness is
about math. I am trying to figure out within the nuclear power
industry how much of the waste is innate to the process and how
much is because of the inefficiency of the cycles.
The Energy Information Administration reports that we use 8
quadrillion BTUs (British thermal units) of nuclear energy in
our power sector a year, which is exactly, exactly three times
the amount of megawatt hours generated by the power plants
because the DOE does this goofy number, where they impute the
same conversion energy as our fossil sector to do an imputed
fuel use rather than an actual fuel use.
And if we were to actually turn 8 quads of nuclear fuel
into the 770-some-odd million kilowatt hours that we report, it
would imply that all of the losses are in the cooling tower,
all of the energy in the fuel rod went either to the cooling
tower or to power generation, and there is absolutely no
residual energy in the fuel rods, we don't have a nuclear waste
problem. I suspect that's not true.
So my question that I'm hoping you can help me with, Mr.
White, just to start is can you tell me how much primary energy
do we actually use in our nuclear power plant industry in the
United States, not the 8 million BTUs that DOE reports? How
many quadrillion BTUs does the nuclear industry use in the
United States, civilian nuclear industry?
Mr. White. Congressman, that's a very good question, but
I'm going to have to apologize for the fact that I can't answer
it for you. The environmental cleanup program really is
responsible for disposition of the fuel that we have, but I'm
sure my colleagues----
Mr. Casten. OK.
Mr. White [continuing]. In nuclear energy would be happy to
talk to you about----
Mr. Casten. Do any of the witnesses know the answer to that
question? OK, well, let me ask this another way to any of the
witnesses. What is your understanding of what percentage of the
energy in an input fuel rod remains in the waste and continuing
to emit energy and waste at the end of a nuclear fuel cycle?
Does anybody have that number? Are we talking--I'm hearing our
experts up here saying 90 percent is in the waste. Because, I
mean, here's part of the reason for this, like, I'm trying to
Google on my phone as I sit here, and we all have better access
to information than my phone, I hope. But I'm seeing 5 to 7
percent of the energy goes through the plant. If that's true,
then the 8 quadrillion BTUs that we report is actually more
like 300 quadrillion BTUs. We tell ourselves as a country that
we use 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy in a year in our country,
total primary energy use. Are we off by a factor of 4? That is
a BFD. Excuse me.
The reason I'm riffing on this here is because the----
Mr. Weber. Does that stand for bad finance deal?
Mr. Casten. I will take the Fifth. What I'm trying to--the
reason I'm asking this is because the scope of our nuclear
waste problem is in the first instance a function of how
efficiently we process that input fuel. So let me come--let me
get this back. If it's 5 to 7 percent, if you're right that
it's 10 percent, we're--whatever, we'll get the number, we'll
fire some requests. How much could that number increase?
Because it seems to me that if we could increase that by 10, 20
percent, we have massively reduced the amount of the waste
problem we have. And I want to make sure that as we think about
waste processing, should we really be thinking about this as a
front-end issue?
So, any of the witnesses, do you have any ballparks for how
much we could theoretically improve the conversion efficiency
of our nuclear plants and thereby cut down on the degree of a
waste program that we have? I'm sorry to be the only one making
noise here, but I would love if anybody can follow up offline
because the silence to some--and I'm not saying this as
criticism, but the silence speaks volumes that we are talking
about waste, and we're--and yet it sounds to me like the vast
majority of the waste is being created in the first instance
because we do a very bad job at reporting the actual math, and
so we're not even looking at the right problem. And if I'm
wrong, please clarify. But it feels to me like we're wrong. I
see you got maybe some comments.
Mr. White. No, I'm just going to say I'm sure that my
colleagues in the Office of Nuclear Energy would be happy to
talk to you about this. At LinkedIn I'll work with our folks--
--
Mr. Casten. OK.
Mr. White [continuing]. Make them available.
