 The Office of Science and Technology (also known as OST or EM-50) is the part of DOE that develops innovative technologies for cleanup. In an interview with Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Gerald Boyd and his acting assistant, John Lehr, Initiatives got an inside look at what the management team is doing to meet the challenge of cleaning up the environmental legacy of the Cold War. While continuing to focus on the needs of the future through basic science research and R&D focused on DOE’s main cleanup problems, it is clear Boyd and Lehr also are defining their success by OST’s ability to get the technologies they’ve already developed into widespread use.
Boyd recognizes that by achieving multiple deployments of the technologies OST develops, EM-50 will improve its return on investment. Boyd hopes to make positive changes by first improving EM-50’s integration with the technology user organizations within DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. These organizations are primarily EM-30 (Waste Management), EM-40 (Environmental Restoration), and EM-60 (Nuclear Materials and Facility Stabilization). Boyd admits that OST has “not done that adequately.” However, he believes that will change if EM-50 “reorients its thinking about what its job in science and technology is.” In the past, EM-50 developed technologies, provided performance data, handed the technology off, and moved on. Boyd hopes to lead the way in changing that approach. To initiate these changes, OST is in the process of developing a new strategic plan that addresses the role of science and technology in the cleanup business. The plan will redefine the role of science and technology to include deployment assistance in a way that integrates OST with the EM user organizations. Lehr will play a key part in helping EM-50 make this shift. Lehr has been with DOE since 1985, and before moving to EM-50, he had been with EM-40 since its inception. Boyd says, “John has already been very helpful and will continue to be helpful in making that connection between the developers of technology and the users of technology.” About OST The Office of Science and Technology began as the Office of Technology Development in 1989 shortly after DOE instituted its Office of Environmental Management. OTD’s mission was to ensure the availability of technologies needed to support DOE cleanup. The integrated demonstrations around which OST initially organized its program gave way in 1994 and 1995 to the focus area approach that is still used today. Even with redefining OST’s responsibilities in the strategic plan, Boyd believes EM-50 will continue to use focus areas as the basic management approach. Boyd says, “We believe that is probably the best management approach we have developed to date to deal with trying to establish better technologies to do the job.”
With the introduction of the focus areas, OST decentralized the daily management of activities to the field offices leading each focus area. As second in command, Lehr is responsible for day-to-day headquarters operations of EM-50. Lehr hopes to have an impact on how the EM-50 headquarters organization functions so that it better supports the field. He believes, “We can be better advocates for the program and get the resources that we need so that the folks implementing the program, and those are the field folks, can concentrate on that aspect of the job.” Accomplishments According to Boyd, when OST started there were not enough alternative technologies that either saved time or money in cleanup. Over the last seven years, EM-50 worked on approximately 700 alternative technologies. Boyd estimates OST has completed work on approximately 200 alternative technologies that are commercially available and being used across the complex now. Many of the technologies DOE sites consider to be baseline technologies now were first made available by OST. According to Boyd, those technologies are saving significant amounts of money and time, and those savings will grow exponentially as the technologies continue to be used. Boyd says, “It takes time for any R&D organization to begin to have an impact and we believe we are starting to see that.” Many of OST’s technologies are enabling technologies that are now being used where there was no baseline before. Boyd explains, “Jobs that couldn’t be done can be done now with the technologies we made available, especially in the high-level waste tanks arena.” Also, Boyd points back to the time when incineration was the primary thermal treatment technology used. Now, OST has made some alternatives available. Lehr further explains that the whole Tanks Focus Area could be considered a success because it has been integrated into the waste management programs and tanks closure activities in at least three sites: Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River. He also describes the large-scale demonstrations projects, or LSDPs, sponsored by the Deactivation and Decommissioning Focus Area as another success story. In the LSDPs, the focus area has demonstrated nearly 50 technologies during actual D&D activities in the past two years at the Argonne National Laboratory’s CP-5 Research Reactor, the C Reactor at the Hanford Site, and the Plant 1 Complex at Fernald. Challenges EM has spent $40 billion since its establishment in 1989. How EM spends its money in the next 10 years will have a great effect on what the overall cost for cleanup will be beyond those 10 years. Boyd says, “If we spend that money right, then the amount of money that has to be spent in the next 20 years or longer is going to be much less than what it would be if we don’t spend the next increment properly.” It is estimated that EM will spend another $60 billion before 2006 (the end date for the 10-year planning process undertaken by former EM Assistant Secretary Al Alm). That $60 billion involves deploying better technologies so enough cleanup is accomplished to push down the spending curve dramatically as EM goes into the out years. After that point, the remaining cleanup problems facing EM will be the most difficult to tackle. According to Boyd, if EM is ever going to start tackling those more difficult, post-2006 problems, the Office of Science and Technology will need to focus more attention on developing technologies to address them. The Science Program
During the strategic planning process, Boyd is attempting to make connections between what the science program is already starting to yield and what technology developers and users are going to need over the long term. Boyd estimates that the science program’s results will be equally divided between leads to new technology development and technical information DOE decision makers can use to solve environmental problems. An example of a problem the science program is currently tackling that’s beneficial but won’t result in a technology is the rapid migration of cesium under the tanks at the Hanford Site. Boyd says, “They [researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory] could get fundamental understanding about that cesium transport within the next 12 months.” When they do, decision makers at Hanford can use that information to decide what to do about the cesium migration. Outlook Lehr is positive about EM-50’s future under Boyd’s leadership. He says even though Boyd has been with EM-50 through some changes and upheaval, Boyd “still has a lot of enthusiasm for the mission of the Office of Science and Technology.” Lehr observes, “He [Boyd] has a very strong feeling about what our place ought to be in the whole EM program and what our relationship should be with the other EM program offices and I think that’s good news.” Proving Lehr’s point, Boyd closed by saying, “It’s been a rough road. It’s been hard, but I think we’ve made the right decisions, and I think wide-scale deployments of technologies will show that those were the right decisions.” |
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Gerald Boyd, who has been with the Office of
Science and Technology almost since it began, wants to be
remembered for “breaking the code of
deployment.” John Lehr agrees, “That’s
where it’s at. When we come right down to it, the
performance measures are—are we getting cleanups
done better, cheaper, and faster with less risk?” 
The focus areas are
centered around DOE/EM’s major problems: tanks,
mixed waste, subsurface contaminants, and deactivation
and decommissioning. But the strategic planning effort
will be looking at areas of research and development that
can be phased out and those that need to be ramped up.
The Mixed Waste Focus Area will be closing down as its
mission is completed. A focus area for plutonium has been
established, and some 1999 funding may be set aside for
concentrating on transuranic, or TRU, waste.
The Science Program,
which was added to OST in 1996, has already begun the
work that stands to benefit EM beyond 2006. The program
was started by Congress in the hopes that it would
provide the technical scientific underpinnings needed for
long-term cleanup. Boyd predicts, “The science
program is going to be one of our greater successes once
we start to see some payoff from it.” As with other
basic research programs, however, many of the expected
breakthroughs will take some time.