[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                         NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP:
                 RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
                     FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S
                   OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

=======================================================================
                                                                          

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             JULY 13, 2022
                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-64
                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

                                     
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                                     
                                     
                                     
       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
                              ___________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
48-009PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022         
       


              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California             JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York                 STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia                  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                MIKE CAREY, OHIO
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                         Subcommittee on Energy

                 HON. JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Chairman
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             RANDY WEBER, Texas, 
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan                  Ranking Member
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     JIM BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California


                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             July 13, 2022

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Jamaal Bowman, Chairman, Subcommittee 
  on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................     6
    Written Statement............................................     7

Statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member, 
  Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and 
  Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     7
    Written Statement............................................     9

Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
  Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................    10

                               Witnesses:

Mr. William ``Ike'' White, Senior Advisor, Office of 
  Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy
    Oral Statement...............................................    11
    Written Statement............................................    14

Dr. Vahid Majidi, Director, Savannah River National Laboratory
    Oral Statement...............................................    22
    Written Statement............................................    24

Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director Resilience Technologies, 
  Community and Regional Resilience Institute
    Oral Statement...............................................    38
    Written Statement............................................    40

Mr. Nathan Anderson, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, 
  U.S. Government Accountability Office
    Oral Statement...............................................    47
    Written Statement............................................    49

Discussion.......................................................    69

              Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Mr. William ``Ike'' White, Senior Advisor, Office of 
  Environmental Management, U.S. Department of Energy............    88

Dr. Vahid Majidi, Director, Savannah River National Laboratory...    95

Dr. John Plodinec, Associate Director Resilience Technologies, 
  Community and Regional Resilience Institute....................    98

Mr. Nathan Anderson, Director, Natural Resources and Environment, 
  U.S. Government Accountability Office..........................   100

 
                    NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP: RESEARCH
                     AND DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
                    FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S
                  OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                            Subcommittee on Energy,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in 
room 2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jamaal Bowman 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    Chairman Bowman. Good morning. This hearing will now come 
to order. Without objection, the Chairman is authorized to 
declare recess at any time.
    Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note that, 
today, the Committee is meeting both in person and virtually. I 
want to announce a couple of reminders to the Members about the 
conduct of this hearing. First, Members and staff who are 
attending in person may choose to be masked, but it is not a 
requirement. However, any individuals with symptoms, a positive 
test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask 
while present.
    Members who are attending virtually should keep their video 
feed on as long as they are present in the hearing. Members are 
responsible for their own microphones. Please also keep your 
microphones muted unless you are speaking.
    Finally, if Members have documents they wish to submit for 
the record, please email them to the Committee Clerk, whose 
email address was circulated prior to the hearing.
    Good morning, and thank you to our panel of expert 
witnesses for joining us today to discuss nuclear waste cleanup 
managed by the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of 
Environmental Management (EM). The focus of the discussion 
today will be on how targeted research and development (R&D) on 
innovative technologies can be leveraged to perform cleanup 
faster and at lower cost.
    Some of the nuclear waste we're talking about today was 
generated almost 60 years ago when the global nuclear arms race 
during the cold war spun out of the Manhattan Project. The 
majority of the legacy nuclear waste that the Department is 
responsible for is from government-sponsored weapons 
development and production. However, the Manhattan Project was 
also the genesis for peaceful uses of nuclear technology such 
as nuclear energy. Some of the legacy nuclear waste is also 
from government-sponsored research and development to further 
these peaceful purposes. Regardless of the defense or 
nondefense application, the government has an obligation to the 
American people to responsibly manage and dispose of this 
legacy waste.
    So why are we talking about this on the Science Committee 
when our legislative jurisdiction is over civilian research and 
development? This is because the Science Committee is all about 
finding and applying scientific solutions. So the budget for 
the nondefense portion of the Office of Environmental 
Management is only a little over 4 percent of the budget for 
the entire office. Much of the science we can use to improve 
the cleanup process is the same. And when we're learning from 
experts in the field, many of which are here today, that the 
lifecycle cost estimates for the remaining cleanup activities 
are growing to the order of half a trillion dollars or more, it 
would be irresponsible of us to not look at the science. 
Unfortunately, the budget dedicated to research and development 
has shrunk from 5 percent of the budget a few decades ago to 
only 1/3 of a percent in recent years.
    The good news is we have a good idea of the work that needs 
to be done. The experts before us have all closely reviewed the 
DOE's Office of Environmental Management. The analyses have 
been complete, the reports published. They all have the same 
conclusions and recommendations. We must look at opportunities 
for improvement across the cleanup enterprise holistically, and 
we must increase our investment in research and development of 
innovative technologies that can be widely used to enable more 
efficient cleanup. I look forward to hearing our witnesses 
today go into detail on proposals to do just that.
    Before I close, I want to acknowledge the impressive work 
that the Office of Environmental Management has done to date. 
Thankfully, the Department has successfully completed a lot of 
their work here, as only 15 sites out of the 107 remain. I was 
especially pleased to see the work at the Brookhaven National 
Lab in my home State of New York finish up successfully just 
this year.
    This is a tough job. I want to recognize that and thank 
those of you who work to make it better. With that said, thank 
you all again for being here today, and I look forward to this 
discussion.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Bowman follows:]

    Good morning, and thank you to our panel of expert 
witnesses for joining us today to discuss nuclear waste cleanup 
managed by the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental 
Management. The focus of the discussion today will be on how 
targeted research and development on innovative technologies 
can be leveraged to perform cleanup faster and at a lower cost.
    Some of the nuclear waste we're talking about today was 
generated almost sixty years ago when the global nuclear arms 
race during the Cold War spun out of the Manhattan Project. The 
majority of the legacy nuclear waste that the Department is 
responsible for is from government-sponsored weapons 
development and production. However, the Manhattan Project was 
also the genesis for peaceful uses of nuclear technology, such 
as nuclear energy. Some of the legacy nuclear waste is also 
from government-sponsored research and development to further 
these peaceful purposes. Regardless of the defense or non-
defense application, the government has an obligation to the 
American people to responsibly manage and dispose of this 
legacy waste.
    So, why are we talking about this on the Science Committee, 
when our legislative jurisdiction is over civilian research and 
development? This is because the Science Committee is all about 
finding and applying scientific solutions. Though the budget 
for the non-defense portion of the Office of Environmental 
Management is only a little over 4% of the budget for the 
entire office, much of the science we can use to improve the 
cleanup process is the same. And when we're learning from 
experts in this field--many of which are here today--that the 
lifecycle cost estimates for the remaining cleanup activities 
are growing to the order of half a trillion dollars or more, it 
would be irresponsible of us to not look to the science. 
Unfortunately, the budget dedicated to research and development 
has shrunk from 5% of the budget a few decades ago to only 1/3 
of a percent in recent years.
    The good news is we have a good idea of the work that needs 
to be done. The experts before us have all closely reviewed 
DOE's Office of Environmental Management. The analyses have 
been complete, the reports published. They all have the same 
conclusions and recommendations. We must look at opportunities 
for improvement across the cleanup enterprise holistically, and 
we must increase our investment in research and development of 
innovative technologies that can be widely used to enable more 
efficient cleanup. I look forward to hearing our witnesses 
today go into detail on proposals to do just this.
    Before I close, I want to acknowledge the impressive work 
that the Office of Environmental Management has done to date. 
Thankfully, the Department has successfully completed a lot of 
their work here, as only 15 sites out of 107 remain. I was 
especially pleased to see the work at the Brookhaven National 
Lab in my home state of New York finish up successfully just 
this year. This is a tough job. I want to recognize that, and 
thank those of you who work to make it better.
    With that said, thank you all again for being here today, 
and I look forward to this discussion.

    Chairman Bowman. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Weber for an 
opening statement.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental 
Management, or EM as we call it, the largest environmental 
cleanup program in the world has been charged with the 
formidable task of managing the environmental legacy of the 
cold war. This means cleanup of nuclear contamination resulting 
from decades of weapons testing and government-sponsored energy 
research. Their work includes treating millions of gallons of 
radioactive waste, decommissioning contaminated buildings, and 
remediating contaminated soil as well as groundwater. It's a 
big job without a doubt.
    But while EM has made great progress, completing cleanup at 
92 of 107 sites across the country, the estimated cost of these 
activities has more than doubled in the last decade. That means 
the lifecycle cost for cleanup activities at the remaining 15 
sites could reach as high as $720 billion with a B. It is 
absolutely critical that we get these costs under control.
    The 15 remaining cleanups are estimated to take decades. If 
we don't address costs--our costs and liabilities, they will 
only continue to grow. In other words, things are only going to 
get worse unless we make some changes. In fact, the Government 
Accountability Office (GAO) added the Federal Government's 
environmental liabilities to its quote, ``high-risk list,'' end 
quote, in 2017, meaning EM's programs are among the most 
vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. And it 
has remained on this list ever since.
    But today's hearing will focus mainly on the positives by 
exploring strategies for EM to leverage innovation that will 
shorten cleanup times and help it perform its decontamination 
work safely, more efficiently, and hopefully at a cheaper cost 
to the taxpayer.
    As part of our efforts to encourage EM's use of R&D to 
address the greatest challenge at remaining cleanup sites, 
Congress has called on both the National Academies and GAO to 
address strategies to improve EM's efforts. In its 2019 
assessment, a National Academies committee found that EM's 
management of its science and technology (S&T) activity is 
uncoordinated across its sites. It also found that EM 
demonstrated, quote, ``little to no interest,'' end quote, in 
science and technology development that could contribute to the 
development of breakthrough technologies. That certainly sounds 
like a huge missed opportunity to me.
    In GAO's 2021 report, they reported some alarming findings 
such as the lack, the lack, of a common definition of R&D for 
EM and no systematic efforts to track expenditures, much less 
prioritize needs across the EM complex. Furthermore, GAO found 
that EM lacked any systematic method for evaluating the 
investments in R&D that the EM did make.
    But hopefully today's hearing is the first step in a 
brighter outlook for the future. I look forward to hearing 
about the recommendations from GAO and the National Academies, 
as well as EM's efforts to implement them. In addition, I want 
to encourage EM to better collaborate with other relevant 
program offices across the Department, the Office of Science, 
the Office of Nuclear Energy, and other programs that DOE are 
already tackling today's toughest research challenges and 
pursuing cutting-edge technologies. It would certainly make 
sense that these offices, including the world-class facilities 
at the national labs, coordinate and collaborate with EM to 
reduce cleanup costs in time.
    And on that note, I look forward to hearing how the 
Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), EM's only national 
laboratory, is supporting cleanup efforts across the country. 
In managing this lab, Battelle Memorial Institute has partnered 
with five universities and two small businesses. I hope we can 
identify other opportunities for stakeholders to collaborate in 
addressing those same environmental cleanup challenges.
    I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today, 
your expertise on this issue. And, Mr. Chairman, with that, I 
yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]

