The role of risk in massive cleanups

The dzrector of the Center for Risk Excellence discusses the mportance of risk assessment in decwon-making about nuclear site cleanups

1997 to support the Office of Envn-onmental Management’s Ndtional Risk Pohcy Program It was created to estabhsh a resource group m the field to provide crucial site-oriented technlcal support The CRE 1s operated by the Envn-onmental Programs Group of the DOE Chicago Operations Office Editor Carl Gottschall mtervlewed Al Young about the task of the CRE and the role of risk m environmental decision-making Let me start by askmgyou when the CRE was created Young I would Ike to give you a little background A few years ago, the DOE became convinced that a lot of actlvltles might be done best outslde of headquarters Instead of having Gottschall

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everything m Washington, DC, DOE became mcreasmgly interested In estabhshmgfocal points at operations offices in certain areds DOE has 11 field operations offices For example, Richland, WA, 1s the operations office that takes care of such s&s as the Hanford Site The operations office here m Chicago has responslblhty for Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Brookhaven Natlonal Laboratory, and numerous other sitesthroughout this region The 11 operations offices are really the core of where DOE does Its work As the offices began to look at farming out various issues, one issue they thought would better be managedoutside of Washington was risk assessment and risk management Until this time, the risk Issueswere really handled as the department negotiated through the held offices with the regulatory community at those sites For example, at Hantord,

EPA’s Region 10, the state of Washington, and the tribal nations Joined together with DOE m a compliance agreement, and the risk issueswere consideredwlthm the framework of that compliance agreement The dilemma, CRE DIrector Alvm Young

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however, was that as time goes on, risk issues Lhange As you continue to pcrform your cleanup operations, there needs to be some way for the operations offices to quickly respond to changes m those cleanup operations from a risk perspective So, DOE decided to establish a CRE outside of the department’s headquarters DOE sent sohcltatlons to all of the operations offiLes Here m the Chicago Operations Office, the envn-onmental programs group of the office submitted a proposal on how it would view the estabhshment and functlonmg of a CRE This occurred early m the spring of 1997, and that summer the Chicago office received funding to establish the center Gottschall I thmk you ve partially answered the next questlon I was gomg to ask, which IS whether the CRE fits into DOE’s overall risk program Perhaps you can spcclfy some of the aspects of its overall risk program, to which you give some aid Young The Office of Environmental tisk Management 1sone of the malor componentsof DOE The annual budget for the department’scleanup operations, which IShandled by the Oti~e of Environmental Management, exceeds

$6 b&on This 1sthe largest clcdnup operation m the world All 11 opcratlons othccs are m the processof domgsltc remedlatlon These are sites that were contammatcd through the nuclear weaponsprogram begmmngm the 194Os,and they are the legacy of that program And so we, as a nation, have undertaken this massive cleanup opcratlon The department b&eves strongly that risk assessment and risk management are very important components to help guide that cleanup operation So, it helps set the pnontics, the agenda. dnd the funding levelsthat are going to be given to the sites Gottschall Is there a rule of thumb or a gauge to trade off relative risk versus relative costsm any of thcsc prolects) In other words, Ict’s say one project IS one-tenth the cost of another, but the risk ISflvc timesgreater Is that good or is that msufhcient,or hdsthat qucstlon been asked7 Young That has been a very dlfhcult questlon to address One of the problemsthat we have m th& regard ISthdt there are hundreds of cleanup sitesout thcrc, if you try to rank them dll by risks, it becomes extraordmanly dlffcult It’s like comparmg apples with oranges

