Integrated framework for environmental technology evaluation

The Federal Government's nuclear weapons research, development, testing, and production activities have resulted in widespread subsurface contamination of soils and groundwater by radioactive and hazardous wastes. The screening of potential technical solutions to site environmental problems requires an integrated evaluation framework. This paper describes an environmental technology evaluation framework developed for the United States Department of Energy by the Consortium for Environment Risk Evaluation (CERE). CERE's framework provides a comprehensive and consistent basis for the comparison and selection of technologies to meet site environmental restoration needs using indices of technical performance, life cycle costs, risk, process residuals, regulatory experience, stakeholder concerns, natural resource damage and future use. A pilot application of the framework to containment or treatment of trichloroethylene in soils and/or ground water at three sites with a range of hydrogeologic settings illustrates the robustness of the framework parameters.