Decommissioning USDOE nuclear facilities

During the 1960s, the US Government agency responsible for nuclear energy activities - the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) - recognized the need to eventually decommission facilities. The AEC began to develop techniques for decontaminating some facilities for re-use or for unrestricted use, as well as methods for safe storage of the facilities when decontamination was not a preferred option. In 1977, the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the successor to the AEC, made an inventory of unused radioactivity contaminated facilities and established a programme for an orderly decommissioning of these ''surplus'' facilities. About 500 facilities were included in the Surplus Facilities Management Program (SFMP). The SFMP is being continued under the US Department of Energy (DOE), the successor to ERDA. The objectives of the SFMP are to: Safely manage and dispose of the inventory of surplus facilities in accordance with priorities; Maximize re-use of facilities; Optimize use of state-of-the-art decommissioning techniques; Transfer the decommissioning technology to US industry and collaborate with international and other national decommissioning programmes