E. Powell and J. Bashaw
Project Performance Corporation

S. Livingstone
USDOE

Since 1989, The Department of Energy's Environmental Management program (EM) has grown to include 137 sites in 31 states and one U.S. territory. Based on the analysis conducted for this paper, approximately 100 of these sites are expected to require some level of long-term stewardship after remediation activities at the site are complete. Unlike remediation activities, stewardship at some sites may need to continue indefinitely to ensure that humans and the environment are adequately protected from residual contamination. In light of the magnitude and duration of stewardship activities, the Department needs to evaluate the current institutional framework to assess its adequacy in addressing present and impending stewardship requirements. This paper provides the first comprehensive (if still preliminary) view of the sites currently under the EM program that may require long-term stewardship after cleanup is completed. It is intended to complement the EM program's current planning efforts by describing the scope of stewardship requirements and providing suggestions on how the EM program can begin preparing for sites to make the transition from cleanup to stewardship.

In the late 1980's, nuclear weapons production ceased and the Department of Energy (DOE) began focusing its efforts on active cleanup. As a result of this transition, DOE established a new organization, the Office of Environmental Management (EM), that focused on environmental restoration, waste management, and nuclear materials and facilities stabilization. Through this organization, DOE began to address the federal government's responsibility to clean up the Department's sites that were used to support the production, research, and testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War Era. To support this mission, the EM program initiated a strategic planning process to accelerate cleanup at all of DOE's sites, and to complete cleanup at as many sites as possible by 2006. This strategic planning process has become known as the "National 2006 Plan."

As DOE's National 2006 Plan is implemented, an increasing number of sites will be cleaned-up and closed. These sites will then either enter into a phase of long-term care or be sold or transferred to other entities for alternative uses. In this paper, the term "cleanup"refers to active remediation and waste management to stabilize, contain and/or dispose of radioactive and hazardous waste and contamination. Completing cleanup does not necessarily indicate that sites will be returned to levels acceptable for unrestricted use (i.e., no health risks posed by exposure to land, surface water, or groundwater). In many cases it is technically or economically infeasible to fully remediate a site because of the degree of contamination and type of contaminants present. At these sites, additional monitoring and maintenance will be required to ensure that human health and the environment remain protected after cleanup has been completed. The completion of cleanup and closing of the Department's sites means that the federal government will need to provide long-term care to sites where residual contamination, waste, and excess nuclear materials will remain onsite.

When considering the level of cleanup and the long-term care requirements anticipated for the sites, it is important to also consider the potential future uses of sites and the degree of ongoing site maintenance or monitoring necessary when cleanup is completed. The future uses (e.g., agricultural, residential, industrial, open space, or restricted access) of DOE sites are determined through negotiated agreements among DOE, regulators, and stakeholders. For instance, cleanup goals at a site or a portion of a site intended for future industrial use will generally be less stringent than those needed at a site intended for residential use. At sites where waste or residual contamination will remain, the EM program may be responsible for monitoring, implementing use restrictions, and providing other "stewardship" activities to prevent exposure to these hazards. Providing for stewardship of these sites will be the last stage of the nuclear weapons production cycle that began more than fifty years ago.

In the Department, the term "stewardship" can have a variety of meanings. It is often used to refer to "stockpile stewardship", which is the program to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile of nuclear weapons. In this paper, long-term stewardship is defined broadly to mean all activities required to maintain an adequate level of protection to human health and the environment from the hazards posed by nuclear and/or chemical materials, waste, and residual contamination remaining after cleanup is completed. Stewardship can be either active or passive, and includes activities such as post-closure monitoring of contamination, safeguarding nuclear materials, monitoring the effectiveness of remedies, inspecting disposal cells, enforcing physical access restrictions, invoking permits and other legal or institutional controls, and generally providing responsible long-term care of the sites. For example, clay caps built over landfills will require occasional repair due to damage caused by weather and erosion. Some of these stewardship activities are prescribed by regulation, compliance agreements, or DOE orders, while others have not yet been defined. Additionally, rigorous record keeping will be required to ensure information on the location and longevity of residual contamination is preserved and accessible to future generations so that inadvertent intrusion into contaminated areas is minimized.

