Abstract
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) manages the largest groundwater and soil remediation effort in the world—6.5 trillion liters of contaminated groundwater and 40 million cubic meters of contaminated soil and debris contaminated with radionuclides, metals, and organics. Although DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has made significant progress in its restoration efforts, the subsurface problems that remain are some of the most complex encountered by the global technical community. These problems require a multi-faceted technology development and deployment program to provide holistic solutions based on scientific understanding of the subsurface environment. The DOE EM Office of Soil and Groundwater Remediation (SGWR) develops and implements transformational technologies and methodologies in characterization, remediation, monitoring, and predictive simulation of contaminants in vadose zone, groundwater, and surface water environments. The SGWR program consists of four program elements:
• Deep Vadose Zone – Applied Field Research Initiative;
• Attenuation Based Remedies – Applied Field Research Initiative;
• Remediation of Mercury and Industrial Contaminants – Applied Field Research Initiative; and
• Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM).
These four initiatives consider contaminant remediation and natural attenuation in the vadose zone, groundwater, and surface water. As such, they collectively advance capabilities needed to steward the vast and diverse contaminant inventory across the DOE EM complex. Application of existing and emerging scientific knowledge of natural and enhanced attenuation processes and the evolution of geochemical conditions at subsurface waste sites provide innovative tools, approaches, and guidance to support effective, sustainable, lower cost remedies. The ASCEM program improves our understanding of contaminant fate and transport, proactively guides development and implementation of remedial strategies, and enables better predictions of future impacts to human health and the environment from the Department’s cleanup actions.
Complementary to the core initiative program, SGWR also maintains a technical assistance program that allows nationally recognized experts to assess urgent environmental problems and solve pressing problems across the DOE EM complex. Building from the knowledge and capabilities provided by the initiative program, technical assistance teams work closely with sites to develop solutions and strategies that minimize detrimental impacts to the environment, project budgets, and program schedules. An important goal of the technical assistance program is to address regulator and stakeholder concerns and to facilitate acceptance of recommended approaches and solutions. Herein we summarize the SGWR program structure and recent advances within the program.
