stewardship principles

Stewardship Principles 

  “[S]tewardship is a pervasive concept and not simply a set of measures to be implemented once remediation is complete.  . . .

“Today’s waste management actions should become an integral part of stewardship planning.” -Long-Term Institutional Management of

DOE Legacy Waste Sites

Long-Term Institutional Management (LTIM)—

• Seeks to deploy multiple measures in a balanced, integrative, systematic way

• Is phased and iterative through time

• Is active in its search for better remedies

• Aims to be self-correcting, self-improving (i.e., adaptive) through (long) time

NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

The “Three-Legged Stool” of

Long-Term Institutional Management

NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

• Adopt a “pessimistic” planning basis that assumes:

Institutional controls will eventually fail; Engineered barriers have more limited lives than

contaminants they contain; Assumptions about contaminant migration may

prove wrong.

NRC Report on Long-Term Management of DOE Legacy Sites

LTIM Study Recommendations

Current LTS Issues & Themes

• Scientific and technical uncertainties– (Responses to, implications of)

• Social and institutional vulnerabilities– (As mediators of vulnerabilities assoc. w/

biophysical and engineered environment)

• Stakeholder roles– (Approaches to ensuring decision transparency)

Scientific & Technical Uncertainties

(and implications for life-cycle costs)

Plutonium travel time and the conceptual model problem: Changing understanding of contaminant transport at the Idaho site

NRC Report on Research Needs in Subsurface Science

Aerial view looking East Columbia River is to the left

Process Effluent TrenchAfter Remediation

Groundwater

Excavated Trench5 m

8 m

Residual Contamination

Side WallFloor

SurfaceS

ide W

all

Sid

e W

all

Cleanup Verification PackageProcess Effluent Trench

RESRAD Model

•Environmental Transport

•Exposure and dose

•Risk

Soil Concentrations at time of Remediation

Dose and Risk Projections for 1000 years

• Most of the dose and risk is from the side wall

Sid

e W

all

Sid

e W

all

Burrell, Pennsylvania

Stewardship Cost* Drivers

• Risk to environment and public health• Stakeholder concerns• Ongoing routine operations

– Environmental monitoring– Water treatment– Security

• Maintenance– Vegetation control– Vandalism repair– Institutional controls

*Costs meant to be low, as DOE envisions little human interaction at “stabilized” sites.

Today 2006 2050

Annual Cost to DOE

$6 billion/yr

$150 million/yr

Two Approaches to Long-Term Stewardship Cost Accounting

Today 2006 2050

Total Social Cost

Potential Social Cost of Long-Term Stewardship: Alternative Models

--

$

$$$

**

*

***

$$

(function of discovery date and scope of LTS failure, should one occur.)

Thinking “Outside the Box” about Vulnerability

(Social and Institutional Vulnerabilities)

Fundamental to Protective Transport Management iseffective and accurate monitoring of contaminant movement

Source: The Integrator Operable Unit at SRS: Regulatory Compliance Focused on Problem Identification, Risk Reduction and Site Resolution; Charles W. Powers, CRESP; June 2000

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Fish Eaten per Year

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24 4

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19Kg/year

Per

cent 50 Kg/year

kg 10

CONSUMPTION

20 30 40 50 60 70 80

This slide was originally used in a Presentation by Joanna Burger, Ph.D. at a Seminar, “Can Science Really Foster Better Public Policy Decisions? The Lessons of the CRESP Experience”, April 12, 1999, in Washington, D.C.. See CRESP website, www.cresp.org.

NRC Report on Research Needs in Subsurface Science

Radionuclide plumes at Hanford

Central Plateau buffer zone, as proposed by “extended HAB” + Tri-Party Agencies (approximate)

Proposed Hanford Reach National Monument

From Cleanup to Stewardship, DOE 1999

Demographic change near Rocky Flats, Colorado

More than 2 millionpeople live within 50 miles of the Rocky Flats Site (arrow at upper center).

How should we select institutional controls and

monitor their performance?

Using the concept of vulnerability in remedy selection

ERDF

Columbia River circa 1950s

Conceptual Model of Vulnerability

SOCIETY-ENVIRONMENT

REMEDYVulnerability: How could the remedy fail due to threats from the social –environmental system?

HAZARD

Risk: What might be the harm done to society and the environment given failure?

HARM

THREAT

“High reliability” institutional management

“Risk is a complex phenomenon that involves both biophysical attributes and social dimensions. Existing assessment and management approaches often fail to consider risk in its full complexity and its social context.”

R. Kasperson and J. Kasperson, The social amplification and attenuation of risk, 1996.

Decision Transparency

(Decision Mapping System as Institutional Control?)

URL: http://nalu.geog.washington.edu/dms

Policy Forum: Nuclear WasteYucca MountainRodney C. Ewing and Allison Macfarlane

Science 296 26 April 2002

“The…decision should be based on a compelling and transparent analysis of…safety. …

“The necessary science…requires an analysis that couples atomic-scale processes…to crustal-scale processes…that extend over temporal scales of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years. …

Policy Forum: Nuclear WasteYucca MountainRodney C. Ewing and Allison Macfarlane

Science 296 26 April 2002

“… We can never know whether the repository ‘worked’ as designed. Even with an operating period lasting for hundreds of years and the possibility of an engineered ‘fix’ for problems, we cannot know whether the predicted behavior … matches its actual performance. This would be an unreasonable expectation … ”

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29 sites where portion(s) of the site are expected to require long-term stewardship by 2006

12 sites w ith geographically distinct portions requiring long-term stew ardship by 2006

17 sites w here surface cleanup is completed by 2006 and w ill require long-term stew ardship but subsurface characterization and remediation activities w ill be on-going after 2006

34 sites where cleanup has been completed and DOE is conducting long-term stewardship activities as of 2000

33 sites where cleanup is expected to be completed and DOE will conduct long-term stewardship activities by 2006

33 sites where DOE may be responsible for long-term stewardship, if long-term stewardship activities are necessary

Map of 129 Sites that May Require Long-term Stewardship