HAZARDOUS-WASTE REMEDIATION - A 21ST-CENTURY PROBLEM

The United States, both the private and the public sector, is currentl y spending approximately $10 billion annually on environmental cleanup . In 1991, the Waste Management Research and Education Institute at th e University of Tennessee, Knoxville, complete an exhaustive study tha t estimated if we continue to pursue current policies the total cost o f the cleanup will be approximately $750 billion - in 1990 dollars. Th is suggests that given current technology and the current rate of expe nditure, cleanup will take 75 years-well into the latter half of the n ext century. The legacy of environmental problems associated with our weapons complex is enormous. The Tennessee group estimated that one-th ird of the total cost of cleanup-approximately $240 billion-will be bo rne by the Department of Energy (DOE). Currently approximately one-hal f of the annual expenditures for cleanup comes from DOE-$5 billion, on e-third of the DOE budget. In contrast, the amount of funds for basic research on environmental cleanup problems is small. The federal gover nment spends less than $100 million annually for basic research-less t han 1 percent of the total annual expenditure of $10 billion. This lev el of funding for basic research seems shortsighted given the current status of cleanup technologies and the expected long duration of the p roblem.