Overview:
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Located within the Department of Energy (DOE), the Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for overseeing the cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. Representing a leftover from the Cold War, vast amounts of radioactive and toxic waste and contamination are spread throughout nuclear weapons facilities around the country, requiring long-term efforts involving environmental restoration, waste management, technology development and land reuse by EM.
By 2006 EM suffered from a “going out of business” climate, thanks to its successful efforts in completing 80% of its original projects. But with considerable work still remaining at several large sites, EM’s state became a cause for concern among observers and analysts, prompting a leadership change for the office.
History:
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From 1945 until 1989 the US produced tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in preparation for war against the Soviet Union. Begun under the World War II-era Manhattan Project, the nation’s first atomic weapons were built for use against Japan. Once the war ended, US policymakers expanded the nation’s nuclear production facilities as an arms race with the Soviets grew over the course of four decades. In 1939 Danish Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr had argued that building an atomic bomb "can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory." Years later, he told his colleague Edward Teller, "I told you it couldn't be done without turning the whole country into a factory. You have done just that."
Over the second half of the 20th century, the US spent approximately $300 billion on nuclear weapons research, production and testing (in 1995 dollars). At its peak, the nuclear weapons complex consisted of 16 major facilities, including vast reservations of land in the states of Nevada, Tennessee, Idaho, Washington and South Carolina. It ranged from tracts of isolated desert in Nevada, where weapons were tested, to warehouses in downtown New York that once stored uranium. Its national laboratories in New Mexico and California designed weapons with production of various components in Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington.
The nuclear weapons complex generated vast amounts of waste, pollution and contamination. By one account, the US has 52,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel from commercial and defense nuclear reactors, 91 million gallons of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, scores of tons of plutonium, more than half a million tons of depleted uranium, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools, metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste, plus some 265 million tons of tailings from milling uranium ore. Some of the most serious contamination exists at three locations where uranium was enriched (see the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund).
The price tag for clean up is estimated at $155 billion. This includes unique radiation hazards, unprecedented volumes of contaminated water and soil and a vast number of contaminated structures ranging from reactors to chemical plants for extracting nuclear materials to evaporation ponds. Early in the nuclear age, scientists involved with the weapons complex raised serious questions about its waste management practices. Shortly after the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission, which oversaw the nuclear weapons complex until DOE was created in the 1970s, a 12-man Safety and Industrial Health Advisory Board reported that the “disposal of contaminated waste in present quantities and by present methods...if continued for decades, presents the gravest of problems.”
In 1989 workers at the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, one of the nation’s most important and polluted nuclear weapons facilities, loaded the last plutonium "trigger" for a nuclear warhead into a tractor trailer bound southeast to the warhead-assembly Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas. With the Cold War coming to an end, the federal government began addressing its contaminated legacy. That same year the Office of Environmental Management was established to begin this gargantuan task.
Half Life: The Lethal Legacy of America’s Nuclear Waste (by Michael E. Long, National Geographic)
National Atomic Museum - Manhattan Project
What it Does:
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Located within DOE, the Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for completing the cleanup of the environmental legacy brought about from five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. EM
identifies, plans and carries out cleanup activities in accordance with the principles of DOE Order 413.3A (PDF) (Program and Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets) and DOE Manual 413.3-1 (Project Management for the Acquisition of Capital Assets). These documents define the principles of project management that are applied to all EM cleanup activities. EM is responsible for providing oversight to ensure that the principles of the Project Management Order and Manual are adhered to by all parties involved in projects.
EM provides a list (PDF) of all 134 projects it oversees. The list consists of nine major sites (each of which includes multiple projects) covering Washington, Idaho, New Mexico, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina and New York. There are an additional 10 sites under the authority of the National Nuclear Security Administration that EM is involved with regarding cleanup efforts, plus nine “other sites” that were not part of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex but still require cleanup of some kind. Finally, EM provides links to five closure sites where cleanup and restoration have been completed.
EM claims projects at 11 sites or areas will be completed by 2009. These are: Argonne National Laboratory – East; Brookhaven National Laboratory; East Tennessee Technology Park at Oak Ridge; Energy Technology Engineering Center; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory-Site 300; Inhalation Toxicology Laboratory; Pantex Plant; Sandia National Laboratory; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Miamisburg; and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Examples of the kind of work EM performs are:
- Constructing and operating facilities to treat radioactive liquid tank waste into a safe, stable form to enable ultimate disposition.