    Thank you, Chairman Bowman.
    The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental 
Management or ``E-M'', the largest environmental cleanup 
program in the world, has been charged with the formidable task 
of managing the environmental legacy of the Cold War. This 
means cleanup of nuclear contamination resulting from decades 
of weapons testing and government-sponsored energy research. 
Their work includes treating millions of gallons of radioactive 
waste, decommissioning contaminated buildings, and remediating 
contaminated soil and groundwater.
    This is a big job, without a doubt. But while EM has made 
great progress completing clean up at 92 of 107 sites across 
the country, the estimated cost of these activities has more 
than doubled over the last decade.
    That means the lifecycle costs for cleanup activities at 
the remaining 15 sites could reach up to $720 billion.
    It is absolutely critical that we get these costs under 
control. The 15 remaining cleanups are estimated to take 
decades. If we don't address our costs and liabilities, they 
will continue to grow. In other words, things are only going to 
get worse if we don't make some changes.In fact, the Government 
Accountability Office added the federal government's 
environmental liabilities to its ``High Risk List'' in 2017, 
meaning EM's programs are among the most vulnerable to fraud, 
waste, abuse, and mismanagement. It has remained on this list 
ever since.
    But today's hearing will focus mainly on the positives by 
exploring strategies for EM to leverage innovation that will 
shorten cleanup times and help it perform its decontamination 
work safely, more efficiently, and hopefully at a cheaper cost 
to the taxpayer.
    As part of our efforts to encourage EM's use of R&D to 
address the greatest challenges at remaining cleanup sites, 
Congress has called on both the National Academies and GAO to 
assess strategies to improve EM's efforts.
    In its 2019 assessment, a National Academies committee 
found that EM's management of its science and technology 
activities is uncoordinated across its sites. It also found 
that EM demonstrated ``little to no interest'' in science and 
technology development that could contribute to the development 
of breakthrough technologies. That certainly sounds like a huge 
missed opportunity to me.
    In GAO's 2021 report, they reported some alarming findings, 
such as the lack of a common definition of R&D for EM, and no 
systematic efforts to track expenditures or prioritize needs 
across the EM complex. Furthermore, GAO found that EM lacked 
any systematic method for evaluating the investments in R&D 
that it did make.
    But hopefully today's hearing is the first step in a 
brighter outlook for the future. I look forward to hearing more 
about the recommendations from GAO and the National Academies, 
as well as EM's efforts to implement them. In addition, I want 
to encourage EM to better collaborate with other relevant 
program offices across the Department.
    The Office of Science, the Office of Nuclear Energy, and 
other programs at DOE are already tackling today's toughest 
research challenges and pursuing cutting-edge technologies. It 
would certainly make sense that these offices, including the 
world-class facilities at the National Labs, coordinate and 
collaborate with EM to reduce cleanup costs and time.
    And on that note, I look forwarding to hearing how the 
Savannah River National Laboratory, EM's only National 
Laboratory, is supporting cleanup efforts across the country. 
In managing this Lab, Battelle Memorial Institute has partnered 
with five universities and two small businesses.
    I hope we can identify other opportunities for stakeholders 
to collaborate in addressing environmental cleanup challenges.
    I thank all of our witnesses for being here today and 
lending your expertise on this issue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.

    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Weber.
    If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 
point.
    [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning to our panelists, and thank you to 
Subcommittee Chairman Bowman for holding this hearing.
    The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental 
Management represents nearly one-fifth of DOE's annual budget. 
Its mission is so important: to clean up the federal properties 
where nuclear development activities conducted during the 20th 
century resulted in contamination. This mission is rooted in an 
important part of American history: this week in 1945, the 
United States performed the Trinity Test--the first ever 
detonation of a nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project helped 
the United States change the course of World War II and in 
turn, the course of global history.
    Communities like Hanford, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River 
stepped up in support of the Manhattan Project, developing and 
testing nuclear materials in secret. These communities 
sacrificed so much for the war effort. Other sites across the 
country were established a few years later to fulfill both 
national security and commercial nuclear power objectives. In 
the decades to follow, it became clear that these early days of 
nuclear innovation left a complex legacy of radiological 
contamination. It is only right that the federal government 
apply the same intellectual firepower and passion to research 
and innovation for addressing our nation's remaining fifteen 
cleanup sites.
    But unfortunately, it seems like these research activities 
have not been a priority for DOE over the past couple of 
decades. Less than half a percent of the overall budget for 
DOE's Office of Environmental Management is dedicated to 
science and technology development. The U.S. Government 
Accountability Office and the National Academies of Science, 
Engineering, and Medicine have found that DOE does not have a 
formal system for evaluating and organizing its cleanup-related 
research activities across the agency complex. DOE also does 
not have a clear strategy for targeting its science investments 
in this area.
    I do want to acknowledge how much the Office of 
Environmental Management has accomplished in its 30-year 
history, having successfully completed cleanup at 92 sites. And 
I also appreciate that very little about DOE's remaining 
cleanup mission is simple. Each site has a different set of 
cleanup needs, because the nuclear activities conducted at each 
site and the resulting waste profiles are all distinct.
    That said, targeted research and development here could 
ultimately save a significant amount of taxpayer money. DOE 
estimates the lifecycle costs for completing its cleanup 
mission at somewhere between $488 billion and $723 billion 
dollars. If DOE can foster strategic partnerships with 
industry, researchers in the academic community, and the 
national labs, I feel confident we will see more innovative 
solutions that can help reduce these costs.I want to thank 
Ranking Member Lucas, Ranking Member Weber, and their staff for 
partnering with me and Chairman Bowman on such an important 
topic. We worked together to develop provisions for the DOE 
Science for the Future Act that would direct the Biological and 
Environmental Research program to study the contaminants that 
the Department is working to address. And we worked closely 
together in organizing this hearing during a very busy 
legislative session.
    Thanks again to our witnesses for appearing here today, and 
I yield back.

    Chairman Bowman. At this time, I would like to introduce 
our witnesses. Mr. William White is the Senior Advisor for the 
Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, or 
EM. Prior to being appointed in November 2021, he has served as 
the Acting Assistant Secretary for EM and as Senior Adviser to 
the Under Secretary for Science. And before joining EM, he 
served as the Chief of Staff and Associate Principal Deputy 
Administrator for DOE's National Nuclear Security 
Administration (NNSA).
    Dr. Vahid Majidi is the Director of Savannah River National 
Laboratory. As DOE's Environmental Management laboratory, SRNL 
provides scientific and technological direction and program 
support for the Nation's legacy waste cleanup program. In 
previous senior positions in the Federal Government, Dr. Majidi 
recently reported to the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the U.S. 
Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation. He has more than 30 years of 
experience in the areas of chemistry, measurement science, and 
technology, national and homeland security, science and 
technology policy, and nuclear nonproliferation.
    Dr. John Plodinec served as Vice Chair on the National 
Academies Committee on the Independent Assessment of Science 
and Technology for the Department of Energy's Defense 
Environmental Cleanup Program. Dr. Plodinec's career has 
spanned nearly 50 years in research and development. His work 
on radioactive waste characterization and glass processing was 
an integral part of the design of the Defense Waste Processing 
Facility at the Department of Energy's Savannah River site, the 
Nation's first facility to incorporate high-level nuclear waste 
in glass. He has regularly been consulted by several of the DOE 
sites by DOE headquarters and by external groups such as the 
Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board and the Nuclear Waste 
Technical Review Board.
    And last but certainly not least, Mr. Nathan Anderson 
serves as a Director in the U.S. and International Nuclear 
Security Group and Cleanup Group at the Government 
Accountability Office. His work contributes to assessments of 
two high-risk areas--DOE project and contract management and 
the U.S. Government's environmental liabilities. Mr. Anderson 
previously served as an Assistant Director, where he led a 
suite of projects examining DOE nuclear waste cleanup issues. 
He also helped lead GAO's work for the International 
Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions Working Group on 
Environmental Auditing, which culminated in a framework to help 
National Audit Offices with fewer resources design and 
implement audits for environmental issues.
    Thank you all for joining us today. As our witnesses should 
know, you will have 5 minutes for your spoken testimony. Your 
written testimony will be included in the record for the 
hearing. When you all have completed your spoken testimony, we 
will begin with questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to 
question the panel. We will start with Mr. White. Mr. White, 
please begin.

