The Department of Energy DOE is responsible for advancing the national, economic and energy security of the United States through the implementation of policies regarding nuclear power, fossil fuels, and alternative energy sources. The DOE promotes scientific and technological innovation in all of the aforementioned energy sectors and is charged with the environmental cleanup of the national nuclear weapons complex.
One of its key duties is the formulation and implementation of the National Energy Policy. Office of Nuclear Energy. The NE helps spearhead new nuclear energy generation technologies, including plans to develop proliferation-resistant nuclear fuel that can maximize energy from other nuclear fuel.
The office also maintains and enhances the national nuclear technology infrastructure and manages research laboratories and radiological facilities. The programs funded by the NE are designed to develop new nuclear reactors that will help diversify the domestic energy supply through public-private partnerships.
National Nuclear Security Administration. Using private contractors to run day-to-day operations, the NNSA manages highly classified research laboratories and nuclear defense facilities that maintain the stockpile of nuclear weapons as well as provide the propulsion systems for the U. Born out of controversy, the NNSA has struggled since its creation in to move past the mistakes of the Energy Department that led Congress to establish this new agency. The agency, however, has repeatedly been criticized for its own lapses in security and other blunders.
Office of Environmental Management. Representing a leftover from the Cold War, vast amounts of radioactive and toxic waste and contamination are spread throughout nuclear weapons facilities around the country, requiring long-term efforts involving environmental restoration, waste management, technology development, and land reuse by EM.
The agency has succeeded in completing cleanup at 90 nuclear sites and continues its efforts at 17 additional sites located in 11 states. Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund. The polluted sites are all former production facilities used during the Cold War to supply enriched uranium for nuclear warheads and commercial nuclear reactors.
Located in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio, the plants encompass more than 30 million square feet of floor space, miles of interconnecting pipes, and thousands of acres of land that are contaminated with radioactive and hazardous materials.
Office of Legacy Management. Once cleanup at former nuclear weapons facilities is completed by the EM, the LM takes over the location to manage any remaining environmental and human issues; it currently manages more than 87 sites located throughout the country. The office is responsible for managing issues consisting of site monitoring, property management, grants to assist local communities affected by facility closure, records storage and pensions, health care, and life insurance for former workers.
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. According to the agency, the United States had accumulated 53, metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors by In addition, military-related activities are expected to produce 22, canisters of solid radioactive waste for future disposal. Altogether, experts estimated that , tons of waste would end up being buried at the site. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board.
Twice a year, the board reports its conclusions and recommendations to Congress and to the Secretary of Energy and points out concerns from outside parties. It has no regulatory or implementing authority. The board consists of 11 members who are nominated by the National Academy of Sciences on the basis of expertise, which ranges from geochemistry to materials science to hydrology to transportation. Members are then appointed by the president and serve a four-year term.
Office of Health, Safety and Security. Created in , the Office of Health, Safety and Security HSS is responsible for overseeing worker safety and security matters at nuclear weapons facilities located across the country.
It has been the subject of much controversy since its very beginning when Energy Department leaders decided to eliminate the previous office handling worker safety—the Office of Environment, Safety and Health—and turn those duties over to the newly formed HSS, which is led by a longtime security chief.
Critics contended the move was designed to protect large private contractors at the expense of worker safety. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. Under its mandate from Congress, the board is charged with ensuring the implementation of DOE health and safety standards by energy officials and to issue advisory recommendations regarding work at facilities. The board also investigates operations or specific problems that arise at facilities that could adversely impact public health or safety and issues recommendations to address these problems.
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The office is concerned with developing cleaner burning fuels, wind, hydro energy, and other renewable energy sources in order to break the dependency the U. As part of its mission, the EERE creates tax incentives for private businesses to develop new technologies that will assist in the overall goal of creating new and cleaner energy sources.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL is the main research center for developing renewable energy technologies and helping get those technologies into the marketplace.
