ORNL: THE FIRST 50 YEARS--CHAPTER 9: GLOBAL OUTREACH
This article also appears in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Review (Vol. 25, Nos. 3 and 4), a quarterly research and
development magazine. If you'd like more information about the
research discussed in the article or about the Review, or if you
have any helpful comments, drop us a line. Thanks for reading the Review.
As the Laboratory approached its 50th anniversary, science--always
an international enterprise-- assumed even broader global
dimensions. Just as national boundaries were drifting away for the
business world, the interests of basic and applied scientists
transcended national concerns. Events at the Laboratory during the
1980s and early 1990s reflected this global transition.
The Laboratory's energy-efficiency expertise generated an
international demand for its assistance. The U.S. Agency for
International Development called on the Laboratory to help Third
World countries. These countries have growing appetites for fuels
but face shortages of reliable and affordable energy services. To
keep energy prices down and to minimize carbon dioxide emissions,
as called for by the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development--the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro--these
countries must find ways to supply and use energy more efficiently.
Laboratory researchers are providing them with technical assistance
and energy planning guidance.
In its quest for abundant fusion energy, the Laboratory intensified
its scientific cooperation with laboratories in other nations. Its
environmental research, which focused originally on nuclear power
plant effects, expanded to encompass worldwide environmental
threats. Its life sciences divisions united with an international
program to map and sequence the human genome. Technology transfer,
the Laboratory's keynote of the 1990s, aimed to improve the
economic well-being of the United States by increasing its
competitiveness in world markets. In short, starting as a national
scientific laboratory in 1943, the Laboratory had evolved by 1993
into a global science center.
As its global missions proliferated, the Laboratory's top
management underwent transition, paralleled by changes at the
national level. George Bush, who became president in 1989, had
spent most of his career as a federal employee. Unlike Reagan (and
even Carter), opposition to the federal government was neither the
rallying cry of his campaign nor the centerpiece of his
administration. Bush proposed to use government agencies, including
DOE laboratories, to advance his goals.
Specifically, Bush augmented the duties of his science advisor; to
advance that goal, the president appointed D. Allen Bromley, who
became the assistant to the president for Science and Technology
and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Having
ready access to the president enabled Bromley to rejuvenate many
existing committees that had ceased to function
effectively--notably the Federal Coordinating Council for Science,
Engineering, and Technology and the President's Council of Advisors
for Science and Technology.
A new approach to science research and development, called the
"Presidential Initiative," also was launched. When such initiatives
were announced in global climate modeling, high-performance
computing, advanced materials and processing, mathematics and
science education, manufacturing technology, and biotechnology, the
Laboratory responded with proposals and programs.
To lead DOE, Bush selected Admiral James Watkins, a veteran of
Rickover's nuclear navy. Watkins had attended the Oak Ridge reactor
school during the 1950s and later recalled that "it was the bright
minds of the academics at Oak Ridge, not the blue suit people, who
inspired me to go forward in the Navy." From nuclear submarine and
ship commander, he rose to chief of operations before retiring from
the Navy to become secretary of Energy.
This national transition was accompanied by changes in Laboratory
management. After 14 years at the helm, Herman Postma transferred
to the executive ranks of Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., in
early 1988. While Associate Director Murray Rosenthal chaired a
committee to recommend Postma's successor, Alex Zucker served as
acting Laboratory director throughout 1988, and Bill Appleton
served as acting associate director for Physical Sciences. A
nuclear physicist, Zucker had come from Yale University to the
Laboratory in 1950 to launch its cyclotron program. A naturalized
citizen born in what is now Croatia, he offered an international
perspective that inspired closer association with the global
scientific community.
Although not troubled by severe budgetary constraints like those of
the early 1980s, Zucker inherited several "crises" demanding
Laboratory attention. The least troublesome crisis focused on fears
that international terrorism might extend into the United States,
even to Oak Ridge. Charles Kuykendall, Laboratory Protection
Division director since 1979, marshaled his division's resources to
protect the Laboratory against potential terrorist assaults, adding
an emergency preparedness department and opening a center for
high-technology security. Although ORNL has never been even
remotely threatened by international terrorism, the new safeguards
proved useful, especially when the 1991 Persian Gulf War heightened
concerns about terrorism and again when President Bush visited the
Laboratory in 1992.
