Nearly a decade ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) embarked on a mission to deal with the environmental legacy of the Cold War. This DOE mission, which is expected to continue for many years, involves a number of activities, with the most ambitious and far-ranging being the cleanup of the hazardous and radioactive contaminants that resulted from the production of nuclear weapons at DOE facilities. The challenges of this task are technical, institutional, and economic. For example, thousands of tons of radioactive waste must be treated and put into permanent storage; contaminated soil must be stabilized; contaminated water must be treated; and nuclear reactors and materials-processing facilities must be decontaminated, decommissioned, and demolished. In some cases, no safe and effective technology is currently available to address the more complex contamination problems. In June 1998, DOE estimated that it will be very expensive, about $150 billion, to clean up the legacy of the Cold War. However, DOE has also stated that the cost of cleaning up its contaminated facilities and sites can be significantly reduced through the use of innovative cleanup technologies. It supports the development of these technologies through its Office of Science and Technology (OST), within the Office of Environmental Management (EM). In 1989, DOE established EM to clean up and restore its contaminated facilities and sites in compliance with federal and state environmental laws and regulations. The Congress also directed the Secretary of Energy to establish “a program of research for the development of technologies useful for (1) the reduction of environmental hazards and contamination resulting from defense waste, and (2) environmental restoration of inactive defense waste disposal sites.” In response, DOE established the Office of Technology Development within EM to develop innovative technologies to support the waste cleanup and restoration efforts of EM’s program offices—the Offices of Waste Management, Environmental Restoration, and Nuclear Material and Facility Stabilization. The Office of Technology Development was renamed the Office of Science and Technology in 1994, when basic science research for waste cleanup was added to its responsibilities. OST’s projects are intended to produce technologies that could accelerate cleanups, reduce costs, enable cleanup activities for which there are no existing cost-effective technologies, or reduce risks to cleanup workers. From fiscal year 1990 through fiscal year 1998, the Congress appropriated approximately $2.5 billion for OST’s development of innovative waste cleanup technologies, and OST has initiated over 700 projects. OST’s budget for technology development activities in fiscal year 1998 is about $220 million. OST requested a total of $180.5 million for technology development activities for fiscal year 1999. OST develops technology at DOE’s national laboratories, private companies under contract to OST, and universities. Although OST is responsible for technology development, DOE waste sites are responsible for selecting the technologies they will use, with the review and approval of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state agencies that regulate DOE’s cleanups, and with input from the public involved with the site. To serve sites’ needs for cleanup technology, OST is organized into five major remediation and waste management problem areas (termed “focus areas”). OST first established focus areas in 1994 in order to better serve the cleanup sites by concentrating technology resources on each of the major cleanup problems DOE faces. OST currently has the following five focus areas: Mixed Waste Characterization, Treatment, and Disposal. Known as “mixed waste,” this focus area addresses the large inventory of mixed, low-level, and transuranic waste; Radioactive Tank Waste Remediation. Known as “tanks,” this focus area addresses the hundreds of large storage tanks containing over 100 million gallons of radioactive waste; Subsurface Contaminants. This focus area addresses hazardous and radioactive contaminants in soil and groundwater and the remediation challenges posed by numerous DOE landfills; Deactivation and Decommissioning. This focus area addresses the deactivation, decommissioning, and disposal of aging and contaminated DOE weapons complex facilities; and Plutonium Stabilization and Disposition. This focus area addresses the over 20 tons of excess plutonium that must be stabilized. OST has established a lead field office to manage each focus area. For example, the Savannah River site manages the Subsurface Contaminants Focus Area. EM has also established site technology coordination groups in each of its field offices to identify sites’ technology needs, provide information to OST and its focus areas, and communicate information about OST’s technology development projects to the cleanup sites. In 1994, the Assistant Secretary for EM established the Environmental Management Advisory Board (EMAB) to provide the Assistant Secretary with information, advice, and recommendations on issues confronting the EM program, including advice on the development and deployment of innovative technology for waste cleanup. EMAB has about 25 members from industry; academia; and private, federal, tribal, state, and local environmental groups. EMAB has been very active in studying OST and recommending improvements