DOE's Massive Cleanup May Suffer Scientist Shortage

Once the United States' builders of sky-riding nuclear bombs, the Department of Energy is now looking back at Earth to clean up the mess such decades-long efforts have left. Specifically, the agency is beginning to address environmental problems in the land beneath its 12 major weapons research, production, and test sites and related facilities. It is a huge effort; environmental management now commands the largest budget in the agency at $5.5 billion this year. But DOE may have problems finding the upper-level scientific expertise to begin what is predicted to be a 30-year cleanup effort. A preliminary study of the staff DOE will need for the first five-year phase of cleanup concluded that the agency will be well-supplied with most of the estimated 25,000 technicians, scientists, and other workers it needs; about half will be existing DOE personnel who will be retrained. But the report warns that the agency may find it hard to fill certain niche scientific disciplines. "The scope of what we are trying to do is immense. It is bigger than the Manhattan Project by orders of magnitude," says Leo P. Duffy, assistant secretary for environmental restoration and waste management at DOE. Among the staff it needs in 53 scientific, engineering, and technical occupations, DOE has requirements for some high-level scientists who are, even now, in great demand here, the report states. These include environmental scientists and engineers, chemical engineers, hydrologists, health physics technicians, and industrial hygienists--specialists who help determine the scientific parameters of toxic waste contamination and removal. Although the number of scientists required in these categories is small, the need is real, say the report's authors. For example, although DOE may need only one or two hydrogeologists per cleanup site, there are very few of them available. But the report, "Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Manpower Needs Assessment: U.S. Department of Energy," prepared by Pacific Northwest Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and Oak Ridge Associated Universities in Tennessee, is not making estimates about the future beyond 1997. The agency is only just starting to assess exactly what cleanup is required; how to do it will come later. The real question to be addressed is "How elegant and cost- effective can we make the cleanup?" says one of the report's authors, Robert Lewis of Pacific Northwest Laboratory. Specialized scientists and new technology will make a difference, he says, but those needs will not be known for some years to come. The total cleanup is projected to last decades and cost more than $200 billion. The effort took shape in early 1989 when then- Secretary of Energy James B. Watkins promised Congress he would soon deliver a comprehensive plan outlining specific actions DOE intended to take over the next five years to fix problems started in the 1940s by the Atomic Energy Commission. Later that year, DOE issued a preliminary five-year strategic plan, with a budget, which was approved by Congress. The extent of the cleanup project is staggering. There are 3,700 hazardous waste sites under DOE's jurisdiction; some of those sites have been assessed for damage and cleanup, but many have not. "I estimate the agency will need from 11,000 to 20,000 additional employees," Duffy says. That means a 45 percent increase in the number of DOE employees compared with the 1991 level, and an agency budget that is projected to rise as much as 87 percent, according to DOE officials. The majority of DOE's cleanup staff will remove nuclear and mixed waste from the soil, and most of those workers will need only a high school degree or community college training, says Duffy. Other scientists now in the agency can be retrained, he says. For example, at the DOE Hanford site in Richland, Ron Izatt, deputy assistant manager for Hanford's environmental program, does not anticipate shortages in staffing at any level to assess contaminations from the nine reactors that were used to produce plutonium. Many of the site's 12,000 employees are being retrained, and in the last three years, almost 3,000 new employees have been addeed, Izatt says. But Lewis warns that there is uncertainty as to what the future of the cleanup may hold: "There is a certain amount of bravado on the part of DOE in saying they can proceed now with everything they need to do." Lewis predicts, however, that the need for new scientists who can develop and implement new technologies will likely come into sharper focus as the cleanup progresses. In the meantime, says Lewis, DOE will probably be able to make do with the current agreements it has between the DOE labs and cleanup sites and universities to provide the niche scientists most in demand. Among those efforts is a program the Atomic Energy Commission began 30 years ago to find the scientists they needed then. The Environmental Management Career Opportunities Research Experience (EMCORE) Program is run by Tom Skuiers for the Associated Western Universities Inc., a consortium of 44 universities. This year, EMCORE will provide $8.3 million in scholarships and fellowships for 1,152 participants, ranging from high school to doctoral- level students. "Environmental management is the crusade of the younger generation. The increasing enrollment is phenomenal, Skuiers says. "There is a shortage now, but there won't be in the future. Peter Wierenga, head of the department of soil and water sciences at the University of Arizona, agrees that student interest is high, but he also warns that graduates from Arizona's newly expanded environmental management curricula will have many job possibilities. "Most major companies now have an environmental department that either is doing some cleanup or is advising company directors how to run their operation so that they don't have such problems, he says. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is trying to gauge interest in environmental management and to respond accordingly. Mujid Kazimi, head of nuclear engineering at MIT and an adviser to DOE, says that his department is "focusing much more now ... on environmental technology. But Kazimi also says that it is almost impossible to say if DOE will experience a shortage: "It's simply a guessing game. It is a new area that will be important to the national welfare, but it is hard to predict the need and difficult to know how fast the academic system can respond. Renee Twombly is a freelance writer based in Durham, N.C.

DOE's Massive Cleanup May Suffer Scientist Shortage

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