A second and longer-lived crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s
involved environmental, safety, and health issues at DOE
facilities. Under new, more stringent laws and regulations, federal
and state environmental officials monitored both remedial and
preventive measures designed to protect human health and the
environment on the Oak Ridge Reservation and in the surrounding
communities and counties. At the Laboratory, scores of air- and
groundwater-monitoring devices were installed, and dozens of
environmental safety and health physics specialists were hired to
ensure that ORNL complied with the stricter standards. As part of
this initiative, the Laboratory also investigated and tested new
methods of treating and managing waste.
Estimates indicated that environmental restoration costs at the
Laboratory could reach $1.5 billion and that the costs of
restoration over 30 years at all DOE installations could exceed
$300 billion. The Laboratory's long-standing leadership in
environmental restoration technology, it was hoped, could partially
offset these staggering costs and provide the Laboratory with new
areas of research. Officials even suggested that Oak Ridge might
become an international center of excellence in waste management.
A third crisis afflicting the Laboratory in 1988 involved ensuring
the safety of its nuclear reactors. In the aftermath of the
Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union, DOE closed the Laboratory's
five reactors in 1987 for comprehensive safety reviews. The Oak
Ridge Research Reactor had been scheduled for decommissioning, and
Laboratory officials thought it imperative that the High Flux
Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and Tower Shielding Facility (TSF) be
reactivated quickly to alleviate radioisotope shortages and permit
resumption of scientific experiments. Officials also identified
important Laboratory research programs that depended on the Health
Physics Research Reactor and Bulk Shielding Reactor, but the costs
of the prescribed environmental, safety, and health improvements
precluded their future operation.
Pressed by DOE, Zucker initiated a campaign to improve quality
assurance. The Laboratory's Quality Department (formerly Inspection
Engineering) increased its work force to 28 people. This staff
helped clear the way for the restart of the HFIR and TSF reactors,
prepared quality assurance documentation in accordance with new
standards, and corrected deficiencies identified by internal and
external quality assurance audits by DOE, Energy Systems, and other
sponsors.
During Zucker's year at the helm, the Laboratory continued to boost
its position as an international leader in materials research by
integrating applied materials research, lodged chiefly in the
Metals and Ceramics Division, with basic research, found mostly in
the Solid State and Chemistry divisions.
In the process, the Laboratory hoped to achieve a broader
understanding of surface phenomena and physical properties. Such
knowledge, in turn, could be applied in many ways--from improving
the efficiency of electricity trans-mission to enhancing the speed
and safety of ground transportation.
In addition to coping with the challenges facing the Laboratory in
1988, ORNL management concentrated on reassuring the staff that
advancing science and technology would remain the Laboratory's
principal goal. Concern existed among scientists that the
Laboratory's preoccupation with the environment, health, and
safety, coupled with the prime consideration given to compliance in
setting contractor-operator award fees, would render Laboratory
research more conservative and less rewarding. To alleviate this
concern, the Laboratory initiated planning and program development
efforts for science and technology that emphasized the Laboratory's
user facilities and opportunities in technology transfer.
By the time Alvin Trivelpiece became the new Laboratory director in
early 1989, the Laboratory had improved its emergency response
system, promoted innovative waste management technologies, and
stood ready to resume reactor operations. There would be no quick
fix, however, to the waste management and reactor operations
crises, both of which would help define the Laboratory's agenda in
the 1990s.
TRIVELPIECE REORGANIZED
In his first address as director in 1989, Trivelpiece outlined the
themes of his administration. "As a national laboratory, we need to
be able to respond both to inflicted change and to the changes we
may cause to occur," he declared. "We need to be a competitor; we
need to be serious about competing and to be taken seriously as a
competitor in the world's research and development efforts."
