Preliminary design of a priority system for DOE environmental restoration

For over 40 yr, the US Department of Energy (DOE) and predecessor agencies have managed the production of nuclear materials and weapons for national defense. Operations at facilities in [approximately]20 states have produced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of contaminated sites. The DOE is committed to cleaning up these sites over a 30-yr period. The cleanup will cost tens of billions of dollars. To assist in the process of formulating and allocating the budget for cleaning up these sites, DOE is developing a risk-based priority system. The system will be a formal decision-aiding tool addressing health and safety risks as well as social, technical, economic, and policy issues. It will ensure that funding decisions reflect the primary goals of protecting public health and the environment and complying with regulatory requirements and agreements. The system also will ensure that decisions are made in a technically defensible and even-handed manner. The primary purpose of the system is to provide information useful for two types of DOE budgetary decisions. One is identifying desirable budget levels and formulating DOE's annual budget request. The other is allocating in the most effective way the funds appropriated by Congress. The priority system will initially apply to DOE's environmental restorationmore » (ER) program, which involves assessing, cleaning up, and closing inactive waste sites and surplus facilities.« less