One of the greatestfears about usmg risk that the operations office had was that Hanford would come m and say that its r&s were far greater than anyone &X’S, and thcrcfore, all ot the $6 bllllon shouldgo to them That 1ssimply unacceptable to the other operations ofhces So, what we have tncd to do IS to divvy up thdt budgetIn the Lontext of the SILCof the programsthat eachof the operations has The largest operations of the Lleanupprogrdmsare at Hanford, Savannah River, and Oak Ridge Those are big programs,and we are talking a bllhon dollars at those sltcsfor cleanup operations In contrast, ANL dtd not have many nuclear programs, it had a lot of laboratory work, but no weapon productlon on-site ANL rcccIves little money for cleanup It 1smterestmg,becauseone would hope that, it you could do a tremendouslob of usmgrisk assessment and risk managementis declslon-ma]
CRE staff, sponsors, and support team Left to right Wilson McGmn, Mary Jo Acke Ramlcone, Pete Siebach, Mark Bollmger, Or Alvin Young, Mark Gilbertson, Jeff Roberts, Miles Dlonisio, Bill Andrews, Dr Margaret MacDonell, and Or Loren Habegger

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Gottschall: I think that is quite logical and appropriate. My question may have been a little off-focus, so let me bring us back I understand that the CRE has five focus areas. Would you elaborate on them? Young: Certainly. We looked at how the center would function, and I have to point out that I came to Chicago from the Department of Agriculture, so I am a new employee at DOE. I came to Chicago in January 1998, so over the last 15 months, we have made major efforts to bring the center programsinto being and addressthe main problems acrossthe DOE system.We do this in five focus areas:assessment, management, education, policy, and communication. Assessmentsthemselves help individual sitesdo the risk assessment. For example, in the assessments arena, we typically help guide the sites in doing the risk assessments;that’s what we have done at Hanford in the groundwaterivadose zone activity. We could actually do the assessments, but we The Center for Risk Excellence is located in National laboratory. need to have the individual sites “buy the policy issues.We have been work into” the value of conducting risk ing with headquartersto develop poliassessments.Hence, we encourage cy. For example, one of the tasks is their involvement in preparation of how to correct the fundamental inforthe risk assessments. mation about risks from each of the In the management area, we give operations offices. The collection of sites suggestionson improving their that information is a policy guidance programs by using baseline risk, for document. So, the role that risk would example, to make sound, risk-based play in certain policy issuesand how decisions and by using risk to priorito provide that support to headquartize their work. ters are certainly important. Education is another focus. We have The last area is communication, seenthe need for workshops throughwhich is probably the greatest chalout DOE for both contractors and lenge. How do we communicate the DOE employees. There is a tremenrisks that exist in this huge environdous lack of knowledge about the mental managementprogram? At this value of risk-based decisions for risk tremendously complicated set of sites assessmentand how to set up manthat we have acrossthe country, how agement programs around the risk do you communicate with the public, issues.The fourth focus area, in fact, is the stakeholders, and the individuals who live in the communities where People just don’t wantthose sites are located? How do you communicate with the regulatory to sit and have someorze community? It’s a challengeto have to work with both state and federal regulecture to them about lators. How do you work with DOE numbers artd tibdels, _ leadershipand communicate effectively with them? So, the job of communi26

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cation is probably the single biggest task that we have, and as a consequence, that was the first thing I addressedwhen I came on board. I proposed that we develop Risk Excellence Notes, what we call the risk newsletter.That is a newsletterthat we distribute not only to the stakeholders and to the DOE community, but alsoto many other governmental agenciesand universities. Gottschall: Can our readers contact someoneto get on the mailing list? Young: Absolutely. We provide access to Risk Excellence Notes at http://risk center.doe.gov/ren.html. Gottschall: You mentioned that communication is the biggest issue. I completely agreewith you. Not only is it the key to success,but it is probably the most difficult issue; therefore, it does require effort. Toward that end, many years ago I took a course on probabilistic risk analysis. It was, of course,thorough, firmly basedin mathematics, rigorous, and intellectually

