BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES

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Basic research is the first link in the chain of events from scientific

discovery to economic growth through technological innovation. Results from research sponsored by the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program become an integral part of the information base used in the development of the applied technologies within the Department and are equally important within the private sector. In addition to underpinning technology development, BES-supported research activities train our future scientists and help us attain our national goals--better health and quality of life, economic strength, energy self-sufficiency, national security--goals calling for continuing and significant technological advances.

The BES program annually supports approximately 1400 research projects at over 200 separate institutions with direct support for about 4000 investigators in the physical, biological, and mathematical sciences. These projects are selected on the basis of scientific excellence, relevance to DOE long-term goals, and their contribution toward a program responsive to the needs of the Nation. BES also provides funding for the supercomputer centers used for computation by the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Biological and Environmental Research programs as well as for its own program.

The Basic Energy Sciences program undertakes research primarily at national laboratories and universities and, to a lesser extent, at private research laboratories and other government laboratories. The majority of BES-supported research is carried out at national laboratories. These laboratories are

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especially valuable in conducting basic research because researchers there also are involved in many aspects of the applied energy programs, thus facilitating transfer of scientific information and technology from experiment to application. In addition, the stability of the organization and specialized capabilities which exist at the laboratories in many instances are unmatched. The BES program also provides significant support to universities both directly and through the participation of university faculty members, postdoctoral students or graduate students in research at the national laboratories and at user facilities.

In addition to universities and national laboratories, BES supports research in and maintains strong ties with industry. Representatives from different industries serve on the BES Advisory Committee; experts from industry participate in the review of research proposals and use the specialized facilities sponsored by BES; industrial scientists participate in advisory committees to the national laboratories; and industry representatives are invited to attend BES conferences and workshops on special topics.

No summary of research results for such a diverse program can ever be complete or even fully representative of the program. Since the BES program covers

such a wide spectrum of research, I can highlight only a few accomplishments in this statement. I would be happy to supply the Committee with additional

representative accomplishments for each of our research areas.

Of special note, a BES project at UCLA has been recognized by a share of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Prize was awarded to Professor Donald J. Cram of UCLA, Dr. Charles J. Pedersen of DuPont and Professor Jean-Marie Lehn of the Louis Pasteur University for developing new chemical methods for recovering scarce metals and purifying common metals using much less energy than in the past. Professor Cram's research program is providing new insight into the selective binding of materials which can "tie up" a valuable metal in the presence of other common ones and allow the new chemical combination to be extracted. The novel substances prepared by Cram's research team can bind molecules as well as metals and can be designed to mimic the highly specific activity of enzymes, the remarkable catalysts that are essential to all forms of life. Thus, in addition to the applicability of Cram's work to recovery of scarce metals and purification of waste streams of toxic or radioactive metals, the principles he has discovered also have widespread implications for the understanding of many processes that occur in nature.

In the materials sciences area, theoretical modeling of materials phenomena provides a basis for predicting the behavior of materials and can be very valuable in supporting experimental results and uncovering new phenomena. Recent application of a newly developed theoretical technique has resulted in the calculation of stress levels that cause brittle cracks to grow in materials. This knowledge will help us to determine safe stress levels without the time consuming process of testing every possible composition and structure.

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An important "first," the demonstration of the x-ray laser, received one of the 1987 IR-100 awards which are presented annually by Research & Development magazine to the 100 most significant new technical products in the world. When fully developed for microscopy purposes, laser-based x-ray microscopy offers, for the first time, the prospect of observing the insides of living cells, including the distribution of chemical elements within a cell. The first microscopic images using the x-ray laser were recently obtained but the wavelength of the laser is still too long to image the cells; further work is in progress.

Last year was also an important year in the development of high-temperature superconductors. Although superconductivity was discovered in 1911, applications to date have depended on cooling with liquid helium. At the end of 1986, a breakthrough occurred in the temperature limit and newly developed "high-temperature" materials have now been found which superconduct above the temperature of liquid nitrogen which is considerably cheaper and easier to use than liquid helium. To take advantage of the discovery of the new class of high-temperature superconductors, the Office of Basic Energy Sciences has supported research aimed at addressing scientific and technical obstacles that must be overcome to use the new materials in technologically important systems. The BES research program is addressing fundamental questions regarding the mechanism by which the new high-temperature superconductor materials become superconducting, the key to finding even better new materials. The program also is addressing the synthesis of new materials to expand the range of these parameters.