Deactivation and Decommissioning Knowledge Management Information Tool

Florida International University (FIU) opened for classes in 1972 as Miami-Dade County ’s first public four-year university. Today, FIU is one of the 25 largest universities in the nation, based on enrollment, with approximately 50,000 students.

FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission. The Applied Research Center was established in 1995 by the Department of Energy (DOE) and FIU. The Center has successfully completed over 300 projects for 14 DOE sites over 18 years. One of the main areas that ARC currently supports DOE EM is in D&D.

The mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) is to complete the risk reduction and cleanup of the environmental legacy brought about from five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.

EM’s Engineering and Technology Deactivation and Decommissioning area activities include providing technical assistance to the sites to identify emerging technologies, technical approaches, lessons learned from past and ongoing site closures, and best practices that will improve safety and reduce risk and cost associated with D&D activities.

The former Hanford ALARA Center provided assistance regarding new tools and work practices that can reduce exposure for workers and reduce the risk of spread of contamination, while getting the work done more efficiently. The Hanford ALARA Center was closed in September 2011.

The former Integrated Safety Solutions Center (ISSC) was located in 766-H at SRS and contained equipment and information to support field implementation of the ALARA concept and industrial safety equipment for the continuous improvement in determining what is technologically reasonably achievable to reduce worker exposure to hazards in the workplace. The SRS ISSC was closed in October 2012.

Both former ALARA Centers were staffed by professionals responsible for keeping abreast of new equipment, technologies and techniques to support radiological work with cost effective solutions. There were a variety of innovative items on display to allow visitors the opportunity to use and borrow select items for field use.

A phone-based D&D Hotline was established at the Hanford ALARA Center to assist the DOE cleanup community by providing a real-time resource for information on potential solutions to cleanup questions. The intent of the phone-based Hotline was to rapidly disseminate lessons learned and information on best practices, thus providing solutions to D&D challenges across the DOE Complex and beyond. The web-based Hotline on D&D KM-IT has captured the information generated by the former phone-based Hotline to make it available to members of the D&D community. In addition, the D&D KM-IT web-based Hotline continues to provide solutions from SMS to the challenges faced by the D&D community users.