- Securing and storing nuclear material in a stable, safe configuration in secure locations to protect national security.
- Transporting and disposing of transuranic and low-level wastes in a safe and cost effective manner to reduce risk.
- Decontaminating and decommissioning facilities that provide no further value to reduce long-term liabilities and maximize resources for cleanup.
- Remediating soil and ground water contaminated with the radioactive and hazardous constituents.
Where Does the Money Go:
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Those with vested interests in the work of the Office of Environmental Management range from defense contractors and multi-national engineering and construction firms to grass-roots citizens groups, universities, state and local governments. Approximately 34,000 contractor employees work at sites that EM oversees. Among these private contractors is Fluor, an international engineering and construction firm, which was heavily involved in the cleanup operations at Fernald, a former uranium processing facility in Ohio, and at the Hanford plutonium facility, which has been described as the most dangerous environmental project in the country because of the scope of the cleanup. Also performing work at Hanford are construction giants Bechtel (which has a stake in Savannah River cleanup and runs the Idaho and Pittsburgh Naval Reactors laboratories) and CH2M Hill, which is handling cleanup work at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and is involved with work at Savannah River.
Babcock & Wilcox, an engineering energy firm, has contracts for Savannah River and Pantex, the nation’s central facility for assembling and dismantling nuclear warheads.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin runs the United States Energy Corporation on behalf of the Department of Energy, responsible for the day-to-day operations at the three gaseous diffusion plants (GDPs) being dismantled and cleaned up under the guise of EM. Lockheed Martin also runs the Schenectady Naval Reactors for the NNSA and Sandia National Laboratories for DOE.
Battelle, an international science and technology firm, co-operates the Oak Ridge facility in conjunction with the University of Tennessee. Another prominent higher education stakeholder is the University of California, which was the sole manager of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California until 2007. Today, it manages the lab along with a consortium involving Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox, Washington Group International, Battelle and the Texas A&M University System. The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the original home of the Manhattan Project, is run by the Los Alamos National Security LLC, consisting of the University of California system, Bechtel, Babcock & Wilcox and Washington Group International.
EM manages a cleanup project at the Nevada Test Site, the nation’s primary testing ground for nuclear explosions from the 1950s until the 1990s. The site is managed by National Security Technologies LLC, a joint venture involving defense contractor Northrop Grumman, construction corporation AECOM, CH2M Hill, and nuclear catchall company Nuclear Fuel Services.
Defense and aviation giant Honeywell runs the Kansas City Plant, a high-tech research production facility that historically was charged with providing many of the non-nuclear components for nuclear warheads.
Public interest and citizens groups that monitor EM’s work include Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety & Health, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Snake River Alliance, Atlanta Women’s Action for New Directions, Natural Resources Defense Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and the Sierra Club.
Several federal and state government entities are also involved with EM projects. The Oak Ridge and Paducah GDPs are listed on the EPA’s National Priorities List and have negotiated Federal Facility Agreements with their respective state and regulators. Portsmouth is regulated by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) and has negotiated a Consent Order with the state of Ohio. US Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also has been very active in this cleanup effort.
Other groups closely involved with EM include:
- Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) - Established in 1992, ECA brings together elected and appointed local government officials in energy communities to share and exchange information, establish policy positions and advocate community interests with DOE.
- Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) - The Environmental Council of the States (ECOS) is the national non-profit, non-partisan association of state and territorial environmental agency leaders.
- National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) - NAAG and DOE have established a working group of Assistant Attorneys General and key DOE staff to discuss current regulatory and statutory enforcement/compliance issues. The parties work towards their common goals of ensuring the protection of human health and the environment through the clean-up and the proper management of DOE activities.
- National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) - The Department of Energy funds a cooperative agreement with NCSL that provides both logistical and staff support for the State and Tribal Government Working Group (STGWG) as well as meeting with elected legislatures from states with particular interests in EM activities. With the support of this agreement, the NCSL serves as a conduit for informational exchange regarding the cleanup of the nuclear weapons complex between DOE, state legislatures, legislative staff, state executive branch staff and tribal government representatives.