Mr. Casten. Thank you very much, yield back.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you. The gentlewoman from North
Carolina, Ms. Ross, is now recognized.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the Ranking
Member and to our witnesses for joining us today.
As a Representative from North Carolina, I'm deeply
invested in the management and cleanup of nuclear facilities.
Almost 1/3 of North Carolina's energy comes from nuclear
plants, making us the fifth-largest producer of nuclear power
in the country. And my district is proudly home to the first
university-based Nuclear Reactor Program at the NC State
Department of Nuclear Engineering. Additionally, two of the
remaining 15 cleanup sites are right in our backyard, in
Tennessee and South Carolina.
The work of our witnesses in addressing the waste created
by nuclear testing and nuclear energy is essential to
protecting our environment and our public health. My first
question is for Mr. Anderson. Nuclear waste cleanup requires a
highly specialized, trained work force. And I know that the GAO
has a priority recommendation for DOE about making sure that it
is on top of any skill and competency gaps for parts of the
work force within the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Has GAO identified any work force deficiencies related to
science and technology within environmental management?
Mr. Anderson. Thank you for that question. I'll answer it
in a couple of different ways. One is that we do have some
ongoing work right now, looking at EM's new contracting
approach, end-state contracting, and the extent to which there
may be work force gaps to implement that particular approach.
So I can't comment on that, but that report will be due out
later this summer, and we're happy to make sure that you and
your staff get a copy of that.
I also think it's important to note that there have been a
number of estimates recently about, you know, attrition,
retirement, et cetera, at the Office of Environmental
Management, and Mr. White may have more recent updated data on
this, but the last data I saw was somewhere between 1/3 to
maybe even as much as 1/2 of EM's work force will be eligible
to retire in the next 5 years, and that is a significant, you
know, gap that will need to be addressed in the near future.
Ms. Ross. Mr. White, do you want to elaborate before I ask
my next question?
Mr. White. You know, I would just say that looking at the
work force that we have for the future is a--is something that
we're very much focused on. We can't do cleanup work, we can't
do R&D if we don't have the right folks to do that.
I will say that we have a number of efforts across the
country with companies that do work for us and with our
national laboratories to address this. We do this at a site-
specific basis, working with local colleges, universities, and
school systems. We do this from a more EM-wide perspective. I
certainly appreciate, for example, the support we got from
Congress this past year to increase our funding for minority
serving institutions, which is a very important pipeline for us
to be able to go out and get the work force of the future that
we need.
Certainly within the Federal work force what Mr. Anderson
pointed out is true. On the Federal side, the age of our work
force is getting older on average, and that's something that
we're looking at very closely in terms of how do we establish
the pipeline we need on the Federal side as well.
Ms. Ross. Thank you. Mr. Anderson, one additional question
for you with the time I have remaining. In May 2020, GAO
reported that the Office of Legacy Management's challenges
related to climate resilience. As we have seen throughout this
hearing, the estimates for cleanup times and costs have both
increased substantially in the past decade, with many decades
left to go in the process. How is the Office of Environmental
Management managing its R&D efforts in light of climate risks,
especially with these increasing timetables?
Mr. Anderson. Yes, thank you for that question. You know,
that report that you refer to, ma'am, did underscore the need
for the Office of Legacy Management to better incorporate, you
know, some of the modeling on climate change into its long-term
plans because I think what's important to note that--here is
that when the Office of Environmental Management completes its
mission, it then hands over those sites to the Office of Legacy
Management. You know, DOE, the Federal Government doesn't stop
having stewardship responsibilities. And so the more that we
know about the climate change and what the models may show, we
need to integrate that information into our long-term planning
to include things like waste disposition, you know, where we
end up storing this waste that will be hazardous to some extent
for tens of thousands of years, how do we build that into the
planning.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb,
is now recognized.
Mr. Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this is a
question for Mr. White, but anyone is free to weigh in on it.
