In Hot Pursuit Of Post-Cold War Survival, Weapons Labs Seek Industrial Partnerships

With the bomb-building out and global economic competitiveness in, Los Alamos, Sandia, and Livermore alter focus The end of the Cold War, coupled with President Clinton's desire to make federally funded research a better engine for national competitiveness, has left the Department of Energy's three weapons laboratories searching for new missions. While weapons development is down, nuclear nonproliferation research is growing, as are environmental and energy research. And Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), which allow the national labs to join with industrial partners to solve high-technology problems, are increasing at a rapid pace. There are now more than 100 of these CRADAs linking the automobile, aerospace, textile, and other industries with the three weapons development labs--Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. These three labs in total receive about half of the $6.5 billion budgeted for the 30 R&D labs managed by DOE in 1993. Each of them operates on budgets in excess of $1 billion and each has about 8,000 employees. While many people have ideas on how these three labs should change their organization and focus, clear direction at this point is still lacking, policy observers say. "The weapons program is going to shrink," says Roger Werne, associate director of engineering and technology transfer at the Lawrence Livermore lab in Livermore, Calif. But, beyond that, much is still undefined because the Clinton administration doesn't have all the necessary DOE appointees in place, he says. Especially critical, he says, is the still-unfilled post of assistant secretary for defense programs. As a result, "we're sort of in a holding pattern," says Werne. In an attempt to guide this new national mission, Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.) introduced a bill on March 23 entitled the Department of Energy Laboratory Technology Act of 1993. "Our goal with this bill is to create a process of disciplined evolution for the DOE laboratories--a process through which the enormous resources of these labs are carefully directed toward meeting some of the nation's most pressing needs, while ensuring that the labs are rigorously evaluated to determine whether they are meeting their new challenges in the years ahead," said Brown during an opening statement for the bill. "The Cold War is over and we must now marshal our national science and technology resources toward the environmental and economic challenges of the next century," said Brown. "But without a plan for phased consolidation and conversion at DOE's defense labs, the outcome could be a budget-driven, ad hoc contraction that leaves the nation with a mediocre nuclear weapons R&D capability and a lost opportunity to redirect part of the DOE weapons lab system to new national missions." The four key objectives of the bill are: (1) providing an updated and focused set of missions for the laboratories; (2) improving the organization of research, development, and technology transfer functions at DOE; (3) enhancing collaboration between DOE labs and industry by streamlining the technology transfer process; and (4) ensuring that activities at DOE labs are regularly subjected to performance evaluations. This bill and similar legislation in the Senate will be the subject of hearings throughout the year. Still, even with a new administration and pending legislation, change is afoot at the weapons labs. Nuclear Nonproliferation As a percentage of Livermore's budget, nuclear weapons R&D stands at about a third "and falling," says Werne. And as a result, over the last three years about 700 laboratory worker and contractor jobs, out of a total of about 10,000, have been cut. But as interest in building nuclear weapons flags, the United States is growing increasingly interested in preventing the spread of these weapons. "The nonproliferation business is a growing program for us," Werne says. As an example of the kind of work involved, he points to the two Livermore weapons designers, a physicist and an engineer, who were among the group of United Nations weapons inspectors who confronted the Iraqi government for 25 days in the parking lot of the Agriculture Ministry in July 1992 over the issue of gaining access to that facility. He says biotechnology research, currently funded at about $25 million, should grow at the lab, which at present is involved in sequencing and mapping human chromosome 19. The lab is also conducting environmental research worth about $100 million, which includes development of technologies like waste minimization, as well as cleaning up its own polluted site. About 80 percent of the pollution at Livermore was caused by improper disposal of cleaning solvents when the Army used the site as a base during World War II, Werne points out. national labs is research into fusion as an energy resource. But Werne acknowledges that developing fusion power is a tough challenge that may elude scientists for as much as another century. "It is the problem to solve, if you can do it," he says. The future