In many cases, the current technologies and remedies will last a shorter period of time than the waste and contamination at sites. Therefore, long-term stewardship will be required to ensure follow-up maintenance of existing remedies, provide confidence that current remedies remain credible and reliable, and to determine if replacement remedies should be implemented.

This study provides the first comprehensive, albeit preliminary, view of the sites currently within the responsibility of the EM program that may require stewardship after cleanup is completed. It is intended to complement the EM program's current planning efforts to accelerate cleanup by describing the scope of anticipated stewardship requirements and how the EM program can prepare for the transition from cleanup to stewardship. This study is not intended to suggest that decisions about particular cleanup levels and future land uses have been made (some decisions have been made and implemented, others have not yet been made); rather it reflects information and assumptions from previous and current planning documents and examines their implications.

Many of the decisions regarding nuclear materials and waste management, storage, and disposition are still pending, as are many site-wide decisions regarding the level of cleanup and future land use. This study is intended to provide a basis for more informed discussions between DOE, its sites, and affected communities on stewardship needs and the potential links between cleanup decisions, risks, costs, technologies, future land use, and the level of effort required to conduct stewardship activities.

The Department is responsible for remediating contamination resulting from nuclear weapons research, testing, and production at a number of sites across the country. When cleanup activities are completed, the majority of these sites will not be returned to pristine conditions because it is either technologically or economically infeasible to do so. At these sites, the cleanup goals are developed (in conjunction with stakeholders) to stabilize contamination, prevent migration of wastes or contaminants, and minimize impacts on human health and the environment. Because the Department is incapable of returning many sites to pre-use conditions, the disposed waste and residual contamination at sites pose several long-term management concerns.

The EM program manages several types of radioactive and hazardous wastes and byproducts that pose differing levels of concerns. These wastes are generally disposed of in engineered landfills, repositories, or vaults that will remain onsite following remediation and closure. In some cases, due to existing engineering limitations, the design life of disposal facilities is significantly shorter than the time these materials pose potential risks. These disposal units will require repair, monitoring, and surveillance to ensure that current levels of protectiveness are maintained. These repairs include activities such as inspections for intrusion and structural integrity as well as monitoring the potential migration of the wastes in the units. These activities occur during the operation of the site by site personnel and will continue to be required once the site is closed and DOE no longer maintains a full-time presence at the site. Not only will these activities be needed in perpetuity, they are likely to increase in frequency as time passes and the disposal units approach the end of their design life.

In addition to buried wastes, many sites will have contaminated groundwater, soils, and surface waters that will not be fully remediated. Contaminated groundwater is of particular concern at many of the Department's existing sites because of both the inherent difficulties in remediating this medium and the number of sites where groundwater is contaminated. Groundwater at some DOE sites contains radionuclides or volatile organic compounds that may have non-aqueous phase liquids, which remain hazardous for long periods of time and are difficult or impossible to remediate given currently available technologies.

Contaminated soils will remain at all sites where remediation to background levels will not occur. At sites with capped contaminated soil areas, periodic inspections will be needed to ensure that erosion, burrowing animals, or invading root systems of plants do not violate the integrity of the caps and that contamination does not spread.

Surface water contamination is usually in the form of contamination settled into sediments. Contaminated sediments in surface waters are only a hazard if the sediments are disturbed, or if bioaccumulation occurs in bottom dwelling aquatic receptors. The potential for human exposures can occur through dermal contact with the disturbed sediments, or ingestion of contaminated fish or water.

Some DOE sites have a wide variety of nuclear materials that are no longer needed for their original missions, including plutonium residues, spent nuclear fuel, and depleted uranium. The plutonium and some spent nuclear fuel require stabilization, safeguards and security, and storage prior to disposal, while some forms of depleted uranium and other materials are relatively stable and may require only periodic monitoring. Although management of most nuclear materials does not fall under the purview of the EM program, all nuclear materials will require some degree of stewardship for the duration of their life span.

