Science & Technology
The Science & Technology Project provides data, tools, and scientific
understanding to fill information gaps that exist to make remediation and
site closure decisions. The Science & Technology Project also provides
data to set the stage for long-term monitoring and stewardship.
Science & Technology Projects include:
| EM-22 Technology Proposals |
| For fiscal year 2006, Congress authorized $10 million dollars for "...analyzing
contaminant migration to the Columbia River, and for the introduction
of new technology approaches to solving contamination migration
issues." These
funds will be administered through DOE-HQ's Office of Environmental
Management (specifically, EM-22). Ten proposals have been prepared,
submitted, and provisionally accepted for funding. It is anticipated
that these funds will be spent in fiscal years 2006 and 2007. Drafts
of these proposals are available on the EM-22 Technology
Proposals page.. |
Development of a probabilistic model for estimating mass-balanced waste site inventories Focused study of core materials collected as part of tank farm and 200 Area soil waste site characterization to determine contaminant distributions and subsurface geochemical conditions to develop conceptual models of contaminant migration beneath key waste site types Field experiments to verify conceptual and numerical models that describe vadose zone flow and transport and deriving parameters for field-scale flow and transport Development and application of advanced vadose zone contaminant transport models that incorporate new knowledge derived from S&T investigations Measurement of aquatic and riparian organism uptake of key Hanford contaminants for ecological risk assessment models Scientific investigations and technology development to define alternative remediation approaches to the current baseline.
The Science & Technology Project develops and implements research plans through a roadmap, which was first developed in
1998 through a series of meetings with representatives of the federal government's national laboratories,
regulatory agencies, tribal governments, the State of Oregon, and the public. The roadmap was updated
in 2002 through several workshops to evaluate the existing technical elements (inventory, vadose zone,
groundwater, Columbia River, and risk) and to add the remediation technical element.
The roadmap document is found in the Science & Technology Documents section.
The roadmap is the primary guide for planning science & technology research needed to address
subsurface problems at the Hanford Site and to develop scientific understanding, information, and
models needed to support Site milestones. The scheduling/sequencing of these activities in the
roadmap, in turn, are coordinated with site milestones and decision points so that required new
knowledge and information is available in time to be influential.
Work scope identified in the roadmap is addressed by focused, site-specific
investigations funded through the Groundwater Remediation Project Science & Technology Project and the
Environmental Management Sciences Program. The Environmental Management
Sciences Program funds basic research aimed at advancing solutions for effective environmental
cleanup at DOE Environmental Management Sites. The goal of the program is to reduce the cost
and risk of cleanup through targeted research efforts.
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