of fusion funding, however, is not clear. And because it has turned out to be so costly and elusive to develop, "a lot of people in Congress are a little disenchanted with the fusion program," Werne says. However, Vice President Al Gore has expressed interest in pursuing fusion research, he says. At Los Alamos in New Mexico, lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold says there's been a steady decrease in nuclear weapons work as expressed in the number of employees classified as full-time equivalents (FTEs). In 1985, there were almost 1,900 FTEs devoted to nuclear weapons and inertial confinement fusion work; this figure has now dropped below 1,200. "And next year we know there's going to be a further decline," Danneskiold says. In terms of total number of lab employees, Los Alamos is bracing for a loss of 300 to 400 employees out of 7,500 next year. Some of these may opt for early retirement, though, he says. Others may be laid off. In terms of projects, "bomb design is going down and things like hydrology and chemical engineering are going up," he says. Los Alamos also has a $15 million-per-year role in human genome research, with a focus on development of rapid DNA sequencing techniques, says Danneskiold. And research into environmental clean-up technologies has gone "way up," he says. In FY 1991, this research area was funded at $88 million, but that figure has jumped to more than $200 million in 1993, and officials expect that it will rise to $244 million in next year's budget-- "There is some growth in the hiring of scientists in the areas of environmental cleanup, waste management, and environmental technology development, but it's modest," Danneskiold says. For the most part, scientists in a declining area of research simply transfer to a growth area, but Danneskiold notes that there are some limitations: "Obviously, somebody who's a nuclear weapons designer won't have any skills in cleanup." At Sandia in Albuquerque, N.Mex., scientists' skills are seen as something akin to the lab's "box of tools" that can be moved from one division to another, says Virgil Dugan, director of planning and staff at that laboratory. "We've had a very fluid system here at the lab. People move back and forth between weapons- related work and energy and environment work," he says. The million of Sandia's $1.3 billion 1993 budget, is expected to climb to $300 million in FY 1994. The defense funding sector is not expected to be flat for next year, Dugan says, because as weapons design declines it will be offset by an increasing emphasis on warhead dismantlement as well as on treaty verification and intelligence work relating to nonproliferation--- Looking Ahead The real future for the labs, though, is in technology transfer, and CRADAs are one vehicle to make that happen, observers say. Livermore, for instance, signed a $6 million CRADA in March in which the lab will help Chrysler Corp. in Highland Park, Mich., apply the nondestructive testing techniques developed for nuclear weaponry to automobile transmissions. As is typical of most CRADAs to date, the labs are working in areas in which they have an existing expertise, rather than wading into new technological waters. In this agreement, $3 million in funding for equipment and staff will come from Chrysler, with a matching amount coming to the lab from DOE's technology transfer budget. That budget, from which CRADA funding is competitively awarded on the basis of proposals, is also growing, says Werne. In 1993, the CRADA budget for the three weapons labs was $141 million, which is expected to rise to $191 million in the 1994 budget, he says. Also in March, DOE announced a "historic" multimillion-dollar CRADA linking a textile industry research coalition, the American Textile Partnership (AMTEX), with eight national labs, including the three weapons labs. About $30 million in joint funding will be provided this year to develop improved materials and processes as well as for waste minimization, energy efficiency, and automation. "I believe this can be a role-model example of a total manufacturing industry/government/university collaboration dramatically increasing the competitiveness of the industry [and] to preserve and create tens of thousands of new jobs in the USA," says AMTEX board chairman Thomas Malone. But there are negative aspects in the call for the labs to increase the nation's industrial competitiveness, Werne warns in a November 1992 report "U.S. Economic Competitiveness: A New Mission for the DOE's Defense Programs' Laboratories." "There is a potential downside to the National Laboratories if the competitiveness mission is not managed properly," the report says. "The Laboratories must not be expected to be a panacea to the competitiveness problems nor must they attempt to be `all things to all people.' "If the Laboratory efforts become too diffuse with many small projects, then the critical mass and focus necessary to sustain and build technical excellence cannot be achieved."

In Hot Pursuit Of Post-Cold War Survival, Weapons Labs Seek Industrial Partnerships

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