SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Questions for the Record for the Hearing of March 23, 1988, for Dr. W. R. Wiley, Director, Pacific Northwest Laboratory.

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How much in PNL Exploratory Research funds have been committed to date to the Molecular Science Research Center (MSRC)? How much funding is committed this fiscal year, and in FY 1989?

Total PNL Exploratory Research funds committed to date: $1,550K

When are you proposing a construction start for the MSRC?

On the FY 1990 line item schedule, the estimated MSRC construction start date is April, 1991. However, if detailed design begins in FY 1989, construction would begin approximately one year earlier.

What additional funds for the MSRC are you seeking for FY 1989?

A request has been submitted for $1M in capital equipment funds for FY 1989 from DOE/BES/Chemical Sciences for initial purchase of leading edge equipment.

What role, if any, might the MSRC have in the project to map the human genome?

Two important aspects of the human genome project are the development of new technologies to increase the speed of DNA sequencing and the development of data base management and analysis tools. The basic research in the MSRC will contribute to both these areas. For example, research in the MSRC to develop a new mass spectrometer for application to very large molecules will provide a new detector system for use in DNA sequencing. This basic research will also provide needed information pertaining to large molecule ionization and desorption which will provide a basis for development of new separation and detection schemes for application to the genome. A key factor in the isolation, purification and analysis of the genome is the complication of having to work in aqueous media. Several research projects in the MSRC are targeted at developing a more detailed understanding of the role of water on the interface chemistry of large systems including DNA. These projects include both experimental and theoretical studies.

A significant portion of the research in the MSRC will center on developing new data analysis techniques and procedures which will be directly applicable to the genome project. This includes new ways to link experiment and theory in near real time, new ways to handle very large data sets and new ways to use visualization techniques to assist in the interpretation of large data sets.

PANEL 2: DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY NATIONAL AND SINGLE-PURPOSE LABORATORIES

Mr. VALENTINE. Thank you gentlemen very much. Next is panel number two consisting of Dr. Martin Blume, Deputy Director, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Dr. Danny Hartley, Vice President, Energy Programs at Sandia National Laboratory; and, Dr. Herman Winick, Acting Director, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.

Welcome gentlemen. We will start with Dr. Blume.

STATEMENT OF DR. MARTIN BLUME, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY, UPTON, LONG ISLAND, NY Dr. BLUME. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to testify on the fiscal year 1989 Basic Energy Sciences budget, particularly as it affects Brookhaven National Laboratory.

We have heard quite a bit about proposed new user facilities here as part of the Basic Energy Sciences budget, and we have also heard about technology transfer. I would like to touch in my summary of my testimony on some of these points.

The Basic Energy Sciences budget supports two outstanding facilities at Brookhaven that are already in existence and already in operation. These are the High Flux Beam Reactor which provides very intense beams for sources of neutrons. They are used in very many different disciplines and experiments. And also, the National Synchrotron Light Source, which is a model for several of the new facilities that are to be undertaken.

The programs there cover a very broad range of science and technology and a very broad range as well of users form universities, National Laboratories and from industry particularly. About 80 percent of the users at the National Synchrotron Light Source are from outside of Brookhaven National Laboratory. This facility plays a very large part not just in the research enterprise of the Department of Energy, but on a much broader sense, in the overall national research enterprise.

The areas of science that are studied there are very wide ranging. In particular, at the High Flux Beam Reactor there are important experiments that are elucidating the nature of superconductors that are being done again, not just by Brookhaven scientists but by scientists from Exxon, Bell Laboratories, MIT and from other National Laboratories as well.

It is significant that this testimony is taking place while the American Physical Society is having its annual Solid State Physics meeting this year in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the first anniversary of the famous Woodstock of Physics meeting that took place last year at which all of the tremendous excitement about superconductivity began at the public eye.

Many of us would like to be there at this time, and in fact, most productive and useful scientists are there. The administrators are left to try to do the best that we can in order to arrange for the funding for the people who are there talking about their results. We are proud that many of the facilities represented here will have scientific results presented at that meeting.

In order to give an idea of the nature of some of these facilities, I would like to make use of the visual aids if I can, and show a few pictures of the National Synchrotron Light Source.

