WASHINGTON - The Energy Department will provide its critics money for research and expanded access to information about nuclear waste cleanup efforts under a settlement reached with environmentalists.

The department said it agreed to earmark $6.25 million for citizen groups, including many of its critics, to monitor and finance independent technical studies of the government's nuclear waste management programs.

The settlement, approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin, closed a nine-year lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and 38 other environmental organizations.

The suit alleged the department acted improperly by not proceeding with a programwide environmental impact review as part of its waste cleanup effort. Under the settlement, no such assessment will be required.

Mary Anne Sullivan, the department's general counsel, called the agreement "excellent news." Sullivan said the settlement will avoid a likely trial and further lengthy litigation. The issue revolved around whether the department had complied with promises it made under a previous court agreement over the waste cleanup.

In return for getting access to more information and money for independent research, the environmental groups abandoned their demands that the government conduct a broad environmental impact review of the waste cleanup program.

Sullivan said the department does not believe a systemwide environmental impact analysis was needed because the waste cleanup program already is subject to federal and state reviews on a site-by-site basis.

"The environmental regulators are the ultimate decision makers,"Sullivan said.

Environmental groups also called the settlement a victory.

"We now have the data, the resources and the processes necessary to make DOE's environmental work more accountable to the public," said NRDC lawyer David Adelman. He said that was better than demanding the department conduct programwide environmental review.

The department will put a variety of unclassified nuclear waste and cleanup information in a new database that will be available through the Internet, officials said.

While most of the information might be available already through various sources, it now will be more accessible.

The new data will provide "the tools the public needs to monitor compliance" to health and safety standards and the department's commitments for cleanup, said Jay Coghlan of Citizens for Nuclear Safety in Santa Fe, N.M.