Environmental Research

Argonne has been involved in providing solutions to environmental problems since its earliest days. Part of Argonne 's Post World War II mission was to study the transport of radioactive materials from nuclear testing in the early 1950s and determine the health and environmental effects from those tests. This work has evolved into the wide-ranging research on environmental issues Argonne does today including providing research tools for monitoring climate change, computer modeling of ecosystems and contracting with agencies to produce environmental impact statements.

The Environmental Research Division develops techniques for environmental measurement and monitoring to understand environmental fate and transport mechanisms, to improve evaluations of environmental risks, and to develop new methods and procedures to either ameliorate or remediate environmental damage.

The Environmental Assessment Division conducts applied research, assessment and technology development in the areas of:

• Risk and waste management
• Natural resource systems and integrated assessments
• Restoration and pollution prevention
• Environmental policy analysis and planning, and
• Environmental management systems.

Most of these efforts support federal agencies that are responsible for energy development and use, natural resource management, or national defense.

The Decision and Information Sciences Division has developed a dynamic and flexible approach to building a comprehensive ecosystem-modeling framework to meet the diverse objectives of facilitating appropriate land use, sustaining natural resources and complying with regulations.

The Center for Energy, Economic, and Environmental Systems Analysis — part of the Decision and Information Sciences Division — analyzes broad strategic areas including:

• Power systems
• Energy systems
• Environmental systems
• Technology assessment
• Natural gas systems
• Policy
• Economics.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program is the largest global climate change research program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. The primary goal of the ARM Program is to improve the treatment of cloud and radiation physics in global climate models in order to improve the climate simulation capabilities of these models. Argonne manages ARM program operations for DOE.