Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Technology Research and Development Program

The Technology Research and Development Program, under the direction of Dr. Sheila Webster, is responsible for research and collaborative projects in the areas of environment, information, and education.

TRDP, which is based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, possesses diverse capabilities in the environmental arena. One of its programs supports all phases of the Oak Ridge Environmental Management Program, an effort aimed at managing and monitoring contamination on the 35,000-acre Oak Ridge Reservation. The reservation was the site of decades of research, production, and testing of nuclear weapons. In its support of the Oak Ridge Environmental Management Program, TRDP provides services in the areas of documentation, waste management, conceptual engineering design, technology research, and training and guidance on CERCLA and RCRA compliance.

Additional environmental support services include field sampling and data analysis, data validation, nuclear criticality evaluations, preparation for ISO 14001 certification, ISO 14001 auditing, internal and external quality-assurance assessments and measurements, economic studies, and reindustrialization planning.

Another of TRDP's environmental programs focuses on sustainable development, brownfield redevelopment, environmental planning, ecosystem management, facility and real property assessment, and mediation of issues involving environmental conservation and economic development. While most of TRDP's environmental projects take place at the local and national levels, some are international in scope.

TRDP's expertise in information services includes information-system design and management and technical assistance for the Information Resource Center in Oak Ridge, which is responsible for maintaining the administrative records for environmental management activities of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as provided for in its contract with the Oak Ridge Reservation. Information-system design involves systems architecture, data collection and analysis, database design, and documentation.

TRDP's education and instructional activities include regulatory compliance training, health and safety training, Internet-based training, Web site design, multimedia instruction, course and workshop development, and educational consulting. Educational activities involve coordination of site-specific training and required compliance training for collaborators operating under DOE-funded contracts. TRDP often collaborates with other University of Tennessee units to develop advanced instructional products and programs for these and other applications.

TRDP project sponsors include Bechtel Jacobs Company; Bechtel National, Inc.; Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Energy Systems; Tennessee Department of Education; and DOE.

Researchers with the Technology Research and Development Program (TRDP) are surveying the 35,000-acre Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which has been declared a Superfund site, for parcels of land that are not contaminated or degraded. According to the researchers, most of the ORR is free of contamination, and much is forest.

They are working to recreate the land's history from the days of most recent private ownership to the present and to map, or describe, the nature of contamination that does exist within the ORR. TRDP uses land deeds dating from as far back as the 1800s and aerial photographs dating from the 1940s to view the changing landscape through time and to locate areas that might have supported contaminating activities, such as a gas station or a farm, before Oak Ridge government facilities were built.

Researchers use remote-sensing data, including geologic, topographic, thermal infrared, magnetic, and gamma survey data. This U.S. Department of Energy-funded program allows TRDP researchers to recommend areas of the ORR that can be removed from the Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List and to identify areas not previously known to be contaminated.