Scientific Opportunities to Reduce Risk in Nuclear Process Science

Cleaning up the nation's nuclear weapons complex remains as one of the most technologically challenging and financially costly problems facing the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Safety, cost, and technological challenges have often delayed progress in retrieval, processing, and final disposition of high-level waste, spent nuclear fuel, and challenging materials. Some of the issues result from the difficulty and complexity of the technological issues; others have programmatic bases, such as contracting strategies that may provide undue focus on near-term, specific clean-up goals or difficulty in developing and maintaining stakeholder confidence in the proposed solutions. We propose that independent basic fundamental science research focused on the full cleanup life-cycle offers an opportunity to help address these challenges by providing (1) scientific insight into the fundamental mechanisms involved in currently selected processing and disposal options, (2) a rational path to the development of alternative technologies should the primary options fail, (3) confidence that models that predict long-term performance of different disposal options are based upon the best available science, (4) fundamental science discovery that enables transformational solutions to revolutionize the current baseline processes.