in its operations. DOE believes it will be very costly and take many years to clean up its waste sites if only conventional technology is used. For example, using the conventional method of removing contaminants from groundwater can involve pumping and treating the water for 30 years or more. In addition, no technology exists to address some cleanup problems. For example, no technology exists for some aspects of removing and treating the radioactive waste now in large tanks at several major DOE facilities. Furthermore, some cleanup activities could be dangerous or impossible for cleanup workers unless innovative technologies, such as remote robotic devices to clean inside radioactive waste tanks, are used. Those in the Congress and in DOE who led the effort to establish OST believed that the use of innovative technology would reduce the cost of waste cleanup. For example, in 1995, DOE estimated that it would cost between $200 billion and $350 billion and take another 75 years to complete the cleanup. However, DOE also estimated that the use of new technologies could reduce cleanup costs by a minimum of $9 billion to as much as $80 billion, depending on the cleanup scenario. More recently, in 1997, the Army Corps of Engineers reviewed cost savings estimates developed by OST for 37 of its technology projects and concluded that these 37 projects could potentially save about $20 billion over the use of conventional technology. DOE believes that cleanup costs could significantly exceed current estimates if innovative technology is not used. We have issued a number of reports and testified on the operation and management of EM’s technology program. Among other things, we have identified obstacles to the deployment of innovative technology at DOE’s cleanup sites. In 1992, we reported that EM had not established key management tools, such as cost estimates and schedules, and decision points for evaluating technology projects. In January 1993, EM implemented a management plan for the technology program that incorporated our recommendations. The program established cost estimates and schedules for projects. EM also developed decision points (called gates) and related requirements for evaluating projects and making “go/no-go” decisions. In 1994, we reported that officials at DOE cleanup sites may not be familiar with innovative technologies and may fear that using new technologies may lead DOE to miss cleanup deadlines if the technology fails to perform as expected. In response to our report, OST took several actions, including establishing the site technology coordination groups discussed earlier, to improve communication on sites’ technology needs and the capabilities of newly developed technologies. In addition, to help ensure that development activities were concentrated on the most pressing cleanup needs, EM restructured its technology development program into the focus areas. In 1996, we reported that EM had not coordinated technology development to prevent duplication of effort, particularly between OST and the Office of Waste Management, which together had 60 projects to develop equipment to melt and immobilize waste. A key reason for the duplication was EM’s lack of a comprehensive list of technology development projects. EM subsequently developed a list of its technology projects. We also found that more technology projects were being started at the sites where the focus areas were physically headquartered. In following up on this situation in 1997, we found that this concentration had decreased. In 1997, we testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, House Committee on Commerce, that OST appeared to have made some improvements in its project management, but we had continuing concern about the extent of use of OST-developed technologies at DOE’s waste cleanup sites and the validity of OST data on deployments and expected cost savings. OST had also proposed a new initiative, Accelerated Site Technology Deployment (ASTD), to facilitate the use of its technologies. We expressed several concerns about the likely effectiveness of this initiative, which provides funding to DOE sites for the first use of an innovative technology. OST provided a total of approximately $26 million to 14 ASTD projects in fiscal year 1998. The Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the House Committee on Commerce and the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations asked us to review EM’s Office of Science and Technology. Specifically, we were asked to determine (1) to what extent innovative technologies developed by OST have been deployed (used) at DOE sites and how this rate of deployment compares with the rates of other government organizations that develop environmental technologies; (2) what obstacles exist to deploying innovative technologies at DOE sites; and (3) what EM is doing to overcome obstacles to deploying innovative technologies. To determine the extent to which OST-developed technologies have been deployed at DOE sites, we obtained deployment information on OST’s projects from an OST management information system. This information provided project names and numerical identifiers, research stage, deployment sites (if any), and other project information, as of January 1998. We also obtained information about OST’s use and definition of the term “deployment” and OST’s procedures for entering and updating the information in this system.