Strategic Assessment – Research – Review – Education

CRESP carries out its work through several types of activities organized by task or focal area, creating a functional approach:

Strategic Assessment

Integrated, cross-cutting analysis and engagement with stakeholders.

CRESP provides multi-disciplinary assessment of strategic nuclear waste management issues and initiatives carried out by CRESP senior researchers, typically working together and in concert with established national and international leaders to identify information gaps and evaluate alternative pathways to progress. Each specific Assessment Project is defined by objectives and milestones over a specified time period. Some are ongoing CRESP activities, while others a newly identified strategic assessment projects that are brought to CRESP attention as strategic work the DOE EM discovers it needs CRESP to help, support or conduct.

Applied Research

Focused research projects involving graduate and post-doctoral students.

CRESP conducts applied research through a carefully-selected portfolio of projects designed to address critical knowledge gaps within the CRESP focal areas.  Individual research projects are linked with DOE programmatic or site-specific needs, have durations of one to several years, and are carried in conjunction with graduate and post-graduate education. CRESP embraces a stakeholder-involved research model, whereby relevant stakeholders are typically involved in problem formulation and research objectives and provide dialogue on findings at key milestones.

A distinctive characteristic of CRESP research is that, with the collaboration of CRESP leadership, researchers have successfully identified projects that either simultaneously provide the intellectual, new-knowledge components of CRESP Strategic Assessments or are intended to develop new information or knowledge that we believe will become central to EM programmatic success in the near-term.

Review

Independent multidisciplinary peer reviews of key DOE documents, other projects and reports.

CRESP provides several types of independent multi-disciplinary reviews of key DOE documents (including draft regulatory documents), other projects, and reports and including specific technical challenges faced by EM managers. Typically CRESP itself organizes these reviews, but CRESP-supported researchers also participate in review mechanisms and tasks when their participation, and CRESP-support of their review work, is identified.

Many types of CRESP review functions are already defined in standing committees, or mechanisms utilized in those cases are carried forward into future CRESP efforts. CRESP reviews have often shaped major nuclear waste decisions such as specific restoration options, performance assessments, and environmental impact statements

Education

Workshops and short courses for continuing professional education and graduate student education

The educational function of CRESP is ongoing and multi-dimensional in that it:

1. provides a multi-disciplinary foundation for the next generation of professionals in nuclear waste management through graduate and post-graduate training,
2. develops materials, frames degree programs, and carries out short courses and workshops for current waste management professionals to facilitate improved professional development
3. introduces nuclear waste management and professional challenges and opportunities to undergraduates through summer internships and degree program work. Preference for these interns are with DOE mentors, either at headquarters or at the sites.