Abstract
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for risk reduction and cleanup of its nuclear
weapons complex. DOE maintains the largest cleanup program in the world, currently spanning
over a million acres in 13 states. The inventory of contaminated materials includes 90 million
gallons of radioactive waste, 6.4 trillion liters of groundwater, and 40 million cubic meters of soil
and debris. It is not feasible to completely restore many sites to predisposal conditions. Any
contamination left in place will require monitoring, engineering controls and/or land use
restrictions to protect human health and environment. Research and development efforts to date
have focused on improving characterization and remediation. Yet, monitoring will result in the
largest life-cycle costs and will be critical to improving performance and protection. Through an
inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole
reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based
approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key
objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and
challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE
complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed
monitoring framework.