Mr. White, I wanted to ask you about the issue of mill
tailings. We have a site in western Pennsylvania in Canonsburg
for uranium mill tailings. It's been under legacy management
for a while. And it--my understanding is that the--you know,
the burial of those was successful, and radiation levels remain
at background. But recently, there was a Ewing sarcoma cancer
cluster in that general vicinity, and the location of this site
kind of popped back into the news, you know, as a concern that
residents had.
And so I--really, I was mainly curious if you could talk
about what happens to a site like that when it's under legacy
management. You know, is there sort of active monitoring? I
think people picture it as just something that's buried in the
ground and ignored, potentially threatening them in ways that
people understand. But my sense is that your office is involved
in much more active management of these sites than that.
Mr. White. Thank you, Congressman. You're right, the Office
of Environmental Management is the office that's responsible
for the active cleanup. And then once the active cleanup is
done, the long-term monitoring is typically done by the Office
of Legacy Management. That is an area, though, that we are
looking at R&D to improve what we do. There is a long-term
monitoring effort that a number of DOE's laboratories,
including Savannah River National Laboratory, is involved in at
the moment. It's one of the activities that we fund with the
technology development budget that we've gotten from Congress.
And part of what we do is actually monitor long-term what
we put in place in terms of corrective actions or measures to
ensure the safety of the public and the environment to make
sure that those are continuing to be effective. The Office of
Legacy Management does that monitoring----
Mr. Lamb. When you say monitoring, are we just talking
about sort of basic local radiation levels or do you mean
something more specific?
Mr. White. You're typically talking about fairly extensive
soil and groundwater monitoring. There will normally be----
Mr. Lamb. OK.
Mr. White [continuing]. Permitted points around the site,
both for soil and groundwater, where measurements are taken on
a certain frequency. There's usually a permitted closure level
where--and an action level where we've agreed with the
regulators in terms of what the limits are going to be. We make
that information public. We publish it from time to time. And,
as I understand it, the Office of Legacy Management will often
hold public meetings in sites that are concerned about what
those numbers would look like.
Mr. Lamb. Got it. And, Dr. Majidi, that--he had mentioned
your lab conducting some research on this. Was there anything
specific to the uranium mill tailing sites that you're aware
of?
Dr. Majidi. Sorry, it's inclusive of those as well.
Realistically, we're working with LM very closely to reduce the
cost of this monitoring because when you do monitor these
sites, it involves active samplings analysis and then
developing computer models, trying to develop a long-term look
at these, including--LM now includes some climate change data
to identify what happens to these LM sites over the next 30 or
40 years. We have developed a series of sensor networks that
are going to be overlaid to these legacy management sites to
provide real-time data as critical issues including additional
rainfall and the outcome of that. So it's a pretty active
program. We have a test site at the Savannah River Site that we
are implementing in the F area. And as the result shows more
and more promise, we're hoping to be able to develop this
technology at all legacy management sites.
Mr. Lamb. Great. Well, I thank you both for your efforts.
And I know actually here in Pittsburgh we received a research
grant for basically using AI (artificial intelligence) and some
fiberoptics to monitor the condition of the casks themselves,
hopefully prevent deterioration. So I know you're doing a lot
of the crucial work to protect people, and I just want to make
sure people know that.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much.
We're going to do another quick round of questioning if
that's OK with the witnesses. OK. I'll start. This one is for
Mr. White.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 (NDAA)
called for DOE to create certain programs related to improving
nuclear cleanup, research, and development. This includes an
incremental technology development program, a high-impact
technology development program, and an environmental management
university program. What steps has DOE taken or does it plan to
take to implement these programs? And if implemented, how will
these programs change the Office of Environmental Management's
approach to R&D?
Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that
question. It's--if you think about what is laid out in that
authorization language, the three components that you talked
about, most of the individual pieces that the authorization
language talks about we actually have in place in the
Environmental Management program in different forms. But one of
the things that we're doing right now in EM in total is really
looking at how we manage the cleanup program at--partly in
response to the GAO report and the National Academies report
that we talked about earlier.