The EM program is also responsible for maintaining and monitoring excess facilities, many of which are contaminated. This responsibility can have long-term resource implications for stewardship, particularly at the large sites that have significantly contaminated structures, such as reprocessing canyons and reactors, for which there is no feasible technology to safely decontaminate them without seriously endangering the health of workers.

Stewardship will also be required at some sites because it is mandated by regulations for certain waste types, contamination, disposal units, or sites. Although the duration of the regulatory requirement is usually significantly shorter than the duration of the hazards associated with the regulated waste or unit, this is primarily the result of the need of regulators to impose enforceable restrictions. For example, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) mandates post-closure care of disposal units for 30 years after the unit ceases accepting waste. This requirement tells us that, at a minimum, stewardship will be required at that unit for at least 30 years. However, because the wastes in most RCRA disposal cells are known to remain hazardous for far greater than 30 years, it also shows that the regulatory requirements are insufficient for the long-term protection of human health and the environment. This is not to say that regulators in any of the relevant agencies have been negligent in the performance of their duties. Rather, it indicates that limited knowledge on long-term risks, potential future technologies, and existing predictive models have influenced the current regulatory climate.

This section briefly describes our approach in conducting this analysis and our preliminary results. All of the data used in this analysis were submitted for purposes other than this paper. Although no additional data call was conducted specifically to support this project, the data used have gone through headquarters review and site concurrence.

For this analysis, we used data submitted by the sites to support the Accelerating Cleanup Discussion Draft. Information was taken from the site and project endstates submitted in the project baseline summaries. For sites that did not submit information for the Accelerating Cleanup Discussion Draft, data were taken from the endstate descriptions provided in the 1996 Baseline Environmental Management Report. For each site, this analysis identified potential long-term requirements for contaminated groundwater, residually-contaminated soils, disposal units, facilities, and excess nuclear materials. By analyzing the site endstates and descriptions of long-term maintenance activities, we attempted to determine:

• The universe of sites that would require stewardship once remediation is completed; and
• The type of stewardship and level of effort that would be required to ensure the long-term protectiveness of the remedies selected.

For a breakdown of the sites expected to require stewardship, this analysis divided sites into three categories:

• Sites expected to require active stewardship;
• Sites expected to require passive stewardship; and
• Sites not expected to require stewardship.

Although larger sites such as Hanford and the Savannah River Site are significantly different than some of the smaller FUSRAP sites, this analysis treated each as a single site. Because of the wide variety in size, type, and extent of contamination between various sites, the report notes those cases where areas of more complex sites fall into one, both, or all three stewardship categories.

This initial analysis was conducted prior to the data submittal for the Draft National 2006 Plan. The results presented here reflect the best data available at the time of this analysis. At the time of this writing, we are in the process of updating the results based on the data submitted for the Draft National 2006 Plan and to reflect the transfer of the FUSRAP program to the Corps of Engineers.

Forty-four sites are expected to require maximum active controls. These sites range in size and type from two former uranium mill tailing sites requiring groundwater pump-and-treat systems to the six largest sites -- the Hanford Site, the Savannah River Site, the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site, and the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site -- with numerous landfills, capped soils, and extensive groundwater monitoring and pump-and-treat systems.

Forty-one sites are expected to require minimum active controls, including 20 former uranium mill tailing sites, seven FUSRAP sites, and 14 other small sites. For example, at some sites, hot spots were excavated and the residual contamination was covered and revegetated. These areas will require periodic monitoring and inspections. For some sites, groundwater must be monitored to ensure that contamination is not spreading, such as at the former nuclear explosion sites (e.g., Amchitka Island and Project Gas Buggy) that require annual surveillance and monitoring of groundwater for 100 years. Some FUSRAP sites, such as the Colonie Site in New York, and all uranium mill tailings disposal facilities will require surveillance and maintenance for residual contaminated soils or consolidated waste and periodic groundwater compliance monitoring. DOE sites subject to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), where wastes will be left on-site, will require five-year reviews to ensure that the remedy selected remains protective.

Activities include RCRA post-closure monitoring, inspections anticipated as a result of the presence of radionuclides or residual contamination, and active pumping and treatment or frequent monitoring. For example, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory will have closed tank farms, disposal units, and entombed facilities that will require active controls for at least the next 100 years. At Mound, a much smaller site, staff will monitor the Miami-Erie Canal bed and provide RCRA post-closure monitoring for two closed landfills.

