But EMSP has accomplished more than providing research dollars. The longer-term basic science program was established in response to a congressional mandate to expand scientific and engineering knowledge in order to replace current conventional approaches, which are often costly and ineffective, with new and innovative cleanup methods. In addition to its funding role, EMSP has established a framework to enable DOE to capitalize on its scientific research investments.

Among the elements of this framework are the following:

• Ensuring that funded proposals have both scientific merit and relevance to cleanup needs at sites and across the complex. EMSP's research portfolio addresses the most challenging technical problems of the Environmental Management Program related to high-level waste; spent nuclear fuel; mixed waste; nuclear materials; remedial action; decontamination and decommissioning; and health, ecology, or risk (a crosscutting area).

• Ensuring that the six technical problem areas and the crosscutting area are funded at appropriate levels. With each new solicitation, EMSP has an opportunity to tailor requests for proposals to equitably support its hierarchy of needs. The program has organized its 202 funded research projects within a framework that shows how the projects relate to 13 scientific disciplines, the six EM problem areas, and the 353 high-cost and high-risk projects described in the draft Accelerating Cleanup: Paths to Closure document. This exercise has helped the program determine how high-priority needs are being served through funded research and helps guide future funding decisions.

• Using advisory groups such as the Environmental Management Advisory Board's Science Committee, the Strategic Laboratory Council, and the National Academy of Sciences/ National Research Council to improve the quality of the program and the process for selecting proposals.

• Establishing a plan for dissemination of research results to site problem holders. The first phase of the dissemination plan is a workshop in Chicago in July 1998 that will bring together researchers and site problem holders to share research results, research needs, and site problems.

The DOE Idaho Operations Office at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory coordinates contractual details of the grants and is responsible for integrating results among researchers and DOE representatives. Results of research conducted under the first year of funding will soon become available, and mechanisms are being developed to share that information with DOE site representatives and other interested stakeholders.

For more information on EMSP and its funded projects, see the program's Web sites at http://www.em.doe.gov/ science (DOE-HQ) and http://www.id.doe.gov/ emsystems/emsp (DOE-ID).