So as we do that, what we intend to do is take a look at
our program review, compare it to the specific elements that
are laid out in the NDAA language, and make sure that the
program we're talking about developing captures the elements
that are laid out in the NDAA. Like I said, a lot of the things
that they talk about are in place in the program. Some of them
are not that we need to work to build, and we're working to
build to do that. One of the more interesting things that we're
working to contract right now is there's a suggestion at the
beginning of it that we work with the Corps of Engineers, for
example, to get an independent perspective on what the level of
funding should be for the different components of the program.
So we're currently working right now with the Corps of
Engineers to figure out how to do that as we revamp the
program.
Chairman Bowman. Just one more, just one more. OK. Thank
you so much for that response.
Mr. Anderson, in May 2020, GAO reported on the Office of
Legacy Management's challenges related to climate resilience.
As we have seen throughout this hearing, the estimates for
cleanup times and costs have both increased substantially in
the past decade with many decades left to go in the process.
How is the Office of Environmental Management managing its R&D
efforts in light of climate risk, especially with increasing
timetables for completing cleanup at some of the most complex
sites like Hanford? Could R&D in this space stave off future
climate-related delays?
Mr. Anderson. Thank you, sir. I'd like to start my answer
to that question using a bit of an example as it illustrates,
you know, the theme that you just articulated. And I think it
was at the Rocky Flats site where there was a tremendous
rainfall not too long ago, and that rainfall event was more
extreme than the models had predicted. And as a result, there
had to be, you know, some additional work to, you know, to
stabilize some of the affected areas. And that shows what can
change between what we knew 20 years ago and what we know now
with regard to some of these extreme weather events.
We haven't looked into the Office of Environmental
Management and how they build in, you know, climate change
data, you know, into a variety of their activities, although I
would suspect that one of the most important places to look and
to be infusing that information into modeling would be on the
long-term disposition of the waste. You know, the waste coming
from the tanks, for example, has to be immobilized. Most of
it's going to be immobilized in grout. How does that grout, you
know, hold up to extreme weather events? Down in the Savannah
River Site it's encapsulated in these large saltstone disposal
units and ultimately will be covered with a cap. Those
engineered barriers have a ton of science behind them as to,
you know, what kind of extreme weather events they can
withstand. But at the end of the day, I believe Mr. White may
know more about the specifics there.
Chairman Bowman. Mr. White, can you jump in?
Mr. White. I mean, certainly, this is something that we
look at across the program. As a matter of fact, at this
moment, we're in the process of updating the climate
vulnerability assessments that we do for each of our sites. I
expect that to be done, I think, by the end of this fiscal
year. When that's done, you'll--what we would do is look across
the--what we identify as new vulnerabilities that we had
previously thought about at different sites. And I think, you
know, in the context of this hearing, I think that also
provides us with an opportunity for where R&D might help or
more modeling efforts might help us focus on addressing those
vulnerabilities in the long term. Some of that work is already
underway. I mean, Dr. Majidi mentioned earlier on the long-term
monitoring system. One of the things that they're looking at--
and this is the impacts of things like increased rainfall.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you. Mr. Weber?
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Chairman.
Interesting question, after listening to Congresswoman
Bonamici from Oregon talk about the waste that was stored
there, 27 billion gallons of groundwater treated, actively
treating 2 billion gallons annually, and there's 24 billion
gallons left. I think there's 18 waste tanks emptied and 18.7
million tons of soil and debris disposed. And she talks it
being the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Saddle Mountain fault, and
they're right by the Columbia River, which brings to mind were
there to be an earthquake--and I think she said--she made that
mention maybe they're overdue for an earthquake. I don't know
how--I don't know why they would schedule that.