    TESTIMONY OF MR. WILLIAM ``IKE'' WHITE, SENIOR ADVISOR,

              OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT,

                   U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

    Mr. White. Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and 
Members of the Subcommittee, it's an honor to appear before you 
today to represent the Department of Energy's Office of 
Environmental Management.
    EM is focused on its commitment to clean up the 
environmental legacy of the national defense programs that 
helped end World War II and the cold war. This work helps 
address the government's responsibilities to the communities 
that played such an important role in U.S. history. More 
importantly, it helps position them to continue to grow and 
thrive in the future.
    Today, we've completed cleanup activities at 92 of 107 
sites and most recently completing legacy work at Brookhaven in 
New York. These historical accomplishments were enabled by the 
significant investments Congress has made in the EM program and 
aided by technology development and research.
    Today, EM is continuing to advance the cleanup mission by 
achieving impactful progress across the country. More than 200 
transuranic waste shipments were received last year at the 
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, bringing the 
total to more than 13,000 shipments safely transported. That 
includes shipments from Los Alamos where the team has certified 
and completed 30 shipments to WIPP just last year.
    At the Hanford Site in Washington State we've begun large-
scale treatment of radioactive tank waste at the Tank-Side 
Cesium Removal System, another project we recently completed 
ahead of schedule and under budget. Demolition of the Building 
326 uranium process building was just completed, marking the 
most significant cleanup milestone to date at the Portsmouth 
site in Ohio. The activation and decommissioning is also 
advancing at sites like West Valley Demonstration Project in 
New York.
    And technology R&D plays a role in these and other 
priorities. By leveraging the expertise of the national labs, 
other DOE offices, industry, and academia, EM routinely deploys 
technology advancements in the areas of tank waste cleanup, 
soil and groundwater remediation, facility decommissioning, 
decontamination, and worker safety. Multiple national 
laboratories have been involved in efforts that have led to 
innovative environmental monitoring systems that provide long-
term protection at our legacy soil and groundwater 
contamination sites. Applied R&D efforts have led to 
advancements in the area of air filtration and treatment to 
better protect workers as they perform their cleanup work. 
Testbed initiatives are being used at multiple sites to 
evaluate technologies to address higher priority program needs. 
Technology R&D has also accelerated tank waste treatment at the 
Savannah River Site, and that may have application at other 
sites as well. And more energy-efficient and sustainable 
methods for safeguarding groundwater have been developed and 
deployed.
    While steady progress continues across all sites, the EM 
mission has decades to go at some sites and accounts for at 
least $400 billion in environmental liabilities. Given the 
magnitude of the remaining cleanup mission, EM must keep 
developing innovative approaches to accelerate progress, 
increase efficiency, and protect human health and the 
environment. I appreciate the support provided by Congress and 
the recommendations offered by the Government Accountability 
Office, the National Academies of Science, and others.
    As we work to enhance our R&D efforts, EM takes a 
comprehensive approach to prioritizing all of its cleanup work, 
including the associated technology development. For example, 
one of EM's top priorities is addressing Hanford's tank waste 
mission, which represents one of the Department's largest 
financial and environmental liabilities. That's why EM is 
leveraging the expertise of our Savannah River National 
Laboratory and the entire network of national laboratories for 
environmental management and stewardship to develop an R&D 
roadmap for accelerating the Hanford tank waste mission.
    Utilizing increased funding, EM is also expanding our 
partnerships with minority serving institutions (MSI). This 
enables us to add a technology curriculum and a research grant 
partnership involving EM minority serving institutions and the 
national laboratories.
    EM is committed to maximizing the benefit of the available 
R&D investments while maintaining the momentum of cleanup 
progress, meeting regulatory milestones, and bringing EM sites 
closer to completion. In partnership with the national 
laboratories, EM is conducting a holistic EM technology review 
to ensure that the labs have overall unity of effort, that they 
are efficient, and that they provide maximum value.
    I appreciate the Subcommittee's interest in utilizing 
technology development to enhance the environmental cleanup 
mission, and I look forward to working with Congress on ways to 
build on the ongoing improvements we have in this area. I thank 
you for your time and look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. White.
    Next, we will have Dr. Majidi.

            TESTIMONY OF DR. VAHID MAJIDI, DIRECTOR,

               SAVANNAH RIVER NATIONAL LABORATORY

    Dr. Majidi. Good morning, Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member 
Weber, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting 
Savannah River National Laboratory to testify and discuss our 
mission to highlight the value of our work to our Nation.
    Savannah River National Laboratory is the only national 
laboratory stewarded by the Department of Energy's Office of 
Environmental Management. Additionally, we make significant 
contributions toward the Office of Legacy Management (LM) and 
National Nuclear Security Administration programs, including 
nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation activities. Battelle 
Savannah River Alliance, or BSRA, is charged with the 
management and operation of our laboratory. Our experience and 
deep understanding of challenges associated with Department of 
Energy's cleanup mission is rooted in 7 decades of resolving 
our Nation's most complex nuclear material processing problems.
    Our laboratory provides applied science and engineering 
innovations for DOE's 15 active cleanup sites and 101 post-
closure management sites. Savannah River leads the Network of 
National Laboratories for Environmental Management and 
Stewardship. This network coordinates science and technology 
solutions for both EM and LM.
    This fiscal year, SRNL led a team in analysis of 
supplemental treatment approaches for Hanford low-activity 
waste. We updated the complex wide soil and groundwater 
technical targets to develop a national groundwater management 
strategy for EM, and we're creating an R&D roadmap for 
accelerating and reducing risk for the Hanford waste tank 
treatment mission. We're also providing recommendations for 
long-term actions to mitigate risks for legacy management 
sites.
    Our main mission is to provide modern and practical 
solutions to environmental cleanup and long-term surveillance 
and maintenance problems. This includes our latest work on 
assessing the climate vulnerabilities of EM and LM sites. When 
appropriate, we work across different program offices to bridge 
the need for research and development, for example, extracting 
unique isotopes for nonproliferation programs will also benefit 
DOE's Office of Science, EM, and other NNSA programs. The 
Advanced Research Projects Agency--Energy, or ARPA-E, is 
funding SRNL to use our expertise in glass and ceramics in 
partnership with the recycling and manufacturing sector to 
create more durable cement and other advanced materials.
    University partnerships are critical to our success, and we 
leverage them to develop our future work force. Cleanup and 
remediation projects are designed to meet local stakeholder 
needs. As such, we purposefully work with many stakeholders and 
train our work force to understand the impact of technology 
within the regulatory requirement domain. Since 2014, the 
Office of Environmental Management's Minority Serving 
Institution Partnership Program has been executed by Savannah 
River National Laboratory. We work with five other national 
laboratories to provide internship and support to historically 
Black colleges and universities (HBCU) and minority serving 
institutions. Most recently, we have expanded the program, 
providing funding for postdoctoral research and graduate 
fellows.
    To accelerate cleanup mission, our laboratory provides 
processing, remediation, and closure approaches with a rigorous 
data-driven foundation. We develop high-impact technologies to 
overcome barriers, while minimizing waste production in the 
disposition of nuclear materials. We focus on remediation 
strategies using passive technologies to reduce cost in the 
long-term maintenance. We pioneer innovations to reduce long-
term monitoring costs through integration of sensor networks 
and by providing high-fidelity assessment.
    Mr. Chairman, Savannah River National Laboratory's 
expertise and innovative spirit uniquely positions the lab to 
help the Department of Energy accelerate cleanup activities and 
realizing a reduction in liabilities and costs. Thank you again 
for the opportunity to testify. I'm happy to take any 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Majidi follows:]

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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Majidi.
    Next, we will have Dr. Plodinec.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN PLODINEC,

          ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR RESILIENCE TECHNOLOGIES,

          COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL RESILIENCE INSTITUTE

    Dr. Plodinec. Thank you. Slight technical glitch there. My 
thanks to--back out of there a little bit--Chairman Weber--
excuse me, Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and the rest 
of the Subcommittee. You have my written testimony. I'm going 
to, in my oral testimony, try to make three points that I think 
are very important for the discussion today.
    First, it was clear to our committee that there are 
opportunities for science and technology developments that 
could reduce costs, quicken cleanup, and reduce risk. We found 
that EM, however, did not have a comprehensive program at that 
time to identify or capture them. The committee identified 
seven areas where S&T developments could reduce costs, and 
those are shown on the control knobs graphic on page 5 of my 
written testimony.
    Let me mention just one, chemistry. Chemical separations 
are and will continue to be of great importance to EM 
throughout the dispositioning of tank waste. Over the last few 
years, tremendous progress has been made in such subfields as 
micro-separations in accelerated chemical processing. If these 
advances were deployed for processing liquid waste, 
particularly in the tanks, advances in these areas could 
increase efficiency, reduce the cost and the time required.
    But that brings me to my second point. That positive return 
on these public investments in science and technology can only 
occur, can only occur if they are deployed at the DOE sites. 
That means that EM's cleanup contractors have to deploy them. 
That's relatively easy at the start of a particular project or 
contract. It becomes more and more difficult as facilities are 
built and processing starts and as contracts approach their 
completion. Further, cleanup contracts themselves are focused 
on maximizing cleanup within the life of the contract, not on 
finding potential solutions for waste streams not included in 
the contract.
    That brings me to my third point, the importance of what I 
call the technology tailor. In the innovations literature this 
is often called a knowledge broker or the gatekeeper, but these 
terms don't reflect what has to happen within the DOE EM 
context. EM's biggest cleanup challenges, the ones where S&T 
can really have a big return on investment, pose complicated, 
often wicked problems that are multidimensional, multifarious 
for that matter, and require stitching together pieces from 
several technologies and testing the combined fabric if you 
will and making alterations so that the proposed solutions 
actually fit EM's needs. Thus, the technology tailor plays a 
crucial role by translating science into operations. The 
National Academies committee saw instances where technology 
tailoring had occurred but saw no evidence at that time that 
the importance of this tailoring function was recognized by EM. 
However, I must say, Dr. Majidi's testimony indicates that the 
importance of this crucial element of a comprehensive S&T 
program is beginning to be realized, recognized, and that's a 
very positive development.
    With that I'll stop. Thank you for your attention. I'm 
ready to answer any questions you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Plodinec follows:]

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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Plodinec.
    And finally, we will have Mr. Anderson.

