Uncertainty Marks DOE Scientists' Efforts To Adapt, As Their Labs Take On New Missions, New Objectives

The 1990s have marked a new era for the national laboratories administered by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). Spurred by a mandate from President Bill Clinton, the labs are trying to adapt to a lean-budget, Cold War-free world. Should the efforts of one or more of them to change direction be deemed less than successful, the results could range from larger layoffs than the relatively minor cuts currently being discussed to full-scale shutdowns. The National Labs: Past, Present, and Future The Department of Energy has some 43 laboratories and weapons facilities. The nine multiprogram labs are the largest and most famous research institutions. These are the labs whose futures are being contemplated by the task force led by former Motorola Inc. chairman Robert Galvin and commissioned by Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary. (Figures are from 1993 unless otherwise stated.) Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Ill. Director: Alan Schriesheim Staff: 4,858 (1994); Budget: $425 million The laboratory has long emphasized energy research, with little defense work. According to director Schriesheim, it will place "more of a focus on outreach activities." The lab has many user facilities--containing large instruments not easily built by industry or academia, where scientists can come to do research. The coming "watershed event" for the lab, says Schriesheim, will be the opening of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), probably in 1996, a half-billion-dollar project that will produce high-energy X-rays and attract scientists interested in structures of materials. Pharmaceutical as well as chemical companies plan to use APS. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, N.Y. Director: Nicholas Samios Staff: 3,484; Budget: $284 million Brookhaven was the first lab to have user facilities--a high-tech "lab for rent"--according to deputy director Martin Blume. Some 3,000 outside scientists annually use the National Synchrotron Light Source, making it possibly the largest user facility in the world, he says. Energy research accounts for about 75 percent of the funding at Brookhaven, with major programs in basic energy sciences, high-energy physics, and nuclear physics. Recent growth has been in on- site environmental remediation and in applied programs. Brookhaven's budget is declining slightly, with the largest hit to high-energy physics, in part because of the loss of superconducting supercollider money. The lab is looking at cuts of about 140 people, perhaps 90 from layoffs. Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), Idaho Falls Acting manager: John Wilcynski Staff: 11,267 (1994); Budget: $967 million (1994) The laboratory's strength has been in research and development of nuclear reactors, especially regarding their safe operation, says Kent Millington of the business development office. Some 52 experimental reactors were built and tested at INEL. The people who run reactors for the Navy's nuclear fleet have largely trained there. Now, of 1,300 engineers employed, only 144 are nuclear engineers. Mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers are more numerous. Much of its work in the near future will be in environmental remediation and restoration related to nuclear waste from on-site reactors, says Millington. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. Director: Charles Shank Staff: 3,384; Budget: $284 million In the 1960s, this laboratory put 100 percent of its effort into high-energy physics, compared with 10 percent today. Director Shank says the lab's fundamental mission--to understand how to acquire and use energy--has not changed since the end of the Cold War. He expects the lab to continue to concentrate on basic research, with not much more than 15 percent to 20 percent of the activity focused on industrial partnerships. He believes the lab's size will not change much before the end of the century (about 10 percent of the staff took early retirement last year). Meanwhile, the lab's strategic plan identifies two growth areas: the life sciences, with its expanding human genome research program; and energy and environment, with the lab highly regarded for its energy-efficiency work. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif. Acting Director: Bruce Tarter Staff: 7,923; Budget: $1,088 million Livermore is the second nuclear-weapons design laboratory built, providing competition to Los Alamos. Only about 23 percent of the operating cost of the lab goes to nuclear weapons today, down from 78 percent in 1970. Associate director Roger Werne says the lab has a slight excess of machinists and technicians, while being "a bit shy" on scientists and engineers. The lab is widely expected to shrink some more, and layoffs have not been ruled out. "Arms control is a big growth area at the lab," says Paul Brown, who runs that area of the weapons program. Environmental work is also growing, up to 10 percent to 15 percent of the lab's business today. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.Mex. Director: Siegfried Hecker Staff: 7,000 (1994); Budget: $1,118 million About 800 staffers took early retirement last fall. Since 1987, the lab has lost about half of its technical staff associated with nuclear weapons, says director Hecker. He believes the remaining nuclear scientists are necessary for the new missions. "It turns out that the intellectual components driving the nuclear program will be needed in the new world as well," he says. With Berkeley and Livermore, the lab is also working on the Human Genome Project. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn. Director: Alvin W. Trivelpiece Staff: 5,031; Budget: $533 million Oak Ridge is one of two high-performance computing centers, with Los Alamos, and has been hiring in that program, says associate director Bill Appleton. Once the lab focused almost exclusively on atomic energy, but its materials work has been growing for a decade. Last year, 4,500 researchers came to Oak Ridge's user facilities. The lab's Advanced Neutron Source is now the largest planned scientific construction project in DOE. Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL), Richland, Wash. Director: Bill Wiley Staff: 4,500 (1994); Budget: $481 million Ten years ago, says Ron Liikala, a strategic planner at PNL, the lab lacked a focus. Today, it is trying to build a reputation in environmental R&D. Part of that involves waste cleanup at the Hanford radioactive- and hazardous-waste site, contaminated over 50 years. The lab is also increasing integrated research in energy, environment, and the economy. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.Mex. President: Al Narath Staff: 8,500; Budget: $1,400 million While Livermore and Los Alamos have designed the nation's nuclear arsenal, Sandia has engineered it. Without new nuclear weapons to work on, Sandia has been reassigning people to other engineering and science projects. That's "not traumatic," says director Narath, because the lab was always working on non-nuclear parts of bombs. "It doesn't matter who the final customer is," says Narath, "the technical foundations aren't changing in significant ways." Sandia's focus is shifting to advanced manufacturing, information technology, and electronics to form what Narath calls "precompetitive partnerships with industry consortia." --B.G. But if the facilities are successful at making a shift in focus, then they may emerge with new national missions and a determination to become "an R&D performer of choice," as the acting director of DOE's Office of Laboratory Management, Toni Grayson Joseph, puts it. Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary has appointed a high-level task force, chaired by Robert Galvin, former CEO of Motorola Inc. in Schaumburg, Ill., to investigate alternative missions for the labs. What is clear at present is that the facilities face an uncertain future. Scientists at the labs are feeling this uncertainty, especially those at the three nuclear weapons labs--Los Alamos (New Mexico), Lawrence Livermore (Livermore, Calif.), and Sandia (Albuquerque, N.Mex.)--which have billion-dollar budgets and employ about 8,000 people each. Weapons scientists face the greatest stress because Clinton has signaled his desire to end nuclear weapons testing and to use the labs to help U.S. industry become globally more competitive. Many of these researchers are enthusiastic about the prospect of shifting gears, excited about the possibility of forming partnerships with industry--and somewhat frustrated at the slowness with which such relationships are being forged. In addition to the three weapons labs, there are six DOE multiprogram labs, which perform R&D in a broad range of areas, including national security, energy, and the environment. In all, the nine DOE labs employ 20,000 scientists and engineers and spend about $6 billion annually. While the weapons labs have received the most attention in discussions of the future directions of the DOE facilities, the other six are also continuing to develop research strengths that stray from their original energy missions. Several labs have human genome programs; others are building expertise in environmental assessment and remediation; and two--Oak Ridge and Los Alamos--are designated as high- performance computing research centers. "We're having a lot of intellectual challenges, but we're worried constantly about survival," says Los Alamos physicist Louis Rosocha, who has been working on a pair of pollution-abatement projects, only one of which has attracted industrial interest and funding. "We're frustrated. We see lots of areas where we can contribute to the country's economic well-being." The weapons labs have seen cutbacks before, but Clinton's moratorium on nuclear weapons tests and the deficit- reduction climate in Congress may signal their severest test. Laboratory scientists and managers paint a picture of their facilities scurrying to find new missions for their highly skilled weapons scientists and engineers. At Livermore, "arms control is a big growth area," says Paul Brown, who directs that area of the lab's weapons program. For decades, the labs have played--and still do play--a technical role in arms-control negotiations. Weapons scientists know, for example, what signals to look for in countries suspected of building a bomb, says Brown, including what technologies other countries import and what their graduate students study. These activities are occupying even more of the labs' time now than before. Peter Adams, a theoretical physicist who works for Los Alamos' 20-member thermonuclear-applications group, is one bomb designer who has found plenty to do without new bombs to design. "With the cessation of testing, the focus of the weapons program is shifting, from nuclear weapons design and implementation to stewardship of the stockpile," he says. Adams and his colleagues are studying how nuclear weapons deteriorate as they age. "My group is swamped with work," he says. Meanwhile, experimentalists, those who take the measure of extremely short, violent explosions, are facing greater uncertainty, Adams says. So far, the weapons labs have not been forced to lay off any scientists or engineers, according to DOE officials. Early retirement incentives offered to Livermore and Los Alamos by the University of California, which operates those labs and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., resulted in the loss of about 10 percent of the staffs of all three labs, according to Alex Glass, former associate director for programs at Livermore, who took early retirement himself in November but continues to consult at the lab. While some weapons-program scientists remain active in arms control and other weapons-related issues, others are getting involved in a well-publicized effort by the department to find industrial partners for research with practical results that