challengmg Having said that, I would relate that I would never, under any cucumstances, attempt to explain this subject to a general audience Accordmgly, I think that for many years, commumcatlon has been the key challenge for many groups and mdlvlduals who have been attempting to commumcate with the lay public However, m light of past efforts having largely failed, are you aware of any new approaches that will facilitate better commumcatlon, or are you proceeding on a trial and error basis7 Young We have proposed some new approaches and are domg exactly that The old paradigm of number-crunchmg, explaining our target, and explaumg what lOE-10 means has repeatedly failed m terms of commumcatmg with the public Number-crunching and models are important, but trying to communicate with the public about them 1svery difficult Not that the public 1sdumb-quite the contrary, the public IS sharp-but people lust don’t want to sit and have someone lecture to them about numbers and models They want to hear what the risk issues really are, they want to be told m plam terms what we mean about the r&s at a DOE site And so, the center has undertaken workmg with the national laboratories-what we call our support teamand each of the operations offices throughout the country We are domg what we call risk profiles These arc loto 15-page documents that identify the current and planned measures They describe the controlled hazards and the materials that are on-site, and state whether plutonium or low-level wastes are present In plain language, we lay out for them what 1s present at those sites and what control measures are being used We try to separate the risk mformatlon from the dollars, and indicate what the site IS doing with regard to the risk management and risk reduction program over time It is really a fascinating approach The idea 1s a document that commumcates to the stalteholders, site personnel, and public at large, what the department sees as the r&s at the

operations offices and the sites that need to be remedlated The document 1s m plain and simple language and Includes tables so that people can track and say, “Well, those are the low-level wastes, and this IS how they plan to reduce them” We try to show the progress, and we even discuss what the department plans to do at the end of the prolect What will the end state be7 We want people to understand that there 1s a stewardship component to this, that m some cases, sites essentially will be cleaned up, and the operations office will close At Rocky Flats, we have a deadline that we have set, when we are done, the site ~111be turned back to the community Gottschall I thmk It IS wise to brmg some sort of closure I gather from your comments that you are avoiding a mathematical comparison because, unfortunately, I thmk that perception 1s reality for many The public “knows: for example, that nuclear reactors are more dangerous and more r&y than coal mines, although the facts show the opposite Perceptions, generally with no numerical comparisons or factual bases, are pretty hard to change, aren’t they7 Young Yes, I think the best way to tell the public about the risks 1s to assure them that the r&s are really very low, because we do have control measures m place At Rocky Flats, for example, there are multiple control measures, I’m not lust takmg about how the inventory 1spackaged m a safe way, but we have guards around it so that not lust anyone can come m and play with it and disturb things That IS the beauty of the risk profile It says Okay, we have these measures m place, and as we now move over time, we will do the followmg things with this particular inventory We will pump those tanks, we will sohdlfy that material, we will transport that matenal to a low-level waste repository, or we will solidify the material m the tank right there and leave it m place, and that will be a long-term commitment for us to monitor

What we will try to do 1s lay out the loglcal steps that the department has spent a great deal of time and effort developing to achieve the best course at each site We have a huge amount of mformatlon that the prolect managers and the mdlvidual operations offices have drawn up that we can use m these risk profiles to show the public what a tremendous effort the department has made to control risks and manage them

We are tyng to figure out how best to

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the publzc Gottschall 1 assume that there are many risk profiles for each DOE site Is that correct, or IS there lust one7 Young We have wrltten a single lo- to 15-page document for each operations office-m the case of Hanford it 1s about 20 pages, but it encompasses all of the sites wlthm the Hanford area So, It IS a document that the pubhc can read, and you don’t have to spend weeks trying to read it Gottschall The document, I presume, can be obtained by phone or e-mail? Young At this pomt, all of the operations offices have completed the drafts, and they are now being reviewed by citizens advisory boards After the operations offices and stakeholders complete the review, the drafts ~111 be revised and then Issued as a final document, which will be avallable to everyone The document will show what the entire DOE complex looks like in terms of risk profiles Gottschall That’s commendable The mformatlon, one hopes, 1s always a way to put to bed any false apprehensions, perceptlons, and even emotlonal responses, If the public can see Chemical