               TESTIMONY OF MR. NATHAN ANDERSON,

          DIRECTOR, NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT,

             U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE

    Mr. Anderson. Chair Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, Members 
of the Subcommittee, good morning. I'd much prefer to be with 
you in person, but the COVID bug finally bit me a few days ago, 
hence my virtual participation.
    Research and development has played a central role in 
Federal efforts to clean up massive amounts of radioactive and 
hazardous waste produced by more than 75 years of nuclear 
weapons production and energy research. Advances in R&D have 
enabled DOE's Office of Environmental Management to carry out 
this cleanup using safer, more efficient, and more effective 
approaches.
    But the proportion of EM's budget specifically designated 
for R&D has generally declined since 2000. At the same time, 
DOE's environmental liabilities, the estimated costs to clean 
up radioactive and hazardous waste are now over $500 billion. 
In recent years, the growth in these lifecycle costs on average 
have significantly outpaced annual spending on efforts to 
address them, creating a situation not unlike an interest-only 
mortgage. We need to look at smarter ways of doing business to 
chip away at the principal.
    My testimony today discusses our findings and 
recommendations from two recent reports on the Department of 
Energy's Office of Environmental Management. Our findings have 
implications on the outcomes and effectiveness of investments 
in R&D. Specifically, I'll discuss the extent to which EM 
coordinates R&D across the complex, prioritizes R&D efforts, 
and has sustained a consistent leadership commitment, which can 
help an R&D program.
    Regarding EM's coordination of R&D, it's important to note 
that EM has a number of players involved in these activities, 
including EM's network of national labs, 15 cleanup sites, its 
technology development office, and other offices such as the 
Office of Science. In our October 2021 report we found that 
coordination amongst these different entities was a mixed bag 
with some positives and some challenges. Positives include EM's 
ability to clarify roles and responsibilities such as through 
the national lab network to help ensure the right people and 
groups are often at the table.
    Challenges include identifying and tracking resources used 
for R&D and defining and measuring outcomes for such 
investments. For example, EM doesn't have internal systems to 
track R&D expenditures throughout the complex or monitor their 
effectiveness. Of the nearly $300 million, broadly 
characterized as annual funding for R&D, we were unable to 
track investments for about $180 million.
    Regarding prioritization, we found that EM's technology 
development office had not taken a comprehensive approach to 
prioritizing R&D for nuclear cleanup. In the absence of a 
comprehensive approach, individual EM sites and DOE 
laboratories developed their own methods for making 
prioritization decisions.
    It's also important to note that the way that money is 
allocated for R&D and restrictions on spending result in 
pressures to direct resources to address immediate operational 
needs. As a result, there can be pressure to divert resources 
away from forward-looking R&D efforts that could bring long-
term efficiencies. Prior studies of EM's R&D efforts have 
identified concerns about EM's level of investment in 
breakthrough research in favor of incremental research.
    Better coordination and prioritization tie in to my third 
point about the need for enhanced and committed leadership 
within DOE and EM, which may also enhance the effectiveness of 
its R&D efforts. And let me be clear, this is an area where 
Congress can help. To set the stage, EM has experienced 
frequent turnover in its top leadership positions since it was 
established in 1989. In the last 2 decades, there have been 
five Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretaries and nine Acting 
Assistant Secretaries or Senior Advisors. Frequent turnover has 
created challenges for achieving the Department's complex and 
long-term cleanup mission, such as difficulty in building 
relationships with States and local communities, inconsistent 
and incomplete initiatives, and a focus on short-term actions 
over long-term priorities.
    In addition to frequent turnover in leadership, EM's 
position within DOE's organizational structure has been 
unstable. EM has reported to DOE's Deputy Secretary and three 
Under Secretaries at different points throughout EM's history. 
Earlier this year, we recommended Congress establish a term 
appointment for EM's top leader and create a new DOE Under 
Secretary position for environmental cleanup.
    Chair Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, this completes my prepared statement. I'd be 
pleased to respond to any questions that you may have at this 
time.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

