Dr. F. Y. Fradin, Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Research, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL

Dr. Mary L. Good, President, Director of Research

Signal Research Center, Inc., Des Plaines, IL

Prof. Darleane C. Hoffman, Nuclear Science Division,

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

University of California, Berkeley, CA

Prof. Joseph Macek

Department of Physics and Astronomy

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

Dr. David Moncton

Exxon Research and Engineering Co., Annandale, NJ

Dr. Albert Narath

AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany, NJ

(Vice Chairperson)

Prof. James R. Rice, Division of Applied Sciences and

Department of Earth and Planetary Science

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Dean Herbert H. Richardson, Vice Chancellor for Engineering

Texas A&M University, College Station, TX

Dr. J. Michael Rowe

National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD

Prof. Leon T. Silver

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Prof. Robert L. Sproull, Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

(Chairperson)

Prof. William B. Travers, Department of Geological Sciences Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Prof. Mark S. Wrighton, Professor, Department of Chemistry Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

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I. Introduction

We report after an extremely active year of meetings, briefings, laboratory visits, and consultation with Department of Energy (DOE) staff. Furthermore, all the members of the basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) have been close observers of the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program for decades and most have been active participants. Even with such activity and experience, however, the BES program is so rich and varied that we need more time to cover adequately the issues and opportunities that the program presents and to make truly incisive recommendations. Reports in future years can therefore be expected to speak with a stronger voice.

In order to attack our study of the quality, adequacy, balance, and management of the BES program we found it necessary to set up six subcommittees, with most members of BESAC serving on more than one of them. The reports of the six are appended as Appendices A-F. Although in Section II below we extract some key points from these reports, the real meat of Our report is in these appendices, and we strongly recommend attention to them.

In April, 1987, Dr. Trivelpiece tasked us to organize an expert panel to study the recent discoveries of high temperature superconductors. The focus of this study was to be the materials development and time required to harvest the new discoveries for the lattice of a superconducting supercollider. The panel was set up under our Vice Chairperson, Dr. Albert Narath, and among its experts were other members of BESAC (Drs. Flynn, Fradin, and Moncton). The report of the panel will be submitted separately at about the same time as this report.

In section III we address some "global" questions and issues in energy research and in BES, points that cannot be decomposed into divisions and consigned to subcommittees. Nevertheless, the wisdom of this section is derived from the work of the subcommittees.

We register here our most basic global conclusion: the funding of BES has not expanded enough to deal adequately with the needs, and certainly not the opportunities, facing the nation and the DOE. The inadequacy of funding is most sharply revealed by contrast with the NSF's significant increases. Although BES serves the DOE's mission, its basic research is very similar to NSF's. Furthermore, BES supports expensive National research facilities heavily used by grantees of NSF and other Federal agencies.

As we worked in the spring of 1987 we identified two issues that were urgent as well as important: the interruption of the vital service to research by the High Flux Isotope Reactor and the opportunities presented for research in high T superconductors. We reported briefly our recommendations on these issues in a letter of 29 April to Dr. Decker; that letter and his reply are Appendix G.

с

Finally, for the record we have appended the letters and charter that created BESAC as Appendix K.

II.

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Content of the Program

1. National User Facilities

One of the great success stories of science and technology in the postWorld War II period has been the DOE's National User Facilities (detailed report in Appendix A). Focusing money and talent into the design, construction, and intense application of these sophisticated facilities has proved to be so effective and efficient that it is now hard to imagine how science and technology in the U.S. could have developed without them. Our subcommittee has found these facilities to be of excellent quality and appropriately managed for the benefit of those users with the most promising ideas and plans for the most important experiments, both for the benefit of BES and other DOE programs and for the benefit of other Federal programs, notably NSF and NIH. Although most are at National Laboratories, users from universities and industry get fair and generous treatment, and the facilities provide an arena for healthy interactions among these communities and for technology transfer. Industrial users of these facilities contribute resources and talent that provide research in support of DOE and the other Federal agency missions.

The High Flux Isotope Reactor should be restarted as soon as safely possible. BESAC endorses the DOE's budget request for the construction of the Advanced Light Source, the Advanced Photon Source, and the Advanced Neutron Source, but not at the expense of other BES science and its mission. These facilities will serve National needs and the BES program should not be milked to create and operate them.

We are unable to provide a recommendation as to whether the costs of facility operation should be identified in a separate line item; there are advantages and disadvantages to that method and to the present system. We anticipate that we will make a definite recommendation next year.

However budgeted, there is high leverage to funding these facilities at a rate such that the output of science is limited only by the imagination of the scientists and the capacity of the machines, not by the number of hours per year restricted by an inadequate budget.

Funds should be provided annually to maintain, upgrade, and restore these facilities. In addition, major emergencies will always recur in ambitious, state-of-the-art facilities, but since these are unpredictable, money cannot readily be set aside (and possibly not used) to get a facility back into operation (See Section III, 7).

Materials Science (Appendix B) is central to the mission of DOE, and the program in BES is outstanding in its health and vitality and in its responsiveness to National needs. The program is well managed and coordinated with the similar programs of other Federal agencies. An illustration of the flexibility of DOE management and the effectiveness of local management at the laboratory bench level occurred this year when many scientists and engineers quickly re-oriented their research to exploit the superconductivity

discoveries.

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Less-than-cost-of-living increases in budgets over the past five years have narrowed the coverage of materials opportunities, and funding of programmatic research should be increased in real terms. Advanced synthesis and processing, especially of the newer superconducting materials, should be featured. The major user facilities are especially important to materials research and (as noted above) their development and operation should be fully funded.

Technology transfer is being effectively executed in materials, but there is a danger that some of the BES Materials Science activities may suffer by being too close to proprietary information, with the attendant restriction on publication. The program must be nourished and defended as a basic, long-term activity. Technology development and transfer can best be enhanced by expanding the training of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows in environments where industry participates and by visiting scientist and visiting faculty programs.

3. Chemical Sciences, Biological Energy Research, and Carbon Dioxide Research

Chemical Sciences (see Appendix C for the report on it and on biology and carbon dioxide) is a large and effective division, with about two-thirds of its expenditures in the National Laboratories. In the face of an expanding role of chemical science in energy and in the country generally, the research budget has not grown in real terms. Management has responded appropriately to ERAB and other National studies in adjusting priorities within a constant budget.

the

The subcommittee detected a growing tension in Chemical Sciences between, fundings for research budgets and major facility operations. The Chemical Sciences Division probably needs to devote more attention to understanding and keeping abreast of current industrial programs in areas such as catalysis where both the Division and industry are active. In some other areas, Division supports the entire National program (for example, transuranium isotopes and the structural characterization of coal), and this creates special responsibilities. The Chemical Sciences Division is widely viewed as having the premier program in photoconversion research.

Biological Sciences is new and much smaller (when one removes Congressionally mandated programs and construction), but it is already conducting important research such as the structural characterization of complex carbohydrates involved in energy conversion. Again, the program managers should become more aware of publicly available information about industrial developments in this fast moving industry. We recommend that Biological Energy Research remain in BES and not be moved to the Office of Health and Environment; we deal here with the basic science related to energy production, not the science related to the consequences of energy production. The small Carbon Dioxide Research program is also appropriately part of BES. Serious and broad-based science is required to determine the consequences of CO2 production. The selection of research needs to be accomplished with strong participation by outstanding research scientists. The explosive expansion of computing power presents a special opportunity to