GAO report: DOE needs to better coordinate and prioritize its R&D efforts
GAO Report | 10/28/2021
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On October 28, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report calling on the Department of Energy (DOE) to “better coordinate and prioritize its research and development efforts.”
The DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) identifies cleanup-related research and development (R&D) needs across the EM complex—EM headquarters and sites and DOE's national laboratories—in various ways. For example, DOE officials and contractors at EM sites work closely with national laboratories to identify project-specific R&D needs, including those encountered during the course of cleanup activities, such as managing vapors in nuclear waste
storage areas. EM headquarters may identify complex-wide needs (e.g., ways to improve worker safety, such as using robotics, see figure) or work with other DOE offices, including the Office of Nuclear Energy, to identify R&D needs that span DOE missions, such as spent nuclear fuel storage.
EM uses both formal and informal mechanisms to coordinate R&D across the EM complex, including the national laboratory network and working groups. EM's coordination of R&D efforts fully aligns with four of GAO's seven leading practices for collaboration, such as clarifying roles and responsibilities and including relevant participants. However, EM does not fully follow other leading practices, which affects its ability to evaluate the effectiveness of
R&D efforts. For example, EM officials told GAO that it does not have a formal system to collect information on R&D activities across the complex, which would enable it to monitor and evaluate the activities' outcomes. Collecting such information could help EM determine whether to encourage or discourage investments in certain areas.
EM also does not take a comprehensive approach to prioritizing R&D. Individual EM sites and national laboratories have their own decision-making processes for prioritizing R&D, but these may not address long-term or complex-wide needs. GAO has found that risk-informed decision-making can help agencies weigh numerous factors and consider tradeoffs, and that doing so would help EM set cleanup priorities within and across its sites. By developing a
comprehensive approach to prioritizing R&D that follows a risk-informed decision-making framework, EM would be better positioned to provide sites with guidance for R&D spending beyond their immediate operational needs and direct its limited R&D resources to its highest priorities.
Why GAO did this study
R&D has played an essential role in EM's efforts to clean up massive amounts of contamination from decades of nuclear weapons production and energy research. Such R&D has led to safer, more efficient, and more effective cleanup approaches. Prior studies have found that investments in R&D could reduce the future costs of EM's cleanup efforts, which have increased by nearly $250 billion in the last 10 years. However, funding designated for nuclear
cleanup R&D has declined since 2000.
GAO was asked to review EM's R&D efforts. The report examines (1) how EM identifies cleanup-related R&D needs, (2) how and the extent to which EM coordinates R&D across the EM complex, and (3) the extent to which EM prioritizes cleanup-related R&D efforts. GAO reviewed DOE and EM documents and interviewed EM site and headquarters officials and national laboratory representatives. In addition, GAO compared EM's coordination of R&D to leading
practices for collaboration and compared EM's efforts to prioritize R&D with GAO's risk-informed decision-making framework.
Recommendations
GAO is making four recommendations, including that DOE (1) develop a system to collect R&D information across the complex to enable monitoring and evaluation of outcomes and (2) develop a comprehensive approach to prioritizing R&D across the EM complex that follows a risk-informed decision-making framework. DOE concurred with the recommendations made in this report.
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"CAPITALIZING ON A NEW ERA OF CLEANUP
SUCCESS"
December 7-9, 2021
Hilton Alexandria Mark Center
Alexandria, Virginia
If you have already registered for the Workshop, you will not need to re-register. If you need to register, please click here. If you have questions, please contact Autumn Bogus at abogus@la-inc.com or (865)
300-1061.
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OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGAGEMENT
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NOVEMBER 8-12
The RemPlex Global Summit, to be held virtually Nov. 8-12, is being organized in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The Summit is hosted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). This IAEA-PNNL cooperation supports the Summit objectives of promoting knowledge transfer, collaboration, and networking to address challenges to successful remediation and long-term stewardship of
contaminated sites worldwide.
NOVEMBER 15
Roy G. Post Foundation Scholarships in amounts of $5,000 for undergraduate and graduate students will be awarded at the WM2022 Tuesday Honors & Awards Luncheon. Apply now.
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Nuclear energy industry angles for bigger role in Washington and U.S. as climate change accelerates
The Seattle Times | 10/31/2021
Clad in yellow suits, three workers took position on a steel bridge inside the concrete reactor building of Washington’s only nuclear power plant. Below them stretched a pool of water 55 feet deep. It acted like a protective shield, blocking the radiation emanating from the submerged core. Peering down, they could see a deep blue glow, the eerie underwater signature of charged particles surging from bundles of fuel rods. It was May 12, and the high-stakes task of
refueling this power plant was about to begin.
This reactor’s electricity - enough to power the city of Seattle on a typical day - has gained new importance as Washington seeks by midcentury to largely eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas and coal that contribute to global warming. And the plant’s operators have joined in a broader push by the U.S. nuclear industry to play a bigger, long-term role in the America’s energy future.
For more than a month, rotating crews used a remote-operated grapple to slowly remove these bundles and reposition others in a giant jigsaw puzzle of a job. In a command center, managers gathered every four hours to monitor progress on the refueling and more than a thousand other maintenance tasks to get the plant back on line for another two years of operation.
“Nothing is routine,” said Bob Schuetz, the CEO for plant operator Energy Northwest.
Columbia Generating Station is part of a fleet of more than 90 U.S. commercial nuclear reactors that in 2020 produced one-fifth of the nation’s electricity, and did so without the direct combustion of fossil fuels.
In pitching for more investment in nuclear energy, industry officials have found allies among some environmentalists who have concluded that the rapidly escalating planetary threat from climate change - hammered home in recent summers by extreme heat, wildfires and powerful hurricanes, and the focus of a United Nation conference that opened Sunday in Scotland - justifies keeping the current generation of plants open as long as possible. They also are
supporting efforts to build a new generation of smaller, more nimble nuclear reactors that could pour power into the regional grids and could help prevent blackouts.
“Wind and solar can do a hell of a lot of the lift. But when you say it can do all of it — that’s magical thinking,” said Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.
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Read about DOE's High Level Waste Interpretation
Have questions about DOE’s recent high-level waste (HLW) interpretation? Download ECA’s Key Points and FAQs on the issue to better understand what ECA believes are the potential benefits of implementation.
Interested in learning more? Read the ECA report “Making Informed Decisions on DOE's Proposed High Level Waste Definition” at www.energyca.org/publications
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