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    Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
    And I just want to note for the record that each witness' 
testimony was well under 5 minutes. That's incredible. 
Congratulations to all of you.
    At this point, we will begin our first round of questions. 
The Chairman recognizes himself for 5 minutes. I'm going to try 
to get through three questions. Let's see if we can make it.
    Mr. White, thank you again for joining us today. In its 
October 2021 report, GAO noted some actions that DOE should be 
taking to maximize the potential of EM science and technology 
activities. I'm hoping you can give us a status report on a 
couple of those.
    First, GAO found that EM did not have a common definition 
of R&D for DOE programs, contractors, and other stakeholders to 
use. This makes it hard to coordinate or even fully evaluate 
the research activities associated with environmental cleanup. 
Has DOE since developed and shared a common definition for R&D 
through the EM complex? If not, do you have an estimated date 
of completion?
    Also, GAO also found that EM does not have an internal 
system to systematically track cleanup-related R&D expenditures 
across DOE, which seems related to the lack of a definition for 
R&D. Has DOE made any progress toward establishing such an 
internal tracking system? Do you have an estimated date of 
completion for this?
    Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm happy to report 
that we have in fact established a definition for research and 
development that we've promulgated across the EM complex. We 
did that last year. We've also developed and put in place a 
data base to track our technology development activities across 
the EM enterprise. To date, we've only populated that data base 
with the activities that we fund directly out of our 
headquarters technology development program, which is the 
smallest part of it. By the end of the year, I expect we will 
have taken our first shot at pulling in all of the sort of 
applied R&D-stage activities that occur at our different sites.
    Chairman Bowman. Awesome. Mr. Anderson, since we're talking 
about the recommendations from your report, do you have 
anything to add to our dialog on this?
    Mr. Anderson. The one thing I would add is, you know, that 
EM we found had taken a bit of an ad hoc approach to managing 
its R&D portfolio. You know, our recommendations are aimed at 
enhancing coordination and improving prioritization, all with 
an eye toward developing smarter ways to chip away at that $500 
billion liability. We're heartened to hear that EM agreed with 
our recommendations, and we look forward to seeing the steps 
taken to implement them.
    Chairman Bowman. Next question is for Dr. Majidi on 
diversity in the work force. Thanks for your testimony. You 
mentioned that Savannah River National Laboratory has supported 
EM in managing its Minority Serving Institutions Partnership 
Program, which provides internship funding and support to HBCUs 
and other MSIs through the competitive research award process 
and also funds postdoctoral research and graduate fellows. Can 
you please talk to us about the importance of a diverse talent 
pool in the areas of environmental management and how the MSI 
Partnership Program is helping to develop a diverse work force 
for DOE labs?
    Dr. Majidi. Thank you, sir. One of the challenges in any 
S&T area today is bringing in more and more diverse voices to 
solve technical challenges. Through EM's vision, we are 
executing the Minority Serving Institutions Partnership Program 
in a number of different ways. First, we partner with minority 
serving institutions to provide technical guidance and 
supporting analysis of technical programs that they are 
performing. Then, we have an internship program that every year 
we bring interns not only to our laboratory, but to other 
national laboratories as well, so that the interns get a full 
flavor of what is going on around the entirety of the DOE 
complex. We have started a postdoctoral program where we bring 
in brilliant young scientists, and we mentor them at the 
laboratory to let them know exactly how the science for EM is 
done. And finally, we're starting a graduate fellowship program 
to bring in additional graduate students from minority serving 
institution programs.
    The diversity is very important to us because most of our 
diverse work force are the ones that are most impacted by many 
of the national activities that is in their backyard. They 
understand what is the impact of technology, what is the impact 
of cleanup in their own backyard so they can speak on behalf of 
the stakeholders because they're stakeholders and help us 
develop a better technology platform.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you so much for that response. And 
before I yield to Ranking Member Weber, I just want to mention 
for follow up, I would love to know what science education 
should look like in our K to 12 school systems, particularly in 
low-income and marginalized communities, to help prepare 
students for, you know, postsecondary opportunities in this 
space. We have about 20 seconds. Do you have any comment on 
that?
    Dr. Majidi. No, that's a very rich topic, sir. And I'll be 
happy to sit down and tell you about all the programs that we 
have in place. We live in a neighborhood that has lots of 
underprivileged school systems, and we are working with a 
laboratory and EM to reach to those.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Weber for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Majidi, in your testimony, you mentioned a couple of 
things that are right at the heart of today's hearing. First, 
you say Savannah River has been working with other national 
labs to help develop an integrated technology development 
framework, primary objective being to provide a good balance of 
early concept R&D with ready-to-deploy technologies. But at the 
same time you mentioned that Savannah River receives limited 
funding from the Office of Science on EM-related research. And 
that's not the best thing for us to hear necessarily because 
there's no one better--in the world better at early concept R&D 
than the Office of Science. I think you'd agree with that. It's 
no secret that when DOE offices worked closely together, 
everyone benefits.
    So, Dr. Majidi, what would your recommendations be to 
ensure the Office of Science is right there with you from the 
start and best helping progress in that environmental 
management field?
    Dr. Majidi. Yes, thank you very much for this question. 
Historically, the Office of Science has not played a 
significant role at our laboratory. Over the past few years, 
specifically, over the past 3 years, we have had more and more 
engagement with the Office of Science. And I know that--I will 
also attest to the fact that this engagement with Office of 
Science has significantly increased.
    We have a number of programs that are coordinated 
throughout the Department, including the Office of Science. 
We've had three specific funding opportunities from Office of 
Science that benefits the laboratory and fundamental research. 
To be perfectly frank, our laboratory in the past has not been 
incredibly competitive in the Office of Science domain because 
we've had applied science and technology rather than 
fundamental technologies. As we mature with our new management 
and operation companies, our goal is to in fact increase our 
interactions with the Office of Science and ensure that that 
fundamental research does weave into our program. We are 
partnering with ARPA-E to fund our programs both in EM and in 
the fusion program. So the laboratory, as it's maturing, is 
engaging more and more programs across the DOE.
    Mr. Weber. Glad to hear you bring that up because that was 
actually part of my next question. To see you mentioned 
partnerships funding through ARPA-E. The Energy Act of 2020 
specifically gave, as you know, ARPA-E the ability to fund 
projects in management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive 
waste and spent nuclear fuel. So, with that in mind, can you go 
into a little bit more detail what ARPA-E is good at and what 
other programs like the Office of Nuclear Energy might be 
better suited for?
    Dr. Majidi. Well, again, thank you for funding ARPA-E 
because they're funding us and it's certainly very helpful.
    I'll start with a quick story. For many decades, EM has 
funded our laboratory, as well as other laboratories, to 
develop glass and ceramics for immobilizing nuclear waste. We 
are quite good at immobilizing nuclear waste, and we have lots 
of expertise in glass and ceramics. So a few years back, I 
challenged all of our scientists who are working in glass and 
ceramics. OK. What is the next step? What's next for glass and 
ceramics? And we in fact invested internally through 
Laboratory-Directed Research and Development Fund, or LDRD, 
what's the next challenge for glass? And we came up with a 
number of different ideas. This engineered cellular magmatics, 
which is basically taking glass and recycling them, not by 
putting more energy, but by putting mechanical energy and 
chemistry to alter the nature of the glass and use it as a more 
fundamentally more useful construction material. That led into 
ARPA-E investment that allows us to create a next generation of 
more enduring cement with a lower carbon footprint. We are 
partnering, thanks to ARPA-E, with both industry and academia 
to push that concept forward and ultimately commercialize it. 
So the fact that ARPA-E is a player in this game has been a 
gamechanger for our laboratory.
    Mr. Weber. Well, thank you for that. So would you agree 
that nuclear waste management cannot be conducted solely by 
ARPA-E and requires a cross-cutting department effort? And if 
money wasn't an object, how would you do that?
    Dr. Majidi. Well, sir, I will leave that up to the 
Department certainly when it comes to the money, but the 
collaboration amongst program managers is absolutely essential. 
And the laboratory plays a game to bring the program managers 
as well. So I mentioned--I haven't quite mentioned but that we 
have a program called Mark-18 that brings NNSA, EM, Office of 
Science all together for a particular focus on a mission that 
benefits everybody.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentlewoman from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, 
is now recognized.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Chairman Bowman and Ranking Member 
Weber, and thank you to our witnesses.
    I am from Oregon, honored to represent a district in the 
northwest part of the State. So I'm going to focus my questions 
on Hanford. And to set the stage, Hanford in south central 
Washington is about a 586-square-mile site, about the size of 
Rhode Island, where they store about 56 million gallons of 
radioactive waste in old tanks not too far from the Columbia 
River and also not too far from the Cascadia Subduction Zone 
where we're overdue for a massive earthquake.
    So with this effort, there are approximately 8,000 workers 
involved, and in 2021, the Washington State Department of 
Commerce released a report that expressed concerns for the 
health of the Hanford work force because of short-term and 
long-term exposure to hazardous materials. According to the 
report, about 1/3 of the work force indicated long-term 
exposure to hazardous materials, and nearly 60 percent reported 
being involved in an exposure event.
    So I'm going to start with Dr. Majidi. In your written 
testimony, you highlight research that would minimize worker 
exposure to hazardous materials. So how can investments in 
research and technological innovations increase workplace 
safety? And what role does your lab play in sharing these 
developments across the cleanup sites nationally?
    Dr. Majidi. Thank you for your question. A few years ago, 
Environmental Management asked the laboratory to put together 
the national network of laboratories for environmental 
management missions, and I am the permanent Chair of this 
organization. And the Co-Chair rotates amongst five other 
national laboratories. This network is utilized by EM and by 
the sites to reduce the risk in a number of different programs. 
So, for example, EM asked us to review technology development 
program, and we completed the review by putting a team together 
and provided various recommendations and suggestions. We 
identified R&D to accelerate Hanford tank waste mission, how do 
we do it faster and cheaper? We use technology--we did a review 
on using technology for remaining soil and groundwater for 
remediation of Hanford and other sites.
    So we as a whole look at sites that EM and LM is 
responsible for and, when specifically merited, we bring other 
national laboratories together as a team and fundamentally look 
at those specific problems and trying to provide 
recommendations to the EM program office.
    Ms. Bonamici. And, Dr. Majidi, when you talk about 
reducing--or using technology----
    Dr. Majidi. Yes.
    Ms. Bonamici [continuing]. For safer work, I assume that 
means reducing the human exposure
    Dr. Majidi. That's exactly a part of it.
    Ms. Bonamici. OK. So, Mr. White, I'm a Member of the Spent 
Nuclear Fuel Solutions Caucus, so I'm committed to working with 
our local communities, my colleagues in Congress, and the 
Office of Environmental Management to develop a long-term 
storage solution for spent nuclear fuel that protects the 
environment and public health. I assume you're familiar with 
the GAO report that Mr. Anderson discussed today?
    Mr. White. Yes, ma'am.
    Ms. Bonamici. So in your written testimony, you mentioned 
Hanford, and you talk about the storage and disposal of spent 
nuclear fuel is a top cleanup priority for the Office of EM. 
You also mentioned expediting the cleanup. So the last report 
that I saw--and hopefully you can update me on this--was 
intended to be about a 30-year project but now they're 
projecting about 75 years. Can you give us an update on how 
long you expect the Hanford cleanup to take?
