The Environmental Management Science Program (EMSP) funds basic science research that will lead to reduced remediation cost, schedule, technical uncertainties, and risk for DOE's environmental clean up. The Tanks Focus Area (TFA) has partnered with EMSP to accomplish those same objectives for DOE's largest and most expensive remediation effort--to retrieve and immobilize the highly radioactive wastes that are our nation's chief nuclear defense program legacy. TFA has been tasked to facilitate success of the EMSP investment. The key for EMSP projects to contribute to this remediation effort is communication. First, scientists need to understand much more about how their scientific results would be used than they could ever learn from the original EMSP solicitation or by reading the referenced DOE needs statements. Second, the scientists' results must be communicated to the site problem holders in a usable form and in a timely manner such that important information gaps can still be filled by the EMSP project. Research results can be used in a variety of ways besides deployment of new hardware or a new process. When results are USED the site problem holders become 'users'. The important aspect that research results are to be used is captured in the TFA lexicon for their clients, the DOE sites--'users'. This paper will show, through several examples, significant contributions EMSP scientists have made to solving DOE's high-level waste challenges through direct and enhanced communication with TFA and site users.
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