More than half a century of nuclear weapons production in the United States has created tens of millions of cubic meters of long-lived radioactive waste, decommissioning problems associated with thousands of contaminated facilities, and environmental problems involving contaminated land and water. The production of 70,000 nuclear warheads and bombs would have resulted in a problem of environmental remediation and waste management in any case. But the neglect and mismanagement of radioactive and toxic wastes have created problems that are far more costly than they might have been; some appear to be intractable with current technology.

IEER's newly released report, Containing the Cold War Mess, looks at the problem of environmental remediation and waste management of the nuclear weapons complex through case studies of three rather different problems, each important in its own way: a) transuranic waste management; b) high-level waste tank farms at Hanford; and c) radium- and thorium-contaminated waste at Fernald. It also outlines alternatives that could be considered in reforming the environmental management program of DOE. The main findings of this report and a summary of recommendations are given below.

Main Findings

1. Nuclear weapons production and associated activities have created tens of millions of cubic meters of dangerous wastes and roughly two billion cubic meters of contaminated soil and water.

2. Since 1989, DOE has made considerable progress in characterizing many of the crucial problems of environmental remediation and waste management in the nuclear weapons complex, but much remains to be done.

3. DOE is proceeding with the most expensive environmental program in history without national remediation standards to govern and guide the process.

4. Despite about $40 billion dollars in expenditures since 1989, DOE does not have a sound direction, plan, priorities, or implementation strategy for dealing with remediation and waste management problems. Institutional factors are the single most crucial element in DOE's failure to achieve a sound direction.

The principal institutional problems that we have identified are:

• an attachment to Cold War technologies related to weapons research, development, testing, and production

• a tendency toward "monumentalism" -- that is, rushing into big projects without proper preparatory scientific and engineering work (this tendency perhaps deriving from a desire to maximize the flow of funds into the weapons complex)

• a lack of sound internal scientific and technical peer review that actually matters in decision-making, or in approval and implementation of large projects, and a corresponding tendency to ignore inconvenient extra-departmental advice

• a tendency to approve large budget increases for contractors without thorough engineering-based reviews of the problems that led to the budget changes

• a failure to learn lessons from past mistakes

• an attachment to the Yucca Mountain and Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) repository programs out of institutional, legal, political, and financial inertia even though these are compromising a much larger effort to remediate the weapons complex, manage long-lived highly-radioactive wastes, and develop a scientifically sound long-term high-level waste management program

• a lack of independent regulation of DOE's nuclear activities.

5. The U.S. waste classification system is an unsound basis for implementing waste management or environmental remediation decisions. (See SDA Vol. 6 No. 1.)

6. DOE is not holding contractors sufficiently accountable for project mismanagement and poor technical decisions.

7. A number of problems cannot be satisfactorily solved with presently available technology. Sound research and development and careful project planning will be needed over a long period.

Main Recommendations

The most important single reform that is needed is institutional in nature. DOE can make internal reforms at once. It should:

• create a project review structure for large projects that is both technical and financial in scope

• create a standing advisory committee to review projects from early stages through implementation both as regards their technical aspects and the reasonableness of budgets from an engineering standpoint. The majority of members on this committee should be free of conflicts of interest in regard to contracting with DOE or its contractors.

• reinstate the practice of issuing annual Baseline Environmental Management Reports, and make them more complete by including all sites, whether closed or operational.

Such internal reforms are unlikely to solve the entrenched problems that we have discussed above. We recommend that President Clinton appoint a commission on Institutional Reform of Environmental Remediation and Waste Management. The commission should hold hearings around the country and make definitive recommendations within a six- to twelve-month period.

Whatever the reform chosen, general technical principles will need to be adopted and reforms implemented to restructure the environmental management program. Specifically, the government should:

1. Create a new, rational, environmentally-protective system of radioactive waste classification according to longevity and specific activity, so that comparable hazards are managed comparably.

2. Coordinate waste management and environmental remediation and make reduction of short-term risks compatible with minimizing long-term risks.

3. Approach remediation with independently enforced, national, health-based clean-up and waste management standards, including specific provisions to protect groundwater resources and mandatory guidelines to keep doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) both for workers and for off-site populations. The ALARA guideline for releasing sites for unrestricted use should be to remediate to background levels, if reasonable, or else to keep doses to under 2 millirem per year (which is the British ALARA guideline).

4. Suspend the politically expedient Yucca Mountain and WIPP repository programs and put in place a scientifically sound program of long-term high-level waste management, including repository research, sub-seabed disposal research, and research on materials to contain radioactivity that are analogous to natural materials that can last for millions of years.

5. Provide funds and technical support to communities that have residual contamination so that they can monitor the environment and keep themselves informed. Such funds are needed to protect communities against future known risks and also against risks due to inadequate characterization or present incomplete understanding of risks. The size of the fund should depend on the size and character of the residual radioactive and non-radioactive hazardous contamination of land, remaining structures, surface waters, river beds, and groundwater, as well as the total amount of radioactivity and non-radioactive hazardous material left in disposal areas on site.

6. Manage non-radioactive toxic components of wastes in ways that do not seriously compromise management of radioactive components.

7. Stabilize waste so as to greatly reduce or eliminate the most serious environmental and health threats and store it on-site while sound long-term management strategies are developed.

8. Provide the states, Indian tribes, and the public (with special emphasis on the affected communities and workers) with timely information so that they can participate effectively in decision-making.