In January 1994, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management introduced a new integrated approach for addressing waste issues based on five focus, or problem areas. In addition, there are crosscutting technology areas that support the five focus areas.

This national focus on solving environmental remediation problems is designed to reduce complexity within the DOE organization, cultivate shared values at sites across the DOE complex, improve communication within field offices and between headquarters and field offices, and improve control and oversight.

Each of the five areas is managed by a multidisciplinary team of representatives from DOE's Offices of Technology Development (EM-50), Waste Management (EM-30), and Environmental Restoration (EM-40); DOE technical programs; and stakeholders. The wide range of focus area management team members will link technical and non-technical offices within the DOE community.

Starting with this issue, Initiatives will report on what the focus area teams are doing to coordinate research, technology development, and demonstrations.

Radioactive tank waste remediation
Thomas Grumbly, assistant secretary of DOE's environmental management; John Wagoner, office manager of DOE's Richland, Washington office; and William Madia, director of Pacific Northwest Laboratory, signed a joint statement of objectives, solidifying the focus area team's commitment to furnish the Office of Environmental Management with technologies to characterize, retrieve, treat, immobilize, and close the tank sites across the DOE complex. Under the terms of the agreement, focus area activities will be jointly executed with the Richland office providing administrative leadership and PNL providing technical leadership. The focus area team will include representatives from the four major tank sites in Idaho Falls, Idaho; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Richland, Washington; and Savannah River, South Carolina.

For fiscal year 1996, the new shorter name of the focus area will be the tanks focus area.

Mixed waste characterization, treatment, and disposal
This fall, states will approve site treatment plans for DOE sites storing and generating mixed waste, setting an enforceable treatment schedule that the mixed waste focus area will be responsible for meeting.

The team's first task is to examine the DOE site treatment plans and identify needs and treatment areas. Members of INEL's mixed waste focus area will join integrated product teams to be formed at each site. These teams are charged with demonstrating three technologies within three years which together could potentially treat 90 percent of DOE's mixed waste.

The teams are preparing to buy from private industry rather than develop new technologies to fill in the treatment gaps. Partnerships with private industry, universities, and consortia will be sought. Tribal and public opinions gathered through workshops and Western Governors' Association committee meetings will help determine what technologies make the final list.

Landfill stabilization
The landfill stabilization focus area hosted an Expo on August 23-24 at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory to demonstrate technologies for reducing worker exposure as well as remediation costs. Expo attendees included industry partners, public officials, members of the Community Leaders Network and other stakeholders, independent technical review teams, and DOE managers and technical staff. During the exhibition, participants observed a remote excavator that retrieved barrels at a simulated landfill; a gantry crane fitted with sensors and robotics manipulators that characterized and selectively retrieved waste as small as a beverage can; and a self-guided transport vehicle that carted waste away from the dig area. Inside a control station, engineers operated the equipment by manipulating joy sticks while viewing the work through state-of-the-art stereo vision cameras.

Development of the technologies involved collaboration with 12 DOE labs and sites, 36 industry development partners, 18 universities, and stakeholders.

Contaminant plumes containment and remediation
The plumes focus area is beginning its fiscal 1996 program year by introducing a DNAPL product line of innovative technologies. DNAPLs, or dense non-aqueous phase liquids, are hazardous organic compounds that are denser than water and can exist in the subsurface as residual droplets or pools of free product. Because DNAPLs have low solubility in water, they can be a long-term source of groundwater contamination. DNAPLs are believed to occur at most DOE sites, where they represent a significant environmental problem because they are hard to detect and even harder to remediate.

The plumes focus area will add the DNAPL product line to its two existing product lines-an organic product line, and a metals and radionuclide product line of innovative technologies. In fiscal year 1996, the DNAPL product line plans to demonstrate subsurface access and DNAPL removal technologies at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. These technologies have been jointly developed by a consortium of the American Petroleum Institute, several universities, and other organizations.

The DNAPL product area will also investigate new applications of electrokinetics, chemical oxidation, alcohol/surfactant flushing, and other technologies for controlled removal or in-situ destruction of DNAPLs along with several innovative methods for potentially locating DNAPLs in the subsurface.

Facility deactivation, decommissioning, and material disposition
On July 11 and 12, Morgantown Energy Technology Center, the lead organization for the D&D focus area, hosted a D&D workshop called A New Focus for Technology Development. (See interview.) METC is using feedback from the workshop to structure a program meeting the mutual needs of government and industrial partners. METC is preparing an Implementation Plan, an Annual Program Plan, and solicitations aimed at industrial participation in large-scale demonstration projects.

The D&D focus area is also identifying sites for mini demonstrations to be performed and completed in fiscal year 1996. One planned mini project is the remote dismantlement of a plutonium glovebox at the Savannah River Site.