Committee on Review of Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of the Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management – författare

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies have conducted activities to develop atomic energy for civilian and defense purposes since the initiation of the World War II Manhattan Project in 1942. These activities took place at large federal land reservations of hundreds of square miles involving industrial-scale operations, but also at many smaller federal and non-federal sites such as uranium mines, materials processing and manufacturing facilities. The nuclear weapons and energy production activities at these facilities produced large quantities of radioactive and hazardous wastes and resulted in widespread groundwater and soil contamination at these sites. DOE initiated a concerted effort to clean up these sites beginning in the 1980s. Many of these sites have been remediated and are in long-term caretaker status, closed or repurposed for other uses.

Review of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of the Department of Energy''s Office of Environmental Management: First Report provides background information on the sites currently assigned to the DOE''s Office of Environmental Management that are undergoing cleanup; discusses current practices for management and oversight of the cleanups; offers findings and recommendations on such practices and how progress is measured against them; and considers the contracts under which the cleanups proceed and how these have been and can be structured to include incentives for improved cost and schedule performance.

The U.S. Department of Energy''s Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) was established by Congress in 1989 to remediate waste and environmental contamination that have resulted from nuclear weapons production and related activities. It has expended almost $200 billion on cleanup and related activities since its establishment and completed cleanup at all but 15 of the more than 100 sites.

At the request of Congress, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine formed a committee to provide advice on enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of DOE-EM cleanup activities, particularly with respect to project management, contracting, and oversight practices. These recommendations were provided in two reports. The first report, Review of Effectiveness and Efficiency of Defense Environmental Cleanup Activities of DOE''s Office of Environmental Management: Report 1, considered overall project management practices, project management metrics and outcomes, and contract structures and performance measures. This second report focuses on specific DOE-EM sites to assess how effective the management of the numerous projects at the sites is contributing to the wider programmatic objectives of DOE-EM.