[en] From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, the Department of Energy (DOE) had a critical role in the Cold War. Many sites were built to contribute to the nation's nuclear weapons effort. However, not enough attention was paid to how the waste generated at these facilities should be handled. As a result, a number of sites fouled the soil around them or dumped low-level radioactive waste into nearby rivers. A DOE laboratory is under construction with a charter to help. Called the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), this national user facility will be located at DOE's Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) in Richland, WA. This laboratory has been funded by DOE and Congress to play a major role as the nation confronts the enormous challenge of reducing environmental and human risks from hundreds of government and industrial waste sites in an economically viable manner. The original proposal for the EMSL took a number of twists and turns on its way to its present form, but one thing remained constant: the belief that safe, permanent, cost-effective solutions to many of the country's environmental problems could be achieved only by multidisciplinary teams working to understand and control molecular processes. The processes of most concern are those that govern the transport and transformation of contaminants, the treatment and storage of high-level mixed wastes, and the risks those contaminants ultimately pose to workers and the public