Preparing to meet these challenges, Trivelpiece reorganized
Laboratory management. Zucker was appointed associate director for
Nuclear Technologies, a post he held until moving to the Energy
Systems executive staff in 1992. (Jim Stiegler replaced him, and
his directorate was renamed Engineering and Manufacturing
Technologies.) Murray Rosenthal was named deputy director and found
himself drawn heavily into urgent efforts to upgrade the
Laboratory's health, safety, and environmental activities. Bill
Fulkerson succeeded Rosenthal as associate director for Advanced
Energy Systems, later renamed Energy and Environmental
Technologies. Chester Richmond continued as associate director for
Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, and Bill Appleton was
designated associate director for Physical Sciences and Advanced
Materials.
As part of the reorganization, Trivelpiece supported several
program initiatives and organizational changes to nurture new
Laboratory missions and directions. He breathed new life into the
Advanced Neutron Source project, which the Laboratory hoped would
lead to construction of its first new research reactor in more than
25 years. He divided project responsibilities into reactor
operations and scientific research, corresponding to the two major
challenges Laboratory staff faced in justifying federal
expenditures: how reliable the reactor would be and what kind of
research it would support. With Colin West as project director and
John Hayter as scientific director, the Advanced Neutron Source
became a top Laboratory priority.
A strong proponent of the Superconducting Super Collider,
Trivelpiece also encouraged vigorous Laboratory participation in
that project's design and development, largely through creation of
an Oak Ridge Detector Center. Acknowledging worldwide scientific
concern for the potential impact of global warming, Trivelpiece
also encouraged creation of a Center for Global Studies.
The new director also strengthened the Office of Planning and
Management under Truman Anderson. To meet the needs of the
increasing number of outside guest scientists and users and to
coordinate the cooperative research and development agreements
(CRADAs) involving ORNL and industrial groups, an Office of Guest
and User Interactions was established.
Another Trivelpiece initiative enhanced scientific computing at the
Laboratory. He established an Office of Laboratory Computing under
Carl Edward Oliver to coordinate Laboratory interactions with
central computing and to stimulate improvements in scientific
computing. Citing the expertise developed in parallel computing in
the Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division under Fred
Maienshein and Robert Ward, DOE designated the Laboratory as a
High-Performance Computing Research Center--one of only two
laboratories granted this responsibility.
The Laboratory was selected partly because of the wide recognition
its researchers have earned for their achievements in computational
science, especially in parallel computing. For example, Malcolm
Stocks and Al Geist received the 1990 Gordon Bell Prize and a Cray
Gigaflop Award for a materials properties code, and Geist was
co-winner of the IBM Superconducting Competition First Prize for
Parallel Virtual Machine software, which enables computers
nationwide to be linked together to solve complex problems.
To promote the use of high-performance computing, a new Center for
Computational Sciences was established at ORNL. In partnership with
universities and other laboratories, these supercomputers, it was
hoped, would help Oak Ridge confront key scientific challenges of
the late 20th century--the unknown frontiers in global climate
research, human genome sequencing, high-energy heavy-ion physics,
materials sciences, and environmental issues such as the transport
of groundwater contaminants.
In 1989 Secretary Watkins solicited views and started a
consensus-building process to develop a new national energy
strategy. ORNL researchers led by Bill Fulkerson and Roger
Carlsmith helped formulate this plan by contributing ideas on
improving energy efficiency, tapping renewable energy,
understanding global climate change, developing energy technologies
for Third World countries, and transferring technology. The final
report, produced after many public hearings, was the basis for
legislation that was debated in Congress and passed as the Energy
Policy Act of 1992.
Trivelpiece also enlisted the Laboratory in a campaign spearheaded
by Secretary Watkins and President Bush to foster science and
mathematics education. In February 1990, he appointed Chester
Richmond director of the Laboratory's science and math education
programs, an announcement that coincided with President Bush's
visit to Knoxville to boost public support for science education.
