EVS Staff Serve on National Research Council Committees

6/2/2009

In conjunction with fulfilling the Environmental Sciences Division (EVS) mission "to advance informed environmental decision making," division members serve on many special science and technology committees, such as those associated with the National Research Council (NRC).

The mission of the NRC is to improve government decision making and public policy, increase public education and understanding, and promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in matters involving science, engineering, technology, and health. The institution takes this charge seriously and works to inform policies and actions that improve the lives of people in the United States and around the world. The NRC establishes committees to study issues of national interest. All committee members serve as individual experts, not as representatives of organizations or interest groups.

EVS staff member Todd Kimmell has served as an expert on cleanup programs and regulatory permitting in a series of NRC committees considering options for remediation of sites and treatment/disposal of non-stockpile chemical warfare materiel (CWM).

As part of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States has committed to destroying all declared CWM, including so-called non-stockpile chemical materiel (NSCM). NSCM includes all chemical agents and munitions materiel that is not in stockpiles (available for use on the battlefield), such as buried chemical weapons, recovered chemical materiel, binary chemical weapons, former production facilities, and other miscellaneous materials.

The U.S. Army, which is responsible for the destruction of the NSCM, requested that the NRC form the series of committees to review technical and operational plans for the facilities at which destruction of recovered NSCM would take place and the transportation systems that would be used to move the NSCM possibly across state lines, make recommendations on their interrelationships, and assess the Army's plans for obtaining regulatory approvals and for enhancing public involvement in the decision-making process.

Todd's current NRC NSCM committee service is an outgrowth of his service on a previous committee that explored international technologies for the destruction of recovered CWM. The new committee will address chamber-based detonation technologies, as determined in the international technologies effort to be promising for some categories of chemical weapons, for specific application to the two Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives sites, the Blue Grass Army Depot and the Pueblo Chemical Depot.

The NSCM NRC committees on which Todd has served and the related committee reports he helped produce are given below.

• Committee on Review of Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives Program Detonation Technologies for Disposal of Chemical Munitions (2008 to present).


• Committee on Review and Evaluation of International Technologies for the Destruction of Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel. Committee report: Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel (2006) (ISBN 0309102030)


• Committee on Review and Assessment of the Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Demilitarization Program: Workplace Monitoring. Committee report: Impact of Revised Airborne Exposure Limits on Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Program Activities (2005) (ISBN 030909545X)


• Committee on Review and Assessment of the Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Material Demilitarization Program: Pine Bluff. Committee report: Assessment of the Army Plan for the Pine Bluff Non-Stockpile Facility (2004) (ISBN 0309091381)


• Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Disposal Program. Committee report: Systems and Technologies for the Treatment of Non-Stockpile Chemical Warfare Material (2002) (ISBN 0309084520)


• Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Disposal Program. Committee report: Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Disposal of Liquid Wastes from the Explosive Destruction System (2001) (ISBN 0309082692)

In a different area of expertise, EVS staff member Elizabeth Hocking was requested to serve as a topical expert consultant to the Committee on the Remediation of Buried and Tank Wastes of the NRC. The committee's 2000 report, Long-Term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites, focused on three complementary elements of waste site disposition: waste reduction, waste isolation, and stewardship. The characteristics of and interrelationships among those elements as well as their current capabilities and limitations were assessed and general design criteria for long-term institutional management were presented.

EVS staff member Robert Johnson, with expertise and experience in environmental restoration, served on the NRC's Committee on Environmental Remediation at Navy Facilities. The purpose of the committee was to evaluate the potential use of innovative technologies within the Navy's cleanup program and provide recommendations to the Navy regarding general approaches for encouraging the successful deployment of innovative technologies. The committee's report, Adaptive Site Management, was released in 2003.

The NRC functions under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The NAS, NAE, IOM, and NRC are part of a private, nonprofit institution that provides science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter that was originally granted to the NAS in 1863 and was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Under this charter, the NRC was established in 1916, the NAE in 1964, and the IOM in 1970. The four organizations are collectively referred to as the National Academies.

For more information, contact:

Jack Ditmars (630)252-5953 jditmars@anl.gov