In October 1997, IEER published Containing the Cold War Mess: Restructuring the Environmental Management of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, a detailed report on the Environmental Management (EM) program of the Department of Energy (DOE). Alvin Alm, DOE's Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management at the time, ordered a thorough review of the analysis, findings, and recommendations of the report. The review was to be finished within 30 days but ended up taking five months to complete and involved thirty DOE staff.

The seriousness with which DOE approached the review represented an important break from its past pattern, and in its review the DOE addressed much of the substance of IEER's analysis. Under the direction of former Assistant Secretary Al Alm and Acting Assistant Secretary Jim Owendoff the EM staff approached the review seriously and cooperatively, and IEER staff worked with them in that same spirit. DOE's extraordinary review process was coordinated and led by Jim Werner and Matt Zenkowich in the Office of Strategic Planning and Analysis.

Upon completion of the review, DOE admitted to a number of problems and committed to undertake three very important efforts, wholly or partly in response to IEER's report:

1. DOE announced a review of aspects of its management of buried transuranic wastes. DOE did not, however, announce how it will involve the public nor set a deadline for its review. In March 1998, IEER suggested that DOE issue technical guidance for compiling transuranic waste data within 30 days and complete its review in 12 months. The DOE has informed IEER that it is producing a new set of data on buried TRU waste. DOE headquarters has called attention to the data quality problems detailed in Containing the Cold War Mess, and asked that these problems be remedied. But it has as yet issued no detailed guidelines that would ensure the technical integrity of this data. Currently, buried TRU waste data except those for the Idaho Lab site are utterly unreliable. Further, DOE continues to promote WIPP as the solution to the problem of transuranic waste (see transuranic waste case study). As far as we can determine, no fundamental review of the management of TRU waste has been undertaken.

2. DOE is making a greater effort to create a plan for vadose zone remediation at Hanford. Recently-published efforts, such as an in-depth study of leaks from the SX tank farm (see Hanford case study), indicate that the problem is far worse than it was understood to be in 1996, when DOE completed the Environmental Impact Statement for remediation of high-level waste in the tanks.

3. DOE agreed to take steps to put in place independent review of all major projects.

DOE made a major break from the past by addressing external criticism in a constructive spirit and in making some specific commitments as a result. However, we note that more than one year after the publication of Containing the Cold War Mess, DOE's follow-up leaves a great deal to be desired. First, DOE failed to address many serious issues raised in the report despite five months of review time. Second, DOE's progress on fulfilling the commitments it did make has been unsatisfactory.

Among the crucial issues that DOE failed address are:

• The fundamental problems with DOE's TRU waste management strategy: The total amount of buried TRU waste and soil is far greater and more environmentally threatening in the short- and medium-term than the retrievably-stored waste slated to be disposed of in the WIPP repository.

• A number of issues relating to waste classification and management: These include IEER's recommendation that all Hanford waste in the high-level waste tanks be handled as high-level waste, instead of a large volume being planned for on-site disposal as "low-level" waste. IEER presented estimates of the cost of managing Hanford high-level waste in this way. DOE did not respond. DOE did not consider IEER's recommendation that it explore calcining as an interim step for Hanford tank waste, apparently because no contractor suggested it in its menu of options. Instead, DOE continues to insist that calcining be considered as a final step, and then dismisses the idea. In addressing calcining in this way, DOE raises a straw man -- there is no technical literature that suggests that calcining by itself could result a final waste form suitable for repository disposal. Even though DOE failed to review IEER's cost estimates, it clings to the belief that direct production of a final waste form would be more cost-effective. It also failed to estimate the cost or risk of the possibility of failure of its approach, which gambles everything on large-scale application of technologies for final waste forms that have never been tried on waste as difficult and complex as that in the Hanford tanks. These are very serious lapses of internal technical and managerial judgment in relation to DOE's most important clean-up task.

• Recommendation regarding the repository programs: IEER recommended that the politically expedient Yucca Mountain and WIPP repository programs be suspended and that in their place a scientifically sound program for long-term high-level waste management be created. This would include geologic repository research, sub-seabed disposal research, and research on engineered materials analogous to natural materials that could contain radioactivity for millions of years. DOE disregarded this recommendation for overall restructuring.

DOE has expressed a desire to continue to work with IEER to help it improve its Environmental Management program. IEER will continue to provide DOE with its views as part of this process and remains committed to pursuing a constructive dialog with DOE. To date, the only major programmatic change that has begun to occur in DOE, partly as a result of IEER's work, is the higher priority now being given to the problem of the contamination of the vadose zone at Hanford. This project is essential to the protection of the Columbia River, which flows through the site. We appreciate and recognize that this is a very big, positive change in a crucial program. However, proceeding with a $6.9 billion "privatized" contract for Hanford tank waste remediation without major independent review (see main article), risks considerable delays, cost overruns, technical and legal disputes, and failure.