The NREL also provides technical assistance, energy planning, and economic development for many organizations and industries in the U. Power Marketing Administrations. The Power Marketing Administrations PMAs are four federal agencies responsible for marketing hydropower—primarily excess power produced by federal dams and projects operated by the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation. The four federal PMAs, which market and distribute power to 60 million people in 34 states, are required to give preference to public utility districts and cooperatives.
Each PMA is a distinct and self-contained entity within the DOE, much like a wholly owned subsidiary of a corporation, and each is affected by its own unique regional issues and conditions. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It has jurisdiction over state-to-state electricity sales, wholesale electric rates, hydroelectric licensing, natural-gas pricing, and oil pipeline rates. It also reviews and authorizes liquefied natural gas LNG terminals, pipelines and non-federal hydropower projects.
The FERC is composed of up to five commissioners appointed by the president, with no more than three commissioners belonging to the same political party. Although an independent agency, FERC has proven susceptible to lobbying and political influence. Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability OE is in charge of overseeing the availability of electricity throughout the country.
The OE makes sure the U. It funds research and development programs that explore new means of storing and delivering electricity. The office also works to identify any infrastructure problems that could potentially cause large-scale power outages, such as the blackout that affected the Midwest, Northeast, and parts of Canada.
Working with other federal agencies, the OE also prepares for responding to any outages that might stem from terrorist-related attacks on the electric grid. Office of Fossil Energy. The office oversees approximately research and development projects ranging from development of zero-emissions power plants to energy facilities that efficiently transform coal, biomass, and other fuels into commercial products to new technologies that can extract oil from existing fields that currently is unreachable.
Office of Science. It also oversees research programs in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, fusion energy sciences, basic energy sciences, biological and environmental sciences and computational science. National Security and Safety. Nuclear Safety and Security. Small Businesses. State and Local Government. Also performing work at Hanford are construction giants Bechtel which has a stake in the Savannah River cleanup and CH2M Hill , which is handling cleanup work pdf through at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and is involved with work pdf at Savannah River.
Battelle , an international science and technology firm, co-operates the Oak Ridge facility in conjunction with the University of Tennessee. Another prominent higher education stakeholder is the University of California , which was the sole manager of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California until Bechtel Group Inc.
Steven Chu. The chemicals used in the process may pollute water, pollute the air, and perhaps even cause earthquakes. Political leaders in Nevada objected to a plan by the DOE to ship old nuclear waste from Tennessee to the state for storage. The DOE wanted to transport canisters containing radioactive waste from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the Nevada National Security Site, where it would be buried in a desert landfill underneath another layer of radioactive waste.
The DOE deemed the material low-level radioactive waste, which contained fissionable uranium The waste would be 40 times more concentrated than any the site had ever accepted for disposal.
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval objected to the shipment, as did U. Harry Reid D-Nevada and Rep. Dina Titus D-Nevada. Federal budget cuts in threatened to slow down cleanup operations at a Cold War-era nuclear facility in South Carolina, prompting state officials to offer their own threat of hefty fines against the agency overseeing the work. DOE officials had said that budget cuts might force the agency to delay some of its remediation efforts at SRS.
That may mean missing some 30 milestones on the cleanup timetable. The controversial drilling method of hydraulic fracturing fracking has performed so well in the United States that companies began talking in of exporting some of their excess supply of natural gas.
But such a move could result in higher gas prices in the U. Initial shipments were scheduled for , with nearly 20 tons of natural gas to be transported per year.
Companies such as Exxon Mobil and Sempra Energy asked the Obama administration for permission to export as much as 29 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. These efforts represented a turnaround for the industry. Less than a decade ago, domestic production of natural gas was so low that facilities were being built in U. Consumer groups and some manufacturers that use natural gas opposes expanded exports, claiming the exports could drive up domestic prices and make manufacturing more expensive.
Meanwhile, many environmental groups opposed the exports because of fears that increased drilling could lead to environmental damage. Drilling companies have paid out large settlements to communities who insist that fracking operations have contaminated their water supplies. There is also evidence of a link between fracking-related injection wells and the onset of earthquakes.
One senior DOE official who was not identified used his position to contact a dozen DOE members to secure internships for his three college-aged children in He had also enrolled them in training programs paid for by the DOE.
