regional groups, the utilities, the transportation industry, special interest groups, and the public at large (ibid., pp. 19-28). OCRWM’s stated policy was “to make program information publicly available to the fullest and most timely extent possible” (DOE 1986a, p. 1). OCRWM lived up to this commitment in the program’s early history. Vehicles for engaging and reaching out to the public and other stakeholders included the OCRWMBulletin (a periodic newsletter), OCRWMBackgrounders (papers on specific topics) and factsheets, and INFOLINK— an“electronic bulletin board”designed“to impart transportation news and information to the interested public” (DOE 1986c, p. 29). In 1992, OCRWM released Science, Society, and America’s Nuclear Waste , an ambitious four-part curriculum for teaching high school students about the “scientific and societal issues” related to the repository program (DOE 1995f ). OCRWM updated the curriculum just once in 1995. According to the letter accompanying the 1995 edition, between 1992 and August 1995, OCRWM received requests for approximately 20,000 “Teacher Guides” and 200,000 “Student Readers,”with requests coming in from all 50 states and 48 countries (DOE 1995f, p. 5). It is unknown whether OCRWM assessed the use of the curriculum or the impacts, if any, the curriculum had on students’ understanding of the nuclear waste management program. In addition to printed public information materials, OCRWM also communicated with stakeholders through meetings of the Transportation Coordination Group (TCG), held at least annually starting in 1986 and continuing until 1995 (DOE 1994c, p. 4-8; DOE 1997c, p. 36). The TCG was the forum OCRWM used to bring together a variety of stakeholders that were interested in the program’s transportation activities. OCRWM described these meetings as involving states, tribes, local governments, utilities, and the transportation industry, with issues covered as the need or interest arose. OCRWM varied the location of TCG meetings in order to give people in all parts of the country a chance to attend. OCRWM also reached out to program stakeholders with a “Director’s Forum,”which provided an opportunity for the
public and other stakeholders to address their concerns directly to the OCRWM director. Held in May 1992, the meeting focused on the issue of early site suitability studies at Yucca Mountain (MHLRWC 1992, p. 8). Participants at the TCG meeting that same month suggested that a forum be held specifically on the subject of transportation; however, OCRWM did not follow up on this suggestion (ibid.). The TCG served as the model for a new DOE-wide stakeholder group called the Transportation External Coordination Working Group (TEC/WG). OCRWM organized the TEC/WG along with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). The TEC/WG was so successful in its early years that, for some time, it managed to fill the void left when OCRWM disbanded the TCG in the mid-1990s due to a program redirection and subsequent lack of funding. The TEC/WG remained the national forum for DOE to use in communicating with transportation stakeholders until it, too, was disbanded in 2009, largely as a result of another OCRWM program redirection. EM replaced the TEC/WG in 2010 with a new National Transportation Stakeholders Forum. The mid-1990s saw a general slowing down of the pace at which OCRWM communicated with the public. This change was not surprising given the department’s 1995 decision that it was not legally obligated to accept spent fuel in 1998 absent the availability of a repository or monitored retrievable storage facility (DOE 1994b; DOE 1995a). Starting in 1997, OCRWM focused most of its resources on characterizing the Yucca Mountain site, putting all work related to transportation on a back burner during this period, including its active involvement with the TEC/WG (DeCesare et al. 1997, p. 7). The OCRWM Bulletin eventually ceased production, to be replaced later by the semi-annual OCRWM Enterprise . Not long afterward, OCRWM stopped even this less- frequent outreach newsletter, perhaps intending its new website, which replaced INFOLINK in 1995, to be a substitute for more traditional outreach activities like newsletters (DOE 1995d). In the meantime, the end of the ColdWar and the rapid shift within EM toward site cleanup created the need for transportation-related factsheets and other publications. In the mid-1990s, states and other stakeholders had a strong role in helping EM’s National Transportation Program (NTP) create numerous factsheets on various aspects of radioactive waste transportation. The NTP recognized the value of enlisting the help of state officials — eventual users of the materials — in actually writing the documents. To involve states in this effort, the NTP tapped the TEC/WG Communications Topic Group as the forum for reviewing and providing feedback on draft public information materials. The NTP envisioned having generic factsheets on topics like spent fuel transportation regulations, along with“quick facts”on transportation casks and other packaging. Programs that had shipments in the works could then pull out the factsheets that pertained to their specific campaigns and package them together in NTP folders for sharing with states and other stakeholders. If campaign-specific materials were needed, the DOE program could prepare them independently or with assistance from the NTP and the Communications Topic Group. The approach was a good one,
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