might help U.S. companies become more competitive globally. "Economic security has replaced nuclear security," says Charles Shank, director of Lawrence Berkeley. In 1989, Congress passed the Technology Transfer Act, allowing the labs to enter into cooperative arrangements with industry and profit from them. The Clinton administration appears eager to use the laboratories to help fulfill the president's pledge to create more skilled jobs in the economy. "Many scientists are tickled to death to work with industry on dual-benefit technology," says Elane Flower, program manager for defense-conversion technology at Los Alamos. "They find it exciting because there are still goals and challenges. But the problem is, there's no funds. It's pathetic." Almost all scientists interviewed for this article voice the same complaint: They are eagerly writing proposals for research and development and lining up industrial partners, but often cannot get matching funds from DOE. One common form of technology transfer--cooperative research and development agreements, or CRADAs--requires industry and government to split the costs of their work. DOE now has more than 600 CRADAs in place with some 500 industrial partners. For example, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and Seagate Magnetics of Fremont, Calif., have entered into a $520,000 CRADA to develop a better process for making the carbon coatings that protect hard disks. But DOE has only a limited amount of funds dedicated to CRADAs, and proposals for future partnerships have fallen apart when DOE financing hasn't materialized, scientists say. Energy Department officials maintain, however, that this situation is not necessarily a bad thing. "That's the way it should be," says Pete Didisheim, special assistant for science and technology to O'Leary. "If it's not a competitive environment, you won't select the strongest applications." A greater problem, many scientists warn, is that the labs are in danger of becoming "job shops," engaging in individual projects with a number of different companies, but without a long-term mission of their own. Bill Appleton, an associate director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says, "There's no question we've had to focus our research on shorter-term payoff. If the reorientation [of the labs] is such that they work only on short-term technologies, there will be trouble." He cites fusion research as an example of a high-risk, delayed-payoff effort, noting that DOE labs have been working on it for some 20 years, although use of fusion as a viable energy source is still 20 years down the road. On the other hand, some scientists with basic research orientations have found the new work they are doing rewarding. Los Alamos physicist Don Rej, for example, is working with nuclear-weapons scientists and others as part of a $14 million CRADA with Detroit-based General Motors Corp. and the University of Wisconsin. They are using a technology perfected at Los Alamos called plasma source ion implantation to develop ways to harden car parts and manufacturing tools. "My background is in nuclear fusion," says Rej, "and I still believe in it, but to work with GM and see my work be useful in my lifetime has enormous appeal." As the labs change, the direction from top management will be critical, lab researchers say. O'Leary has earned high marks from many in Congress for coming to the job well prepared. Yet many scientists remain suspicious of her plans and her ability to streamline the stifling departmental bureaucracy, such as the voluminous paperwork going into simple decisions. Al Duba, a geophysicist at Livermore, says he had high hopes for O'Leary when she began, but he is not confident of her ability to stand up to Congress in order to maintain funding for basic research and reduce bureaucracy, as well as to run the huge scientific component of the department. "I fear for the politicization of the scientific process," he says. A total shift in direction of the laboratories will not happen overnight. The alternative-missions task force chaired by Galvin isn't due to issue its report until February 1995. Rumors abound about the possibility that one or more labs may close. Galvin says, though, that his group "is not a base-closing commission," and is not inclined to make specific recommendations in that area. Galvin's task force is not the first group to look into changes at the national labs. Two years ago, a task force established by former Secretary of Energy James Watkins issued a report on the labs that contemplated downsizing them. "The world has certainly changed since then," says Edward A. Frieman, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, who headed that task force. "Clearly, there will be downsizing, but it's not clear that the best use of taxpayer money is to close one lab and move its work to another," Frieman says. The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, chaired by Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.), has recently been debating legislation that would encourage more cooperation of the labs with industry and a greater emphasis on technology transfer. He says, "It's still not clear whether the DOE labs have a role of the same magnitude as [when they were developing] nuclear weapons." In five years, he suspects, "their role will be reduced by some substantial amount, perhaps 25 percent, based on the budget. The weapons program will be refocused on verifying weapons-control agreements, verifying whether or not we have proper controls of nuclear materials, and away from design and testing. There will be a good share of work in environmental areas. A gray area is the degree to which the labs will demonstrate the ability to have breakthroughs in energy and related technologies." Billy Goodman is a freelance science writer based in Upper Montclair, N.J.

Uncertainty Marks DOE Scientists' Efforts To Adapt, As Their Labs Take On New Missions, New Objectives

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of