Fifteen sites are expected to require only passive controls. Assuming that passive controls would be needed for soils cleaned to an industrial future use or cleaned to NRC standards for no radiological restrictions, this analysis estimates that 15 sites would require only passive stewardship. These sites include several former uranium mill tailing and FUSRAP sites and four small sites at which only deed restrictions or use restrictions are required, including use restrictions on ground or surface waters, restrictions on disrupting soils (e.g., to pour a foundation), and restrictions on building use. However, no monitoring or inspection activities are anticipated. In addition to the 15 sites at which passive controls are expected to be the only requirement, portions of other sites are also expected to require only passive controls. For example, the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve at the Hanford Site will be remediated to open space criteria, but ground-water restrictions will be maintained.

Fig. 1 presents a map of all the sites expected to require either active or passive stewardship.

Thirty-seven sites are not expected to require stewardship. Based on current cleanup plans, 37 of the EM program's 137 sites are not expected to require stewardship or to be the responsibility of the Department after cleanup is completed. That is, some sites have been or will be completely remediated and made available for unrestricted land use. The Department has already completed cleanup at 31 sites to levels adequate to support unrestricted use. Most of these sites are former uranium mill tailing sites with no disposal cells (i.e., the tailings have been disposed of at another site), vicinity properties associated with the mill tailing sites, and several sites under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).

The EM program has already completed cleanup at some sites, and remediation work at most other sites will be completed by 2006. Figure 2 shows the transition of these sites from cleanup to stewardship over time. Most DOE sites will begin to require some level of stewardship, including some level of active or passive controls, during the next few years.

In the near future, DOE will continue to make the transition from a cleanup mission to a mission primarily of stewardship. According to the most recent information from the Department's cleanup plans, approximately 100 sites will eventually require some level of stewardship. The functions required for stewardship are quite different from those being performed for the cleanup phase and, unlike the earlier stages of the cycle, the stewardship mission may continue indefinitely. The EM program has the opportunity to look to the future stewardship needs of DOE sites and to begin preparing for these new missions now. This paper presents two major findings and recommendations.

Despite some substantial efforts in the past few years, the Department's understanding of life-cycle costs for the EM program -- including the costs for long-term stewardship -- remains limited. Through the current planning efforts, site personnel are looking for opportunities to lower risks and long-term costs. In the Baseline Report, the Department estimated that the total long-term surveillance and maintenance costs would be approximately $6.7 billion through 2070. According to the Discussion Draft of Accelerating Cleanup: Focus on 2006, long-term surveillance and maintenance costs are currently estimated to range from approximately $100 to $250 million per year. These estimates, however, are preliminary. In some cases, it is difficult to estimate these costs because site remedies and end states are still being determined, making the long-term stewardship requirements uncertain. Of the sites that submitted costs, many were unable to include all cost elements or cover the full period that costs are expected to be incurred. For example, staff at the Fernald Site estimated costs through 2015, but stated that monitoring, maintenance, and institutional controls will be required "in perpetuity."

Additionally, the EM program has relatively limited understanding of the long-term risks that remain after cleanup is completed. Given the long time periods that stewardship will be required at some sites, it is likely that problems will arise, potentially exposing individuals or the environment to a hazard. To understand the full implications of long-term risks and costs, EM needs to consider the probability that controls to limit exposure will eventually fail.

To better understand the risk and cost implications of the present course of the EM program, EM needs to focus on several analytical questions, including:

• What are the long-term costs of stewardship, both at site-level and for the total program?
• What are the primary drivers of these costs (i.e., what is the functional cost breakdown)?
• What is the relationship between near term investments in more complete cleanup, versus long-term costs for managing residual contaminants from less complete cleanup? For example, when is it more cost-effective to exhume contamination and consolidate it at a central location rather than leave contamination on-site and provide long-term stewardship? How should these and other intergeneration equity issues be decided?
• How do risks compare at each site: before cleanup, after cleanup with stewardship, and after cleanup without stewardship?