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a really convmcmg discussion that it understands Young We Intend to use those risk profiles as our baselme to show the progress over tlmc One of the dlfflculties that DOE had when I came m and began to look at their risk program wds that the starting point kept moving, and you couldn’t measure how successful we had been m our cleanup program But now, the risk profiles set the baseline, and from now on, we can measure progress Ideally, what every DOE operations office should have 1s a barometer or thermometer-like gauge m front that says that today we are 350/o done or 750/o done, so that when people drive by a DOE site or when DOE employ-

What every DOE operatzons office should have zs a barometer or thermometer-hke gauge in front that says that today we are 3.5% done or 75% done

ees Lome to work, they cdn look up and say with some satisfaction that progress IS being made The public IS going to get tired m a few years, if they aren’t already, of how much money 1s going mto the opcratlon Many people see this as lust a lob corps program-but it isn’t We are tackling thcsc monumental cleanup operations across the country, and the best way we can show the public how its money 1s bcmg used wisely 1s to show the success m the cleanup Now, there will be some areas that we ~111 28

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never be able to clean up, and we know that At the Nevada Test Site, where some 900 nuclear explosions took place, reality says that we will not be going there and Lleanmg it up, there’s no way to do it So, we need to determine how best to put the land aside and protect the public from the hazards there and to make sure that the material 1s not going anywhere

The most valuable thing that has happened over the last few months IS how we have been able to work with site managers, DOE pohcy people, and stakeholders m brmgmg back the discussion of how risk can play a role m decision-making It’s a small start, but it’s beginning to be important for the future of how we will look at such issues as stewardship

Gottschall I like the idea of a chart, barometer, or thermometer m front of each faclhty I expect to see one erected on all the sites m the not-too-dlstant future It also reminds me of downloadmg programs on the computcr, and I know you have a Web site Young You bet We have a Web site (http //n¢er doe gov/), and we have been workmg with the national laboratories to develop mformatlon systems For example, at Oak Kldge National Laboratory, we have set up a system with which people can access the database on toxlcologlcal material, methods of risk assessment, and modeling mcthodologles We are trying to figure out the best way to inform the public about the tremendous number of tools avallable for doing risk evaluations There ought to be a place where the public can lust come m and see that mformatlon

Gottschall I think that it does put the scientific method and tram of logic out there and promotes their wider acceptance The flip side would also need to be asked What area has proven to be the most difficult m which to achieve your projected success? Young The fact 1s that, at this point, the budget 1s too committed We are now talking about the 2000 budget, and work and risk begin to play roles in budget-makmg The way that we have approached it is by convmcmg the department to include, within the guidance that it already distributes to the operations offices on the formulation of budget steps, guidance on how risk will play a role m the formulation of their budgets So, we won’t see the effect of that until the 2000 budget, but the fact that we have been able now to put that m place this year 1sthe lmportant first step The benefits of risk profiles as a commumcatlon tool will be shown m the next few years I think the public, when it sees those risk profiles and their value, will be able to say to DOE “Look, risk should be a malor conslderatlon as you put the budget together, not lust a compliance issue”

Gottschall I will get a little phllosophlc now and let you mteqect your personal thoughts What would you consider to be your greatest success to date? Young From my perspective, the most important thing we are beginning to do 1s to open the door with the pohcymakers on the value that risk can have m decision-making Over the last few years, the department has negotiated hundreds of compliance agreements, and the operations office managers have had to focus on how to reach the compliance requirements “So many tons of stuff cleaned up by this time, so much pumped and treated here and hauled away,” and so on, without necessarily gomg back to review the value that risk assessment and risk management could play m their programs