- National Governors Association/Federal Facilities Task Force - The NGA/DOE Task Force, which is supported by DOE, consists of energy officials and representatives from governors' offices from states that host DOE facilities. The purpose of the task force is to assist DOE in improving coordination of its major program decisions with governors' offices and state regulators and to ensure such decisions reflect input from these key state officials and stakeholders.
The State and Tribal Government Working Group (STGWG)
- Helps ensure that DOE facilities and sites are operated and cleaned up in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations, as well as those tribal rights established by treaty, and in a manner that protects human health, safety and the environment.
Controversies:
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Sense of Direction
In 2006 the Office of Environmental Management was in trouble. Having completed 80% of the original 108 sites that EM was charged with cleaning up, the organization found itself suffering from what one study called a “going out of business” mentality. The report by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) found “an organization facing several serious challenges as it struggled to redefine and reorganize itself.” NAPA also cited criticisms from the GAO, the DOE Inspector General and interested observers that EM was taking too long to award contracts, the work was going substantially slower than predicted and the cost was substantially more than projected. The office was also suffering from a drastic reduction in staff levels, which had decreased 40% since the beginning of the Bush administration.
To turn things around, James Rispoli was selected to take over EM’s leadership, and he set about implementing a reorganization of EM headquarters.
NAPA pointed out that, “Although bolstered by its new mission and the sense of security it provided to staff, [EM] was hampered by the lack of a systematic approach
to re-charting the organization’s new direction.” It also suffered from “organization and management issues that included a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities in headquarters and between headquarters and the field; insufficient acquisition and personnel delegations of authority; and human capital challenges.”
Delays and Stakeholder Bickering
One of the major responsibilities of EM is overseeing the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund (D&D Fund), created for the cleanup of former uranium enrichment facilities at the three GDPs found in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) twice reported earlier this decade that cleanup efforts at the Paducah site (OH) had fallen behind schedule and over budget. Originally, it was reported by DOE that work would be completed by 2010 at a cost of $1.3 billion. Now, decontamination and decommissioning aren’t expected to conclude until 2019 and will require at least an additional $300 million.
A 2000 GAO report noted that energy officials were planning to use untested technology for cleanup at Paducah, and that they were also relying on questionable assumptions about funding increases for the project. Although these concerns were gone by the time of the 2004 GAO report, the federal watchdog office noted another serious problem: stakeholder bickering. DOE, EPA and state officials in Kentucky have had difficulty agreeing on an overall cleanup approach, as well as on the details of specific projects. These disagreements have, according to GAO, “undermined trust and damaged the parties’ working relationship.”
The GAO also found that DOE officials had stopped including EPA and Kentucky officials in the cleanup planning process (which it had done successfully at other sites) because of concerns about the growing cleanup scope, associated costs and that the planned actions were excessive in relation to the risk. The result was an almost two-year dispute that delayed progress. This poor working relationship has also prevented the parties from quickly reaching agreement on the technical details of specific projects.
Lack of Community Involvement
In February Sen. Brown complained to DOE Secretary Samuel Bodman that his department was preparing to move forward on the Portsmouth GDP site (OH) without input from local citizens. In his letter to Bodman, Brown said DOE had yet to engage the local community in the creation of DOE’s long-term cleanup plans, even though the department had done so at every other major cleanup site around the nation.
Traditionally, a community advisory board is established by DOE that creates a mechanism for community leaders to have input into the cleanup. Such boards provide feedback on important issues such as future uses of the site and how reclamation should proceed. Currently, no community advisory board exists for Portsmouth.
Brown Blasts Energy Department About Piketon Cleanup Announcement Without Community Input (Sherrod Brown Website)
In January 2008, after President Bush unveiled his 2009 budget, Sen. Brown blasted the president for making deep cuts in the D&D Fund. The budget proposal trimmed funding by $147 million from last year, prompting Brown to call the decision “indefensible.”
Brown Lambastes Administration for Cutting Critical Funds For Piketon Cleanup
(Sherrod Brown Website)
- Table of Contents
- Overview
- History
- What it Does
- Where Does the Money Go
- Controversies
- Suggested Reforms
- Comments
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Founded: 1989
Annual Budget: $5.7 billion
Employees: 1,400
Official Website: http://www.em.doe.gov/pages/emhome.aspx
Office of Environmental Management
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