These issues should be investigated in a coordinated analysis, with input from all parts of DOE, both headquarters and field elements, as well and other federal agencies, states, local governments, and interested stakeholders. The results could help form the basis for a strategy to incorporate long-term stewardship issues more fully into the current management of the EM program. With a better understanding of both risks and costs, the EM program in concert with regulators and other stakeholders, can make more informed decisions regarding how much to spend on site remediation, technology development, and long-term stewardship activities.

Current activities related to stewardship underway within EM, DOE, other parts of the federal government, and state and local governments, are not fully coordinated and responsibility for stewardship at some sites is unknown or unclear. In the late 1980's, large-scale nuclear weapons production ceased, and funding at most sites began shifting to the EM program. Early in that transition, DOE separated the organization conducting the cleanup mission from the nuclear weapons production mission carried out by the Office of Defense Programs. This new organization focused on environmental restoration, waste management and, more recently, nuclear materials and facilities stabilization. As sites or parts of sites were no longer used for production, they were transferred to the EM program. This provided a clearly defined flow of sites and facilities (and usually the budget authority) from these programs into a single organization -- EM. As the EM program completes these initial missions, it is moving toward the final phase of the weapons production process -- providing stewardship for sites with residual contamination, waste, and excess nuclear materials .

Multiple site and headquarters programs are engaged in various aspects of stewardship. DOE has already designated organizations to carry out stewardship activities at some sites. Within the EM program, the GJO has responsibility for long-term surveillance and maintenance of the former uranium mill tailing (UMTRA), and certain other environmental restoration sites with no on-going missions.

At the other sites with waste and contamination, the EM program (or DOE) has not officially assigned the long-term stewardship requirements for several types of sites, including:

• Sites now under the Office of Waste Management (e.g., low-level waste disposal facilities);
• Larger sites with no on-going DOE mission after cleanup; and
• Sites with on-going DOE missions other than cleanup, such as the national laboratories.

Although this piecemeal approach may work for a while, the situation could lead to inefficiencies, duplication of stewardship functions, confusion, and an overall lack of focus on stewardship needs. It could also stand in the way of standardizing functions that apply to multiple sites, such as the development of technology and information systems, and the application of institutional controls.

To address these organizational gaps, the EM program should establish or designate an organization to manage and oversee all stewardship activities. This organization would assign, coordinate, and restructure, if necessary, all stewardship activities as they arise. The major function of the organization would be to ensure that overall stewardship activities are effectively carried out. With EM accelerating cleanup at sites around the country, the need for a comprehensive stewardship program will only become more pressing over time. At present, with 21 sites already in stewardship and 91 scheduled to be complete by 2006, the Department needs to begin planning for a stewardship institution now.

Several reasons exist that indicate that a stewardship organization separate from EM may be warranted. First, the tasks to be performed for long-term stewardship are distinct from those generally performed by EM's current organizations. These tasks include an emphasis on record-keeping and inspection, as well as long-term maintenance activities. Second, by transferring responsibility for sites to a distinct organization for long-term stewardship, the organization would provide a clear demarcation of when cleanup is complete. In the same manner as a transfer from DOE's Office of Defense Programs to the EM program indicates that the nuclear weapons mission for a site is complete, and a transfer from EM's Office of Nuclear Material and Facility Stabilization to the Office of Environmental Restoration indicates that the site is stabilized and ready for cleanup, transferring sites to a stewardship organization would provide a sense of closure for the cleanup and waste management organizations. Figure 3 indicates how sites are currently transferred within DOE and depicts the lack of an organization for long-term stewardship.

The findings and recommendations presented in this paper require a relatively high level of Departmental activity and restructuring. Although these findings can seem daunting, there are obtainable, finite issues that need to be addressed now to improve Departmental understanding of stewardship issues over the long-term. These tasks will help resolve some of the outstanding issues that must be addressed in order for the Department to develop an institution and organizational structure capable of supporting the Department's stewardship needs. Some of these tasks and their relevance to the overall question of "How should DOE prepare for long-term stewardship responsibilities?" are discussed below.