    Mr. White. How long it takes depends in part on exactly 
what we do to do the cleanup, and that's something that we're 
still working through. But I would say on the order of 6 
decades would be a good guess. I mean that--but again, there's 
a lot of uncertainty associated with that number.
    Ms. Bonamici. How often do you update that number based on 
the technologies that are being developed?
    Mr. White. We update the number based on a number of 
different factors, right? It depends on what--how you 
characterize the number. If you evaluate it as part of an 
environmental liability, those numbers get updated on an annual 
basis. When we redo lifecycle cost analysis work, those get 
updated from time to time, and we most recently had the Corps 
of Engineers, for example, do an independent lifecycle cost 
analysis for that work and update their expectations. When we 
do a system plan every couple of years working with our 
regulator, we redo the system plan for the waste there based on 
what our current expectations are for regulatory requirements, 
and we'll update the number based on what that is. We're 
currently involved at the moment, for example, in holistic 
negotiations with the State of Washington Department of Ecology 
on what the cleanup plan might look like. And whatever comes 
out of that set of discussions with the State of Washington 
would also drive another look at what we expect that timeframe 
to be.
    So I know that's not a simple or straightforward answer, 
but there's a lot of different ways that we do that, depending 
on what the use of the number is going to be.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I'm out of time. I just want 
to express, you know, concern about what was originally 
supposed to be a 30-year project turning into a now 6-decade 
project and the number of people and the risks up there. And I 
yield back. I may be submitting additional questions for the 
record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from California, Mr. Garcia, 
is now recognized.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks to our 
witnesses.
    I represent northern L.A. County and parts of Ventura 
County, and within my district, we have the Santa Susana Field 
Lab, which I know is on your radar for many reasons. It's an 
ongoing project with long-term commitment. And so we have a 
whole lot of questions relative to that that we'll probably 
submit offline, but I just wanted to kind of get your sense--
and I think the question is primarily for Dr. Plodinec and Mr. 
Anderson. But as we're looking at these projects and we're 
looking at the technology to support these cleanup efforts, can 
you walk me through what the relationship is right now and what 
the forum looks like between the Federal Government and then 
some of the State governments and even down to the local 
community government level with regards to the requirements for 
the cleanup? And I know that it's--every site is different, 
every cleanup effort is sort of bespoke relative to the toxins 
and the exposure and the environmentals around it. But the 
requirements seem to change frequently. The levels of--and the 
thresholds of the cleanup seem to be a moving target. And so 
how much of that is driven by the States? How much is that is 
defined by the Federal Government, your offices, and what does 
that forum look like? What--how do--how does--how do the 
multiple levels of government coordinate what the sort of exit 
criteria is for these various cleanup projects? Mr.--Dr. 
Plodinec, we can start with you.
    Dr. Plodinec. Well, probably I am not the right person to 
answer that question. I would suggest that that's--probably 
really falls into the bailiwick of Mr. White. I would say that 
one of the areas that we identified as an--as a research 
opportunity was in fact decisionmaking in--with--in areas of 
great uncertainty such as you've identified. This is an area 
where it's not physical science, it's actually social science. 
But a lot of advances have been made and are continuing to be 
made that could really help DOE in its decisionmaking 
processes.
    Mr. Garcia. And, Mr. White--and I appreciate that, Dr. 
Plodinec. Mr. White, did you want to either amplify or add to 
those comments there?
    Mr. White. Well, I mean, just briefly, I think, as you 
pointed out, are--the framework that we use for cleanup at each 
of the different sites typically depends on a--on an agreement 
that we have with the State regulator and usually with the 
Environmental Protection Agency. We normally call it a triparty 
agreement. Those agreements take different forms at different 
sites. And, you know, over time, depending on what's in the 
agreement and what the state of technology advancement is and 
what we discover as we do the cleanup, will add or amend or 
change those agreements.
    You know, the exact nature of the cleanup work and the 
standards that we try to achieve at each site does, in fact, 
depend in large part on the agreements that we reach within 
those parties that have regulatory authority at any given 
place.
    Mr. Garcia. Do you find the States either amicable or 
amenable or malleable for that matter to data from other 
projects that you're providing them that's based on the science 
and the previous best practices and lessons learned from other 
cleanups in other States or do they--you know, in California, 
we're kind of notorious for having high bars when it comes to 
environmental regulations, and things like this are usually--
and I'm assuming California is one of the tougher States in 
terms of meeting the requirements and getting to a point where 
you can disposition this cleanup effort. But are the States 
actually open to seeing the science and the techniques used in 
other cleanups and then basing their strategies and their 
cleanups, you know, models around that information? Or what do 
you see?
    Mr. White. I would say that varies quite a bit across the 
country from State to State and from regulator to regulator. I 
mean, certainly, as you think about the opportunities that you 
have for making cleanup work faster or more effectively, one of 
the challenges that we face is working to convince all of the 
stakeholders involved in that cleanup activity, including our 
State regulators, that the better way of doing something that 
we think exists is not just a way of doing something that would 
be cheaper and reduce lifecycle costs but actually be more 
effective from a cleanup perspective and meet the standards for 
the protection of the public and the environment that we're all 
shooting toward collectively.
    Mr. Garcia. Yes, OK. Well, I appreciate that. And I 
appreciate Dr. Plodinec's comments. I think we can't just throw 
more money at the technology side of this. We have to also--you 
know, the social sciences and the behavioral sciences and being 
able to negotiate these with the States is very important. And 
in some cases, there's not there's not enough money to satisfy 
some of these regulators. So I appreciate your guys' efforts, 
and I yield back, Mr. Chair.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from California, Mr. 
McNerney, is now recognized.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Chairman, thank the witnesses. 
Hey, I'm thrilled to hear about the the advances that are being 
made here. This is very exciting.
    Dr. Plodinec, in your testimony, you discuss the need to 
focus resources on long-term science and technology that could 
reduce the cost and duration of cleanups. Can ARPA-E support 
new breakthrough R&D on cleanup technology?
    Dr. Plodinec. In our opinion, they could. I have to 
clarify, though, what our thinking was and what's really behind 
the words. We did not see ARPA-E as the solution. We saw them 
as able to take responsibility for projects that had been 
identified by the independent assessment as areas of high 
potential return on investment and then be able to, as rapidly 
as possible, develop solutions for those areas. We did not see 
them as trying to, A, do the targeting per se or to be the ones 
who would actually, to use my term, be the technology tailor 
that would then take those from ARPA-E into operations. As 
always, the--given the site-specific nature of many of these 
problems, there's got to be some some cutting and pasting if 
you will so their particular technical solution can actually 
fit a particular DOE need.
    Mr. McNerney. Well, you've mentioned return on investment 
now and earlier in your opening testimony. Is there any spinoff 
from this technology, say, to reprocessing nuclear waste from 
nuclear power plants or long-term storage of nuclear waste from 
nuclear power plants or other significant areas?
    Dr. Plodinec. Well, as you know, we're not currently in our 
country doing reprocessing. But if we were, there certainly--
because of the nature of the chemical separations processes, 
there is the potential for a lot of spillover. If we were to do 
that--I think more importantly, though, for things--for 
example, like potentially cleaning up mill tailings, 
potentially cleaning up the effluence from fossil-fueled power 
plants, there are--there is some potential for that.
    But I'd also mentioned that there's also a potential for 
beneficial reuse of some of those materials, particularly from 
power plants because, as you all know, one of the problems we 
face as a country is that precious materials needed for things 
such as clean energy, solar cells, et cetera, we just don't 
have a lot of that in our country. And there is some of this 
that are in some of the waste streams that are not DOE's 
necessarily but where the DOE technology could potentially play 
a big role.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you for that. Mr. Anderson, do you--
you've mentioned that you think the budgets haven't kept up 
with the costs. Do you think that $25 million in annual 
research funding is sufficient to develop the kind of 
transformational technology that EM envisions?
    Mr. Anderson. Well, it's hard to make the case that the 
problem is just funding. And the reason why I say that is 
because when we did our evaluation, we found that EM couldn't 
exactly identify how much money went to R&D. You know, yes, 
there is a relatively small and a certainly smaller percentage 
that was directly appropriated to it, but when we look at the 
entire suite of funds that may have been made available for 
R&D, it was approaching $300 million. One hundred and eighty 
million dollars of that larger, you know, chunk of money wasn't 
able to be tracked. We asked the sites, we asked the labs, you 
know, what was this spent on, and there was a--you know, there 
was a breakdown in the internal controls at that point. And 
hence, that led to our recommendation that EM needs to be able 
to identify and track all sources of funding going to R&D. So 
before I make the case that, you know, more money is needed, 
let's look at what was done with what they had. And maybe 
centralizing and prioritizing that pot of funds available that 
is already being spent on R&D is the first step.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
    Mr. White, how significant is delaying action on the 
environmental remediation as contaminants spread in the soil 
and groundwater?
    Mr. White. Certainly, time is a big factor that we 
consider. It depends on the specific situation and how fast the 
contaminants are moving in the soil and groundwater. But that's 
something that we work with our national laboratories to make 
sure that we understand and model, and then depending on the 
situation, time is often a concern.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to yield 
back.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Baird, is 
now recognized.
    Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate you 
and Ranking Member Weber putting this kind of a session 
together. And I always appreciate the expertise that we have 
with our witnesses.
    And so my first question goes to Dr. Plodinec. And today, 
you know, we've been talking about the growing cost of cleanup 
and especially facing the Office of Environmental Management. 
In your testimony and the report from the National Academies 
note that the environmental management could reduce their costs 
through investing in strong science and technology programs. 
And I think we've made reference to that here already today. 
But my question is this. In implementing the recommendations in 
the report do you have any additional suggestions for EM on how 
to ensure this science and technology program could identify 
opportunities for cost savings and incorporating this 
consideration into prioritizing the research and development 
needs? Mr. Plodinec?
    Dr. Plodinec. That's a loaded question. Thank you for it. 
Let me try to answer it within the context of our report 
itself. One of the things that's important in terms of return 
on investment is targeting. That's before you actually are 
doing R&D. It's deciding where is the technology effort, where 
should it be aimed at? And it's nice to say, OK, we're aiming 
at, you know, reducing costs. But really, it's what are those 
major cost components? All right. If you look at the DOE budget 
submission for 2023, there are three--EM's budget submission, I 
should say. There are three major components. The first, the 
largest is tank waste, OK? That's an area we got to talk about 
a great deal within the NAS (National Academies of Sciences) 
Committee. It drives both DOE EM's costs and schedule. I'll 
come back to that in a second. Second is D&D, in other words, 
decontaminating facilities and then demolishing them.
    The third largest component is site support. This is a very 
large and hidden component if you will in terms of our thinking 
because what it involves are things like HEPA (high-efficiency 
particulate air) filtration, keeping the lights on, the power 
on. It's truly a--continuing long term probably a fairly fixed 
cost, but it's a big component that it's there that needs to be 
considered.
    OK. If we look at D&D as an example, our committee when we 
went out to--and I won't name the site. So a first-class job 