While we are arranging for that, let me just continue discussions. One of the points that have been made is that there is not sufficient funding for the planned new facilities. In fact, what I want to point out is that we also have problems with the existing facilities. [Slides.]

This is a picture of the storage ring for the National Synchrotron Light Source as it appeared several years ago. You can see the bare elements of the ring and the places where the ultraviolet and soft x-ray radiation come out. Over the succeeding years, there are a series of pictures that I would like to show that will give you an idea of how these have developed.

One of the points that I want to make is that there are tremendous pressures in costs in running these facilities, and in part, these pressures are a consequence of success. This is a picture that was taken just a few years later. All of these pictures are taken from the same vantage point at the ring. You can see the beginnings of the experiments that are placed in here.

There is one point further that I want to make because some of the discussion in the previous panel concerned the difference between large science and small science. It is very important to note that this is collection of many facilities, all of which would be small science in their own institutions.

Indeed, one of the disadvantages of these facilities is that small scientists will have to go to them to make use of these very powerful sources of radiation. This disadvantage, on the other hand, is also an advantage. This is a point that is important in technology transfer. In my view, technology transfer is something that is enhanced by the physical contiguity of people working on different problems.

This is taking place very clearly at the National Synchrotron Light Source, and in fact, interactions between universities and industry scientists have lead to developments that would not otherwise have taken place.

[Slide.]

A few years later as more and more users came along from the same vantage point again, you can see that there are many different and additional experimental beam lines there. In fact, there are researchers at the two facilities, the High Flux Beam Reactor and also the Synchrotron Light Source that come looking around the ring-there's a group from IBM right in front, there's an x-ray lithography from IBM off to the far right.

Bell Laboratories, Exxon and Xerox are all represented with different experimental equipment on the floor, as are researchers from North Carolina State University, the University of Illinois, University of Washington, from the State University of New York at Stoneybrook and many others. I think I have covered just about everyone who is sitting up at the dais at this point. There are others that I could if others were to come into the room.

It is a very impressive collection of researchers from different institutes.

Mr. MORRISON. How about someone from OMB?

Mr. BLUME. The OMB people will only go around and audit, I'm afraid.

[Slide.]

This is the most recent portrait that was taken of the ring. If you look carefully you will see that the walls have been moved back in order to accommodate the increased pressure of the users. This is a consequence of the Phase II program at the Synchrotron Light Source, which allowed us to put extra equipment in and in fact, was strongly pushed by the Department of Energy several years ago.

I believe that this facility and the facility at the High Flux Beam Reactor are cause for pride for Brookhaven, for the Department of Energy and for this Committee for sponsoring it. There has been a tremendous degree of interaction between users from these different disciplines and from different organizations that is very hard to accomplish in any other way.

With that, let me turn to some of the problems that we have. It is very difficult to fund and to operate facilities like this if we have a budget which provides simply for cost-of-living increases each year according to a cost of living formula. The increase in people on the floor that you see over here translates into a need for additional personnel to take care of them, and to additional operating time for the facilities, and into additional upgrades for the equipment so that we can take care of them.

Without that, we are going to be put into something of a dilemma as we have to make very difficult choices between sacrificing operating time and sacrificing research programs. This is the position in which we find ourselves according to the fiscal year 1989 budget. I might add that the same difficulties will occur as the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley come on line, as the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne come on line, and the Advanced Neutron Source.

We, incidentally, are very strongly in favor of rapid construction of those facilities. The point to be made here is that the program is one in which many new opportunities are occurring, and if we are to take care of all of them we have to provide more than a cost of living increase in the funding.

One of the difficulties that we have had, for example, is in the case of the High Flux Beam Reactor. May I have the next slide, please.

[Slide.]

I am showing here the equivalent view of the floor of the High Flux Beam Reactor. It is on some of these spectrometers where beams of neutrons have been used to elucidate the mechanisms of superconductivity in the new High Tc materials. The High Flux Beam Reactor was built in 1966 and was the premier facility in the world at that time for use of neutron beams.

Over the years, however, there has not been ample funding for upgrading the equipment. As you look around here in the foreground, there is a new spectrometer which is a modern state-of-theart one. All of the remainder of the spectrometers around there are essentially the same type of equipment that was built back in 1966. In the meantime, a new reactor at the Institut Laue Langevin in Grenoble, France, has come along and they far exceed us, not in