As the DOE presence is eliminated or reduced at sites, there is a growing risk of losing the current institutional knowledge detailing the historical uses, environmental releases and accidents at the site, as well as the buried wastes and hazards that will remain once the site is closed. Collectively, this information is referred to as "stewardship data."

Identifying and transferring this information to future users is a critical task in protecting human health and the environment over the long-term. Making this information available and accessible to the public will help prevent intrusion into areas of residual contamination and maintain existing buffers between human and environmental receptors and the nuclear materials, waste, and contamination that will remain at the sites when cleanup is complete. Additionally, transferring this data supports the public's right-to-know and enhances DOE's "openness" initiative for public access to records.

The Department has recently become an analysis to address this issue by developing a report that identifies:

• What data will future stewards need about a DOE site in order to ensure human health and the environment are protected, historical significance is documented and transferred, and inadvertent intrusion into contamination does not occur?
• How will this data be maintained and transferred?
• Who will ensure that the information remains dynamic and accessible as information technologies change?

This report is expected to be available in the spring of 1998.

The costs, effectiveness, and public acceptance of managing risks at a site will depend partly on technologies used to remediate the sites and those available for stewardship activities. Sites will need post-closure assurance and monitoring technologies to track and verify the condition and integrity of landfills, caps, underground tanks, decommissioned buildings, and other remaining waste or contamination.

Some environmental problems are currently technically or economically infeasible to remediate, such as the underground test areas at the Nevada Test Site or the contamination of the Clinch River and Poplar Creek in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These and other problems may be appropriate to monitor and control access through physical and institutional controls or they may be candidates for investments in new technology. Decisions on where to invest in critical environmental technologies should reflect the limitations of available technologies, risk management goals, technology development costs, potential financial and societal benefits that may accrue from significantly improved future technologies, and the breadth of potential applications for new technologies. The Department needs to investigate the balance between investing in new technologies now, and the costs and risks occurred in the future. Developing a better understanding of the potential technologies available for monitoring and maintenance, and to replace existing remedies will help the Department make more informed decisions.

While this analysis established a preliminary understanding of the Department's stewardship needs, more work still remains to be done. A better understanding of site-specific stewardship requirements is needed to improve the Department's ability to plan for the future. Continuing to incorporate potential stewardship issues into ongoing and new strategic planning initiatives will be critical to ensuring that Departmental decisions and analyses are based on current site expectations for endstates and future uses. As additional clean-up decisions are made, more information will be available on the stewardship needs of the Department's sites. This information will need to be incorporated into planning efforts. Additionally, it is critical that DOE obtain early and frequent stakeholder input into site endstates, future uses, and the resulting stewardship requirements. Although DOE generally recognizes the need for sites to understand stakeholder needs, DOE also needs to recognize the significant impact that decisions currently being made will have on future uses and the long-term stewardship requirements.

The Department needs to begin identifying and analyzing the institutional policy options for managing stewardship over the long-term. The proper institutional framework needs to be identified and the roles and responsibilities of that organization need to be determined. How will the new organization interact with local governments? How will the maintenance and exchange of information be handled? Will the institution that manages stewardship activities be the same institution that maintains site information over the long-term? The importance of this issue is magnified by the recent transfer of the long-term management of FUSRAP sites to the Corps of Engineers. This transfer of responsibilities to an entity outside of the Department highlights the need to expand the debate on the institutional policy options for long-term stewardship to an audience outside of DOE. Other agencies such as the Department of Interior and Department of Defense will face similar long-term stewardship issues. The proper institutional framework for long-term stewardship of DOE sites may be an organization outside of the Department.

Most stewardship activities will involve inspection and maintenance of disposal cells, remedies, or entire sites. In order to effectively provide stewardship for these units and sites, the Department needs to develop both general and site-specific inspection and maintenance requirements. General risk-based goals need to be developed to ensure that a standard degree of protection is uniformly applied across all of the Department's sites. However, because of differences in residual contamination, hydrology, future use, etc. between sites, site specific requirements will need to be developed to ensure that risk goals are achieved, costs are minimized, and maintenance is conducted on markers and units.

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