Abstract
A definition of Long-Term Stewardship (LTS) is: “all activities required to protect human health and the environment from hazards remaining after cleanup is complete.” “Cleanup” in this sense may mean completion of a prescribed remedy for contaminated soil or buried waste, or it could mean entombment of a nuclear facility or placing nuclear materials in safe, long-term storage. Among the activities included in this definition are long-term monitoring and surveillance, maintenance of engineered barriers, operation and maintenance of long-term remedies (such as groundwater pump and treat operations), institutional controls (e.g., deed restrictions, land use restrictions, permanent markers, etc.), and information management (including intergenerational transfer of data on residual hazards). The magnitude of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) LTS commitments, in terms of scope, cost, and time, is beginning to be better understood.
The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has been chartered to assist DOE’s Idaho Operations Office and the DOE Headquarters Office of Long-Term Stewardship in:
1. planning and management of the National Long-Term Stewardship Program,
2. ensuring the effective transition of sites from cleanup to long-term stewardship,
3. ensuring safe and effective execution of long-term stewardship operations (in conjunction with the DOE Grand Junction Project Office), and
4. developing and implementing improvements to long-term stewardship operations and decision making through advances in science and technology (S&T).
An initial step in determining how advances in S&T can be applied in the LTS program is to identify LTS S&T needs. These are needs which, if advances in scientific understanding can be made or technologies developed to address the needs, may result in reduced risk, cost, or uncertainty of LTS activities, or improved reliability of LTS measures. After LTS S&T needs are identified, DOE will coordinate and manage a research and development program to address needs which aren’t already being addressed through current projects.
In Fiscal Year (FY) 2000 (October 1999 through September 2000), we completed an Initial Needs Assessment and Technology Baseline Inventory 2000 report (available on the Internet at http://emi-web.inel.gov/lts), and prepared a Conceptual Framework for a Science and Technology Roadmap. The needs were analyzed, sorted, and placed into categories where they seemed to logically group. The greatest number of needs identified were related to monitoring and surveillance. In FY 2001 (October 2000 through September 2001), we will initiate development of a LTS Roadmap. This Roadmap will lay out a plan for prioritizing and funding research and technology development that has the greatest potential for impacting cost and reliability of LTS actions.