Gottschall I agree with you, and that leads to another question that occ&s to me when you talk about this need for the budget and then working wlthm the budget that was allocated The 1999 budget 1s already upon you Are any new malor thrusts or new mltlatlves forthcommg that we should be aware of7 Young Undersecretary of Energy Ernest Momz has brought the issue of groundwater contammatlon at Hanford to everyone’s attention Below those huge tanks 1s the vadose zone, an area

of unsaturated fluid, which IS becornmg contaminated by these leakIng tanks We don’t know the mdgmtude of that yet, but thdt 1s one of the big sclcntlflc studies going on at Hanford What contammatlon IS ocLurrlng in the vadose zone and the groundwater’ Of course, the important thing IS the Columbid River-you have tremcndous public concern for Its potential ccntdmmation, not only for dgnculture concerns and fisheries, but the whole aspect of the water Itself as d resource That 1s a key pro]& that the department 1s undertakmg, and It hd5 asked the CRE to develop the risk chdrdcterlzatlon for that prolect I hdve dssembled a multilaboratory team that includes mdlvlduals from the private sector and universities, who are helpmg us char&terize the risk Issues tor that groundwatcr This is a tremendous opportunity tor the Lenter to show the value that risk Cdn have m decision-making Now, we are going to dpprodch this from a slightly different perspective We know what the hazards are, and we know what the concerns of the cltlzcns are, so what we call ‘dcpcndcncy webs” are going to be developed These arc webs thdt concern, for example, the sahnon and what IS Important about them to the public And so WC ~111 ask the stakeholders what they see as important about the salmon It isn’t lust toed. It IS dl5o recreation, and for the Native Amencan, a spiritual ccmponcnt exists We will look at the entlre ccosystcm the cultural issues tor the Native Amcrlcans, the community perspcctlvc, dnd the socloeconomlc Issues, we will try to determine which Issues the pubIlL IS truly concerned about After determmlng the major pubhc concerns, we will lock at all the research that will help us sort out what pctentlal effects could take place, the magmtude of the ccntammdtlon, and a tlmetrame Arc there barriers we would want to put m place? What kmd of science and technology do we want to put m place that could help keep that material from movmg?

The Columbia River at the Hanford Site III Washmgton

Whdt Lould we do to mlnlmlze the impact, It It does move ’ Putting together this risk road mdp is a tremendous opportunity, cspcLldlly It we can do It by Lommumcatlng cttectlvely with the public-not lust nunbermcrunching-and clearly shcwlng that WC:know their concerns, and that we Indeed know which pdthways are potcntldlly out there ior mdterlals to reach those end pclnts WC don t know how well It ISgomg to work yet, but this ~111be scmcthmg that I hope ~111be a model of how nslt can bc put mtc a program m such a way that the public can truly understand what it IS that we are trying to do Well, I wish you the best of 1uc.kand successIn doing 50 Do you have d tcntdtive date tor con&5lon ot that3 Young This 1s a long-term Lommitmerit from DOE to address those ISSUCS, and wc hope that our risk efforts ~111help settle where that ettcrt should be tocuscd WhlLh stepsshould be taken first > Whdt dre the remedidtlon end points’ You Lan mlagme the excltcmcnt that this project ISbrmgmg to a community thdt for a long tlmc Gottschall

has been asking DOE “What are you going to do? ’ The Columbia River sltc was very well chosen because of the natlonal Lonccrn for It. a lot of pubhcIty has been gcncrated about the lc& mg t&t5 up thcrc This 15certainly not to 5dy that SdVdnndh KlVer Oak Rldgc, and other pldccs dren’t going to be 11-7 queueto requestyour servicesas well-but one thing at a tlmc Young There drc 50 many excellent cppcrtunltles to put risk mto DOE programs, dnd so many things It could be mvclvcd m its a shame it’s so small We start small, and I think thdt if we show the vdlue of what WC‘Ldn do the tuture should be much brighter, not only for our CRE but for the other centers thdt DOE, has crcdtcd Gottschall

Gottschall We look to be reading great thmgs from you and dbout you in the tuturc, not lust In scientlhc Iournals. but also the mass media The man who brought reason to the processesthat hdve been cngomg for 5ometime Young That would bc d nice l compliment Chemical

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