impacting the Hispanic and Native American populations, with another initiative expected in New Mexico using DOE facilities there.

The FY 1991 University and Science Education program will continue to provide support for refueling and related activities for university nuclear research and training reactors.

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The R&D Laboratory Technology Transfer program, which supports DOE laboratory efforts to spin off new technology to U.S. industry and universities, will also continue in FY 1991. Under this program, scientists from large and small industries work on assignment at DOE laboratories with laboratory scientists. This is a valuable interaction because new skills and technology are transferred on a timely basis through cost-shared arrangements. The value of these interactions in terms of technology transfer is illustrated by the fact that, in the last five years, DOE laboratories have won over 25% of the R&D100 awards given annually by R&D Magazine for the best new products, processes, and materials.

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH INSTRUMENTATION

The University Research Instrumentation (URI) program provides another way to strengthen the Nation's science and education infrastructure. This program helps universities acquire the state-of-the-art instrumentation that is needed to conduct long-range research on energy problems. In the process, the program provides graduate students with hands-on experience in the use of this

sophisticated research equipment.

This annual, competitive program involves substantial cost sharing from the institution receiving the equipment.

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The FY 1991 request of $4.9 million will assist universities in purchasing instruments that cost over $100,000 each and that will be used by a number of researchers, including students. In selecting approximately 20 proposals to be funded, special emphasis will continue to be placed on innovative instrumentation needed to carry out research on advanced topics in energy

research.

MULTIPROGRAM ENERGY LABORATORIES--FACILITIES SUPPORT

The objective of the Multiprogram Energy Laboratories--Facilities Support program (MEL-FS) is to maintain the capabilities of the five national laboratories overseen by the Office of Energy Research to carry out their missions in a safe, healthy, and cost-effective manner. To accomplish this, the program supports activities that help counter problems of aging and obsolescence of facilities as well as safety and health inadequacies.

The FY 1991 Construction request of $23.7 million will support continuation of all ongoing projects. There are no new starts included in the request.

ADVISORY AND OVERSIGHT PROGRAM DIRECTION AND POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

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The FY 1991 budget request for Advisory and Oversight Program Direction is $4.3 million. The FY 1991 request will provide the staffing resources required by the Director of Energy Research to carry out his responsibilities under legislation (P.L. 95-91) and those assigned or delegated by the Secretary in areas beyond the scope of other ongoing Energy Research programs. These funds are required to provide for the salaries, benefits, travel, and other expenses associated with 50 full-time equivalent employees.

The FY 1991 request for Policy and Management is $0.9 million. These funds are required to provide for the salaries and related expenses associated with 8 full-time equivalent employees in the Office of the Director of Energy Research.

That concludes my statement. I would be happy to answer questions.

Senator FORD. Thank you, Dr. Decker.

Dr. Schwitters, you may proceed.

STATEMENT OF DR. ROY F. SCHWITTERS, DIRECTOR, SUPERCONDUCTING SUPER COLLIDER LABORATORY, DALLAS, TX

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be back before you again and to be able to report to you on the activities of the SSC laboratory in its first year of existence. I have prepared a written status report that I would like to submit to the record.

Senator FORD. It will be included in the record.

Dr. SCHWITTERS. Thank you, sir, and I would like to now just summarize briefly that report. First of all, let me say, let me raise this question again that has been before us this morning, why do we want to build the super collider.

I believe that since humans first became curious about the world around them, they have sought answers to two basic questions: What are things made of and how do they work? Through history the answers to these questions have evolved over time, and we now have reached the stage at which we can describe what we know about the constitution of matter throughout the universe in terms of what is called the standard model.

All experimental evidence to date is consistent with that model, and yet the model itself is incomplete. We really know-again, it describes reality as we have been able to test it in our laboratories and our observations, but it is unable to describe the why of that reality, and particularly this issue of the basic origin of mass which is really one of the most basic questions of the substance of sub

stance.

Therefore, the next step in this historically important and intellectually exciting quest is to gain new experimental information to be able to guide us beyond our present understanding to a much deeper understanding of the standard model and its inner workings. T.D. Lee, a colleague of ours and Nobel laureate in physics has said, "Our aim is to understand that set of laws which governs everything." The SSC makes a direct route toward achieving this understanding. It will be our contribution to the civilization of the next century.

When President Reagan announced his intention to proceed with the construction of the SSC, he signaled this country's resolve to remain a world leader in the search for knowledge and understanding. His announcement changed the nature of the SSC from a conceptual effort to understand the design of a next generation accelerator into a project with the goal of creating the world's most powerful accelerator and the world's premier high energy physics laboratory.

In January of last year DOE chose Universities Research Association, a consortium of 77 of our leading research universities in this country, to serve as the management and operations contractor for the SSC with responsibility to build and operate the new laboratory. We have been in existence now just over a year, and I would like to tell you about some of the accomplishments that have taken place in that time. When formed last year and indeed in our

discussions before your committee last year, I listed a number of the objectives, and I am happy to report that many of those are now successfully completed.

Our first job was to mobilize near the site in Texas. We have done that. We have built and occupied temporary quarters. The staff is growing. It is a very exciting, dynamic group with over 500 people on board now from literally a green field start a year ago.

Our principal effort that you have heard about this morning and I want to go into in more depth and, again, the report I made last year was that we wanted now with responsible engineers and scientists to go into depth, a review of the original conceptual design and apply that to the actual site in Texas and from that develop the necessary cost and schedules that go with that. We call that the baseline design, and it is has been our principal activity.

Associated with that we have performed various geological investigations. We have done work in supporting the environmental impact statement. As you have heard, we have selected an outstanding architect engineering firm to assist us with the construction and engineering of the facility. A major technical effort has been and continues to be the development of the superconducting magnets, and we are also beginning to initiate the scientific programs in the laboratory.

Now, let me address this issue of the baseline design. This has been our most important activity over the first year. The central design group which prepared the original design in 1986 did an excellent job of giving us a foundation for this machine. However, since that time, the 3 years that have transpired since that original conceptual design report was completed, there has been considerable new information available to our accelerator designers. First of all, we have the Tevatron. It is the first large superconducting accelerator, and it was really only after the original design report that we had considerable operating experience in the storage mode. In addition, other accelerators at CERN and in Germany have provided more information about the behavior of particles stored in these accelerators. We have applied that new information to the design of the SSC, and that has resulted in our recommended figures of the 20 TeV energy, the high luminosity, the 2 TeV injector, and the force changing from 4 to 5 centimeters on the aperture.

The recommended design was accompanied by a very careful cost estimate. This is the first cost estimate, I should point out, prepared for the SSC on an actual site. The laboratory worked closely with DOE and continues to work closely with DOE to develop a precise and agreed upon cost estimate that we intend to commit our reputations to and our whole effort to as we go forward with this project.

I want to be very clear about something here. Although the figure will be higher than the $5.9 billion talked about last year and submitted with the President's request, it does not in any sense constitute a cost overrun. It is the first true cost estimate for the project as it is proposed to be built. It came out in the questioning earlier today. We have examined in detail the reasons for the higher number. About half of the difference is due to the design changes that I mentioned before that, again, we felt were required to ensure the proper operation of this immense investment that we