Senior Energy Dept. The DOE decided in early to test the security at a key nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina, and found the protection was far from adequate. DOE specialists posing as terrorists carried out a mock assault on the Savannah River Site, which stores large volumes of nuclear material and reactor waste. Other bad news regarding the testing included a decision by the DOE to halt one exercise because a shift change resulted in workers wandering through the area.
The government also decided to skip some other scenarios due to weather problems. Facility Drill Global Security Newswire. The DOE declared in a report that there was no evidence of hydraulic fracturing or fracking chemicals contaminating aquifers in western Pennsylvania.
DOE researchers spent a year monitoring underground water supplies. They concluded that fluids tagged with unique markers, which were shot into the ground at a depth of more than 8,, were not spotted within a monitoring zone that was 5, feet deep.
The agency said the study was still ongoing, and did not represent a final assessment on the use of fracking or its potential impact on local environments. About a week after the DOE released its report, news surfaced that another federal agency had sat on evidence of fracking-related water pollution in Pennsylvania. A field office of the U. Environmental Protection Agency EPA produced a PowerPoint presentation revealing that EPA on-site staff members in Dimock had informed their Washington superiors that several wells had been contaminated with methane, manganese, and arsenic, and that gas drilling was the likely culprit.
A key nuclear weapons facility operated by the Department of Energy DOE was faulted in May for using tired and poorly trained guard dogs to protect important operations. But it was unable to confirm these accusations. Auditors did confirm claims that the dogs were overworked and not given enough rest between shifts, especially on hot days.
That same year, the DOE promised Congress that six of its 11 nuclear weapons sites would have upgraded security by By the fall of , the department was nowhere near meeting this deadline, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. Five of the six sites were still far from being ready to withstand a terrorist attack as defined by the design basis threat.
Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Portraits of AEC commissioners and other officials of DOE and its predecessors; research staff; and prominent persons in government and the field of atomic energy, PE, PN; 4, images. Motion Pictures six 16mm reels : Network news documentaries relating to energy conservation policy development, ; films relating to technical fuel testing, ; publicity films for "Project Independence" national energy policy hearings, ; and Reserved for Tomorrow, a DOE film focusing on on the Strategic Oil Reserve program, Schlesinger and Charles W.
Duncan, and other Department of Energy officials, Lectures and interviews featuring various DOE employees, including doctors, administrators, and scientists, speaking about such subjects as nuclear waste disposal, radiation accidents, nuclear safety, and the design and development of nuclear reactors, Schlesinger, Color Slides 6, images : Energy sources and uses, S.
Statistical summaries and reports on oil and gas production in the naval petroleum reserves, Report of the National Petroleum Council on petroleum storage and transportation capacities, Provides a chronology of DOE history and its predecessor agencies and includes links to reports, speeches, press releases, and other documentation.
Learn more about the background of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, the authorizing legislation, and park implementation news.
Additional Resources. Cold War History. Although ED's share of total education funding in the U. This targeting reflects the historical development of the Federal role in education as a kind of "emergency response system," a means of filling gaps in State and local support for education when critical national needs arise.
The original Department of Education was created in to collect information on schools and teaching that would help the States establish effective school systems. While the agency's name and location within the Executive Branch have changed over the past years, this early emphasis on getting information on what works in education to teachers and education policymakers continues down to the present day.
The passage of the Second Morrill Act in gave the then-named Office of Education responsibility for administering support for the original system of land-grant colleges and universities. Vocational education became the next major area of Federal aid to schools, with the Smith-Hughes Act and the George-Barden Act focusing on agricultural, industrial, and home economics training for high school students.
World War II led to a significant expansion of Federal support for education. The Lanham Act in and the Impact Aid laws of eased the burden on communities affected by the presence of military and other Federal installations by making payments to school districts. And in , the "GI Bill" authorized postsecondary education assistance that would ultimately send nearly 8 million World War II veterans to college.
To help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields, the NDEA included support for loans to college students, the improvement of science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction in elementary and secondary schools, graduate fellowships, foreign language and area studies, and vocational-technical training.
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