The department of energy program for environmental restoration

For more than forty years the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies have operated a vast industrial enterprise to produce nuclear materials and nuclear weapons for the national defense. Like other heavy industry world-wide, this industrial activity has managed and disposed of its wastes according to accepted practices that have later come to be questioned. Environmental laws and regulations have tightened the standards for hazardous substance control to reflect society's growing awareness of the persistence of many toxic substances in the environment and the need to protect land and environment for future use. As in the private industrial sector, the Department inherits a legacy of contaminated sites from its historical operations that must, under current law, at least be examined and considered for remedial action