being done using about third-class technology, lots of--there 
was a testbed. There was lots of testing to make sure that 
people weren't going to be contaminated in this D&D enterprise. 
But the highest tech being used was actually a bobcat 
excavator. Getting the person out of the potentially 
contaminated site involves technologies such as robotics, such 
as advanced monitoring and interrogation techniques. They don't 
always--they don't have to be things like, you know, 
radiometers. They could be light techniques. But again, 
developing those kinds of technologies, but it's an idea to get 
people out of the loop because robots, for example, they don't 
need time off. They don't need--since they don't have a head 
and a breathing apparatus, they can work 6 or 8 hours, instead 
of, you know, 2 or 3 at a time. So those are the kinds of 
technologies that should--that needs to--that we believe needed 
to be targeted because they were the ones that had the great 
potential return on investment. Great question. Thank you very 
much.
    Mr. Baird. Well, thank you, and a great answer.
    My next question goes to Mr. White. And I'm just going to 
give you the chance to hear more about EM's efforts to ensure 
it is getting the best return on investment for R&D. And so to 
that end, the GAO recommended that EM deploy a system to 
collect comprehensive R&D data and evaluate the outcomes 
through the EM complex. So my question, can you share more 
about EM's efforts to implement that recommendation? And is 
this something that the R&D dashboard you mentioned in your 
written testimony would address? Mr. White?
    Mr. White. Thank you, Congressman. Yes, the dashboard I 
mentioned earlier is part of the system that does, in fact, 
address that recommendation. I will point out the--you know, 
the point of collecting the data and understanding better what 
our R&D programs look like across the country by collecting the 
data is so that we can, in fact, better manage it, right, 
whether it's looking at how we collaborate with other parts of 
the Department, looking at opportunities to do that, looking at 
challenges that we have, looking at gaps that may exist in our 
R&D program. So that is still an ongoing work in progress, the 
question of how we now manage that data and best use that data 
to improve the program.
    Mr. Baird. Thank you. And I'm out of time. And, Mr. 
Anderson, I had a question for you, but thank you. But I'm out 
of time, so I yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Casten, 
is now recognized.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to our 
witnesses.
    So I have to start this because I'm going to get cranky 
here. And I want to be very clear that I'm a big fan of nuclear 
energy, and I'm a huge fan of the Department of Energy, so 
don't take any of this as criticism of either. My crankiness is 
about math. I am trying to figure out within the nuclear power 
industry how much of the waste is innate to the process and how 
much is because of the inefficiency of the cycles.
    The Energy Information Administration reports that we use 8 
quadrillion BTUs (British thermal units) of nuclear energy in 
our power sector a year, which is exactly, exactly three times 
the amount of megawatt hours generated by the power plants 
because the DOE does this goofy number, where they impute the 
same conversion energy as our fossil sector to do an imputed 
fuel use rather than an actual fuel use.
    And if we were to actually turn 8 quads of nuclear fuel 
into the 770-some-odd million kilowatt hours that we report, it 
would imply that all of the losses are in the cooling tower, 
all of the energy in the fuel rod went either to the cooling 
tower or to power generation, and there is absolutely no 
residual energy in the fuel rods, we don't have a nuclear waste 
problem. I suspect that's not true.
    So my question that I'm hoping you can help me with, Mr. 
White, just to start is can you tell me how much primary energy 
do we actually use in our nuclear power plant industry in the 
United States, not the 8 million BTUs that DOE reports? How 
many quadrillion BTUs does the nuclear industry use in the 
United States, civilian nuclear industry?
    Mr. White. Congressman, that's a very good question, but 
I'm going to have to apologize for the fact that I can't answer 
it for you. The environmental cleanup program really is 
responsible for disposition of the fuel that we have, but I'm 
sure my colleagues----
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. White [continuing]. In nuclear energy would be happy to 
talk to you about----
    Mr. Casten. Do any of the witnesses know the answer to that 
question? OK, well, let me ask this another way to any of the 
witnesses. What is your understanding of what percentage of the 
energy in an input fuel rod remains in the waste and continuing 
to emit energy and waste at the end of a nuclear fuel cycle? 
Does anybody have that number? Are we talking--I'm hearing our 
experts up here saying 90 percent is in the waste. Because, I 
mean, here's part of the reason for this, like, I'm trying to 
Google on my phone as I sit here, and we all have better access 
to information than my phone, I hope. But I'm seeing 5 to 7 
percent of the energy goes through the plant. If that's true, 
then the 8 quadrillion BTUs that we report is actually more 
like 300 quadrillion BTUs. We tell ourselves as a country that 
we use 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy in a year in our country, 
total primary energy use. Are we off by a factor of 4? That is 
a BFD. Excuse me.
    The reason I'm riffing on this here is because the----
    Mr. Weber. Does that stand for bad finance deal?
    Mr. Casten. I will take the Fifth. What I'm trying to--the 
reason I'm asking this is because the scope of our nuclear 
waste problem is in the first instance a function of how 
efficiently we process that input fuel. So let me come--let me 
get this back. If it's 5 to 7 percent, if you're right that 
it's 10 percent, we're--whatever, we'll get the number, we'll 
fire some requests. How much could that number increase? 
Because it seems to me that if we could increase that by 10, 20 
percent, we have massively reduced the amount of the waste 
problem we have. And I want to make sure that as we think about 
waste processing, should we really be thinking about this as a 
front-end issue?
    So, any of the witnesses, do you have any ballparks for how 
much we could theoretically improve the conversion efficiency 
of our nuclear plants and thereby cut down on the degree of a 
waste program that we have? I'm sorry to be the only one making 
noise here, but I would love if anybody can follow up offline 
because the silence to some--and I'm not saying this as 
criticism, but the silence speaks volumes that we are talking 
about waste, and we're--and yet it sounds to me like the vast 
majority of the waste is being created in the first instance 
because we do a very bad job at reporting the actual math, and 
so we're not even looking at the right problem. And if I'm 
wrong, please clarify. But it feels to me like we're wrong. I 
see you got maybe some comments.
    Mr. White. No, I'm just going to say I'm sure that my 
colleagues in the Office of Nuclear Energy would be happy to 
talk to you about this. At LinkedIn I'll work with our folks--
--
    Mr. Casten. OK.
    Mr. White [continuing]. Make them available.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you very much, yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you. The gentlewoman from North 
Carolina, Ms. Ross, is now recognized.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the Ranking 
Member and to our witnesses for joining us today.
    As a Representative from North Carolina, I'm deeply 
invested in the management and cleanup of nuclear facilities. 
Almost 1/3 of North Carolina's energy comes from nuclear 
plants, making us the fifth-largest producer of nuclear power 
in the country. And my district is proudly home to the first 
university-based Nuclear Reactor Program at the NC State 
Department of Nuclear Engineering. Additionally, two of the 
remaining 15 cleanup sites are right in our backyard, in 
Tennessee and South Carolina.
    The work of our witnesses in addressing the waste created 
by nuclear testing and nuclear energy is essential to 
protecting our environment and our public health. My first 
question is for Mr. Anderson. Nuclear waste cleanup requires a 
highly specialized, trained work force. And I know that the GAO 
has a priority recommendation for DOE about making sure that it 
is on top of any skill and competency gaps for parts of the 
work force within the National Nuclear Security Administration. 
Has GAO identified any work force deficiencies related to 
science and technology within environmental management?
    Mr. Anderson. Thank you for that question. I'll answer it 
in a couple of different ways. One is that we do have some 
ongoing work right now, looking at EM's new contracting 
approach, end-state contracting, and the extent to which there 
may be work force gaps to implement that particular approach. 
So I can't comment on that, but that report will be due out 
later this summer, and we're happy to make sure that you and 
your staff get a copy of that.
    I also think it's important to note that there have been a 
number of estimates recently about, you know, attrition, 
retirement, et cetera, at the Office of Environmental 
Management, and Mr. White may have more recent updated data on 
this, but the last data I saw was somewhere between 1/3 to 
maybe even as much as 1/2 of EM's work force will be eligible 
to retire in the next 5 years, and that is a significant, you 
know, gap that will need to be addressed in the near future.
    Ms. Ross. Mr. White, do you want to elaborate before I ask 
my next question?
    Mr. White. You know, I would just say that looking at the 
work force that we have for the future is a--is something that 
we're very much focused on. We can't do cleanup work, we can't 
do R&D if we don't have the right folks to do that.
    I will say that we have a number of efforts across the 
country with companies that do work for us and with our 
national laboratories to address this. We do this at a site-
specific basis, working with local colleges, universities, and 
school systems. We do this from a more EM-wide perspective. I 
certainly appreciate, for example, the support we got from 
Congress this past year to increase our funding for minority 
serving institutions, which is a very important pipeline for us 
to be able to go out and get the work force of the future that 
we need.
    Certainly within the Federal work force what Mr. Anderson 
pointed out is true. On the Federal side, the age of our work 
force is getting older on average, and that's something that 
we're looking at very closely in terms of how do we establish 
the pipeline we need on the Federal side as well.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you. Mr. Anderson, one additional question 
for you with the time I have remaining. In May 2020, GAO 
reported that the Office of Legacy Management's challenges 
related to climate resilience. As we have seen throughout this 
hearing, the estimates for cleanup times and costs have both 
increased substantially in the past decade, with many decades 
left to go in the process. How is the Office of Environmental 
Management managing its R&D efforts in light of climate risks, 
especially with these increasing timetables?
    Mr. Anderson. Yes, thank you for that question. You know, 
that report that you refer to, ma'am, did underscore the need 
for the Office of Legacy Management to better incorporate, you 
know, some of the modeling on climate change into its long-term 
plans because I think what's important to note that--here is 
that when the Office of Environmental Management completes its 
mission, it then hands over those sites to the Office of Legacy 
Management. You know, DOE, the Federal Government doesn't stop 
having stewardship responsibilities. And so the more that we 
know about the climate change and what the models may show, we 
need to integrate that information into our long-term planning 
to include things like waste disposition, you know, where we 
end up storing this waste that will be hazardous to some extent 
for tens of thousands of years, how do we build that into the 
planning.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Lamb, 
is now recognized.
    Mr. Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this is a 
question for Mr. White, but anyone is free to weigh in on it. 
Mr. White, I wanted to ask you about the issue of mill 
tailings. We have a site in western Pennsylvania in Canonsburg 
for uranium mill tailings. It's been under legacy management 
for a while. And it--my understanding is that the--you know, 
the burial of those was successful, and radiation levels remain 
at background. But recently, there was a Ewing sarcoma cancer 
cluster in that general vicinity, and the location of this site 
kind of popped back into the news, you know, as a concern that 
residents had.
    And so I--really, I was mainly curious if you could talk 
about what happens to a site like that when it's under legacy 
management. You know, is there sort of active monitoring? I 
think people picture it as just something that's buried in the 
ground and ignored, potentially threatening them in ways that 
people understand. But my sense is that your office is involved 
in much more active management of these sites than that.
    Mr. White. Thank you, Congressman. You're right, the Office 
of Environmental Management is the office that's responsible 
for the active cleanup. And then once the active cleanup is 
done, the long-term monitoring is typically done by the Office 
of Legacy Management. That is an area, though, that we are 
looking at R&D to improve what we do. There is a long-term 
monitoring effort that a number of DOE's laboratories, 
including Savannah River National Laboratory, is involved in at 
the moment. It's one of the activities that we fund with the 
technology development budget that we've gotten from Congress.