But anyway, is there a list of facilities--the amount of
things that she listed is pretty substantial in my opinion. Is
there a listing of waste storage across the country so that we
say, OK, this would be really catastrophic if all of that,
whatever it is, however many billions of gallons of
contaminated wastewater got down into the river, Columbia
River, and on out? Is there a list of the amount of waste
that's stored and what kind of risk is involved? Is there a
list? And that's just for anybody. Dr. Majidi, we'll start with
you.
Dr. Majidi. So at Savannah River Site, we know the
inventory quite well. And I'm sure across the EM site, that's
well known to every organization.
Mr. White. I just want to point out as part of what DOE
does at all of its operating sites, not just the cleanup sites,
but the national security sites, science sites as well, every
decade or so we update what we call our Natural Phenomena
Hazards Assessment. We actually go out and look at what
earthquake levels are expected at each of our sites and what
the vulnerabilities are to the activities and waste storage
activities that we have at the sites are to those
vulnerabilities and then make sure that those concerns are
addressed and whatever the safety basis or licensing documents
associated with the facilities that we use to either operate or
store the waste.
Certainly, some of our priorities are driven by an
understanding that, over time, the condition of facilities
degrades, and eventually, they might not be able to withstand a
design-basis earthquake, for example, and so we would want to
get material out of such a facility sooner rather than later.
But this is something that we look at very closely at all of
our sites.
Mr. Weber. But you only update that every 10 years, you
said?
Mr. White. Well, yes, every--what you do every 10 years is
we look at the latest science and data in terms of what we
think the worst-case natural phenomena are going to be because,
like all things, the science behind these things changes and
our understanding of earthquakes changes and so our
understanding of--so we take--we update our understanding of
what we think the worst-case scenarios are going to be every 10
years, and then an ongoing--on an ongoing basis we use that as
the basis if you will for then all of the stuff that underlies
the safety of our activities, the licensing documents, the
safety basis documents. That gets folded into these things that
are maintained on an ongoing basis to ensure that whatever
we're doing, whether it's operating a currently operating
nuclear facility or storing waste is able to withstand those
design-basis events.
Mr. Weber. And so what was it? I'm not--I don't have my
notes open, but there was 115 sites and 92 of them had already
been dealt with? Is that--do I remember those numbers right?
Mr. White. One hundred and seven and 92, yes, sir.
Mr. Weber. OK, 107 and 92. So, of those, is there a
priority list to where you actually focus--try to focus more
attention, money, manpower, or whatever the term might be, or
are they all treated equally?
Mr. White. We go through an annual prioritization process
as part of our planning and execution on the program management
side. You can see this reflected every year in what we publish
as our calendar year set of priorities. So we have both a
strategic vision that lays out priorities across the enterprise
over the next decade, and every year we publish an update in
the first part of the year what our calendar year priorities
are for the complex at large.
Mr. Weber. And I'm going to assume that there's some--
there's a--in that matrix, there's a calculation about--and I
forget the name of the Columbia River--Hanford, Washington? Is
that--I think is the area maybe?
Mr. White. Yes, there are a number of activities at the
Hanford Site that show up on that priorities list, yes, sir.
Mr. Weber. OK. So does that take into calculation are there
in that area--choose a number--50-mile radius, 100-mile radius,
is the population 1 million or is it 20 million? Do you take
that into account?
Mr. White. I'd need to get back to you on that. I don't--
off the top of my head, I don't think so, but let me take that
for the record and get back----
Mr. Weber. OK. All right.
Mr. White [continuing]. With you.
Mr. Weber. Well, that's--just came to mind when Ms.
Bonamici brought that up, and I appreciate her bringing that
up. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence. I yield
back.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you.
Before we bring the hearing to a close, I want to thank our
witnesses for testifying before the Committee today. The record
will remain open for 2 weeks for additional statements from the
Members and for any additional questions the Committee may ask
of the witnesses. The witnesses are now excused, and the
hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Mr. William ``Ike'' White
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. Vahid Majidi
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Dr. John Plodinec
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Mr. Nathan Anderson
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]
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