    And part of what we do is actually monitor long-term what 
we put in place in terms of corrective actions or measures to 
ensure the safety of the public and the environment to make 
sure that those are continuing to be effective. The Office of 
Legacy Management does that monitoring----
    Mr. Lamb. When you say monitoring, are we just talking 
about sort of basic local radiation levels or do you mean 
something more specific?
    Mr. White. You're typically talking about fairly extensive 
soil and groundwater monitoring. There will normally be----
    Mr. Lamb. OK.
    Mr. White [continuing]. Permitted points around the site, 
both for soil and groundwater, where measurements are taken on 
a certain frequency. There's usually a permitted closure level 
where--and an action level where we've agreed with the 
regulators in terms of what the limits are going to be. We make 
that information public. We publish it from time to time. And, 
as I understand it, the Office of Legacy Management will often 
hold public meetings in sites that are concerned about what 
those numbers would look like.
    Mr. Lamb. Got it. And, Dr. Majidi, that--he had mentioned 
your lab conducting some research on this. Was there anything 
specific to the uranium mill tailing sites that you're aware 
of?
    Dr. Majidi. Sorry, it's inclusive of those as well. 
Realistically, we're working with LM very closely to reduce the 
cost of this monitoring because when you do monitor these 
sites, it involves active samplings analysis and then 
developing computer models, trying to develop a long-term look 
at these, including--LM now includes some climate change data 
to identify what happens to these LM sites over the next 30 or 
40 years. We have developed a series of sensor networks that 
are going to be overlaid to these legacy management sites to 
provide real-time data as critical issues including additional 
rainfall and the outcome of that. So it's a pretty active 
program. We have a test site at the Savannah River Site that we 
are implementing in the F area. And as the result shows more 
and more promise, we're hoping to be able to develop this 
technology at all legacy management sites.
    Mr. Lamb. Great. Well, I thank you both for your efforts. 
And I know actually here in Pittsburgh we received a research 
grant for basically using AI (artificial intelligence) and some 
fiberoptics to monitor the condition of the casks themselves, 
hopefully prevent deterioration. So I know you're doing a lot 
of the crucial work to protect people, and I just want to make 
sure people know that.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much.
    We're going to do another quick round of questioning if 
that's OK with the witnesses. OK. I'll start. This one is for 
Mr. White.
    The National Defense Authorization Act of 2022 (NDAA) 
called for DOE to create certain programs related to improving 
nuclear cleanup, research, and development. This includes an 
incremental technology development program, a high-impact 
technology development program, and an environmental management 
university program. What steps has DOE taken or does it plan to 
take to implement these programs? And if implemented, how will 
these programs change the Office of Environmental Management's 
approach to R&D?
    Mr. White. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that 
question. It's--if you think about what is laid out in that 
authorization language, the three components that you talked 
about, most of the individual pieces that the authorization 
language talks about we actually have in place in the 
Environmental Management program in different forms. But one of 
the things that we're doing right now in EM in total is really 
looking at how we manage the cleanup program at--partly in 
response to the GAO report and the National Academies report 
that we talked about earlier.
    So as we do that, what we intend to do is take a look at 
our program review, compare it to the specific elements that 
are laid out in the NDAA language, and make sure that the 
program we're talking about developing captures the elements 
that are laid out in the NDAA. Like I said, a lot of the things 
that they talk about are in place in the program. Some of them 
are not that we need to work to build, and we're working to 
build to do that. One of the more interesting things that we're 
working to contract right now is there's a suggestion at the 
beginning of it that we work with the Corps of Engineers, for 
example, to get an independent perspective on what the level of 
funding should be for the different components of the program. 
So we're currently working right now with the Corps of 
Engineers to figure out how to do that as we revamp the 
program.
    Chairman Bowman. Just one more, just one more. OK. Thank 
you so much for that response.
    Mr. Anderson, in May 2020, GAO reported on the Office of 
Legacy Management's challenges related to climate resilience. 
As we have seen throughout this hearing, the estimates for 
cleanup times and costs have both increased substantially in 
the past decade with many decades left to go in the process. 
How is the Office of Environmental Management managing its R&D 
efforts in light of climate risk, especially with increasing 
timetables for completing cleanup at some of the most complex 
sites like Hanford? Could R&D in this space stave off future 
climate-related delays?
    Mr. Anderson. Thank you, sir. I'd like to start my answer 
to that question using a bit of an example as it illustrates, 
you know, the theme that you just articulated. And I think it 
was at the Rocky Flats site where there was a tremendous 
rainfall not too long ago, and that rainfall event was more 
extreme than the models had predicted. And as a result, there 
had to be, you know, some additional work to, you know, to 
stabilize some of the affected areas. And that shows what can 
change between what we knew 20 years ago and what we know now 
with regard to some of these extreme weather events.
    We haven't looked into the Office of Environmental 
Management and how they build in, you know, climate change 
data, you know, into a variety of their activities, although I 
would suspect that one of the most important places to look and 
to be infusing that information into modeling would be on the 
long-term disposition of the waste. You know, the waste coming 
from the tanks, for example, has to be immobilized. Most of 
it's going to be immobilized in grout. How does that grout, you 
know, hold up to extreme weather events? Down in the Savannah 
River Site it's encapsulated in these large saltstone disposal 
units and ultimately will be covered with a cap. Those 
engineered barriers have a ton of science behind them as to, 
you know, what kind of extreme weather events they can 
withstand. But at the end of the day, I believe Mr. White may 
know more about the specifics there.
    Chairman Bowman. Mr. White, can you jump in?
    Mr. White. I mean, certainly, this is something that we 
look at across the program. As a matter of fact, at this 
moment, we're in the process of updating the climate 
vulnerability assessments that we do for each of our sites. I 
expect that to be done, I think, by the end of this fiscal 
year. When that's done, you'll--what we would do is look across 
the--what we identify as new vulnerabilities that we had 
previously thought about at different sites. And I think, you 
know, in the context of this hearing, I think that also 
provides us with an opportunity for where R&D might help or 
more modeling efforts might help us focus on addressing those 
vulnerabilities in the long term. Some of that work is already 
underway. I mean, Dr. Majidi mentioned earlier on the long-term 
monitoring system. One of the things that they're looking at--
and this is the impacts of things like increased rainfall.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you. Mr. Weber?
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Chairman.
    Interesting question, after listening to Congresswoman 
Bonamici from Oregon talk about the waste that was stored 
there, 27 billion gallons of groundwater treated, actively 
treating 2 billion gallons annually, and there's 24 billion 
gallons left. I think there's 18 waste tanks emptied and 18.7 
million tons of soil and debris disposed. And she talks it 
being the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Saddle Mountain fault, and 
they're right by the Columbia River, which brings to mind were 
there to be an earthquake--and I think she said--she made that 
mention maybe they're overdue for an earthquake. I don't know 
how--I don't know why they would schedule that.
    But anyway, is there a list of facilities--the amount of 
things that she listed is pretty substantial in my opinion. Is 
there a listing of waste storage across the country so that we 
say, OK, this would be really catastrophic if all of that, 
whatever it is, however many billions of gallons of 
contaminated wastewater got down into the river, Columbia 
River, and on out? Is there a list of the amount of waste 
that's stored and what kind of risk is involved? Is there a 
list? And that's just for anybody. Dr. Majidi, we'll start with 
you.
    Dr. Majidi. So at Savannah River Site, we know the 
inventory quite well. And I'm sure across the EM site, that's 
well known to every organization.
    Mr. White. I just want to point out as part of what DOE 
does at all of its operating sites, not just the cleanup sites, 
but the national security sites, science sites as well, every 
decade or so we update what we call our Natural Phenomena 
Hazards Assessment. We actually go out and look at what 
earthquake levels are expected at each of our sites and what 
the vulnerabilities are to the activities and waste storage 
activities that we have at the sites are to those 
vulnerabilities and then make sure that those concerns are 
addressed and whatever the safety basis or licensing documents 
associated with the facilities that we use to either operate or 
store the waste.
    Certainly, some of our priorities are driven by an 
understanding that, over time, the condition of facilities 
degrades, and eventually, they might not be able to withstand a 
design-basis earthquake, for example, and so we would want to 
get material out of such a facility sooner rather than later. 
But this is something that we look at very closely at all of 
our sites.
    Mr. Weber. But you only update that every 10 years, you 
said?
    Mr. White. Well, yes, every--what you do every 10 years is 
we look at the latest science and data in terms of what we 
think the worst-case natural phenomena are going to be because, 
like all things, the science behind these things changes and 
our understanding of earthquakes changes and so our 
understanding of--so we take--we update our understanding of 
what we think the worst-case scenarios are going to be every 10 
years, and then an ongoing--on an ongoing basis we use that as 
the basis if you will for then all of the stuff that underlies 
the safety of our activities, the licensing documents, the 
safety basis documents. That gets folded into these things that 
are maintained on an ongoing basis to ensure that whatever 
we're doing, whether it's operating a currently operating 
nuclear facility or storing waste is able to withstand those 
design-basis events.
    Mr. Weber. And so what was it? I'm not--I don't have my 
notes open, but there was 115 sites and 92 of them had already 
been dealt with? Is that--do I remember those numbers right?
    Mr. White. One hundred and seven and 92, yes, sir.
    Mr. Weber. OK, 107 and 92. So, of those, is there a 
priority list to where you actually focus--try to focus more 
attention, money, manpower, or whatever the term might be, or 
are they all treated equally?
    Mr. White. We go through an annual prioritization process 
as part of our planning and execution on the program management 
side. You can see this reflected every year in what we publish 
as our calendar year set of priorities. So we have both a 
strategic vision that lays out priorities across the enterprise 
over the next decade, and every year we publish an update in 
the first part of the year what our calendar year priorities 
are for the complex at large.
    Mr. Weber. And I'm going to assume that there's some--
there's a--in that matrix, there's a calculation about--and I 
forget the name of the Columbia River--Hanford, Washington? Is 
that--I think is the area maybe?
    Mr. White. Yes, there are a number of activities at the 
Hanford Site that show up on that priorities list, yes, sir.
    Mr. Weber. OK. So does that take into calculation are there 
in that area--choose a number--50-mile radius, 100-mile radius, 
is the population 1 million or is it 20 million? Do you take 
that into account?
    Mr. White. I'd need to get back to you on that. I don't--
off the top of my head, I don't think so, but let me take that 
for the record and get back----
    Mr. Weber. OK. All right.
    Mr. White [continuing]. With you.
    Mr. Weber. Well, that's--just came to mind when Ms. 
Bonamici brought that up, and I appreciate her bringing that 
up. So thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence. I yield 
back.
    Chairman Bowman. Thank you.
    Before we bring the hearing to a close, I want to thank our 
witnesses for testifying before the Committee today. The record 
will remain open for 2 weeks for additional statements from the 
Members and for any additional questions the Committee may ask 
of the witnesses. The witnesses are now excused, and the 
hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:25 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                Appendix

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions


                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Mr. William ``Ike'' White

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Responses by Dr. Vahid Majidi

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Responses by Dr. John Plodinec

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Responses by Mr. Nathan Anderson

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