Under this initiative, the Laboratory expanded its educational
programs designed to foster elementary and secondary science
education, largely through hosting student workshops and teacher
training seminars. In an effort to attract new students into the
world of science, the science education program further
strengthened Laboratory cooperation with minority educational
institutions. More than 16,000 precollege students visited the
Laboratory in 1991, many participating in weekend academies for
computing and mathematics.
When Richmond moved to science and mathematics education programs
in 1990, David Reichle succeeded him as associate director for
Biomedical and Environmental Research, later expanded to include
the Energy Division and renamed Environmental, Life, and Social
Sciences. By 1992, this directorate had experienced significant
growth and led Laboratory advances into research on global
environmental change, economic competitiveness, and human health.
REACTOR MANAGEMENT
Restarting its reactors was at the forefront of the Laboratory's
agenda. After extensive review and improvements of the HFIR's
safety and management, DOE's Oak Ridge Operations manager, Joe La
Grone, recommended reactivating the reactor in late 1988. And, in
March 1989, Admiral Watkins surprised a Senate committee by
announcing that HFIR operations would resume at Oak Ridge.
The long process of restarting the reactor was managed by Robert
Montross, Jack Richard, Pete Lotts, and Hal Glovier. As a result,
the HFIR was brought back on line in April 1990 at 85% of its
original power. The Laboratory also restarted its Tower Shielding
Facility reactor in December 1989, allowing shielding studies for
breeder reactors funded by DOE and Japan to proceed. This reactor
had been used for many years for shielding experiments developed,
designed, and analyzed by Dan Ingersoll and others. The Laboratory
mothballed its Bulk Shielding Reactor, Health Physics Research
Reactor, and Oak Ridge Research Reactor, however, and initiated
steps to decommission them, although Jack Richard and the
Laboratory believed the Health Physics Research Reactor deserved
retention as a national asset.
AGE OF MATERIALS
In 1989, the National Research Council published a comprehensive
study titled Materials Science and Engineering: The Age of
Materials. It provided a detailed assessment of the critical roles
materials science and engineering would play in the future economic
competitiveness and prosperity of the United States. ORNL staff
played a major role in this study, and the systematic development
of multidisciplinary materials science programs at ORNL served as
a case study of why materials were technologically and economically
important, and why the 1990s seemed destined to become the "age of
materials."
Materials science, which had begun in earnest during the
Laboratory's nuclear airplane project in the 1950s, had slowly
evolved from a program defined by disparate agendas into a cohesive
and comprehensive research initiative. The Solid State Division,
launched in 1950 under Douglas Billington, initially examined
radiation effects on materials, but expanded over the decades to
explore the physical properties of many types of materials needed
for new technologies. This work was directed by Mike Wilkinson,
Bill Appleton, Fred Young, and Jim Roberto. The Metals and Ceramics
Division, begun in 1948, steadily moved into broad research and
development efforts that included advanced alloys and ceramics,
under the leadership of John Frye, Jim Weir, Jim Stiegler, and Doug
Craig.
The interaction of these two divisions, together with support from
the Chemistry, Chemical Technology, and Analytical Chemistry
divisions, provided a broad multidisciplinary research organization
with unparalleled capabilities for characterizing and analyzing
materials. Alloys developed to withstand severe radiation damage in
reactors were found to have valuable commercial applications. Ion
beam facilities built to simulate radiation damage to materials
were found useful for the fabrication of solar cells and
semi-conductors. Furthermore, the fundamental understanding of
materials obtained in previous investigations and the ability to
apply a variety of techniques to major projects were the
ingredients needed to help meet the research and development
requirements of U.S. industry.
Laboratory staff also contributed significantly to the National
Research Council's assessment of materials science. Bill Appleton,
for example, chaired the council's solid-state sciences committee,
which coordinated the report, and Jim Stiegler co-chaired an
assessment panel. Moreover, the Laboratory hosted one of four
regional meetings requested by the Office of Science and Technology
Policy to follow up the report, edited the combined report, and
helped to obtain a Presidential Initiative on Advanced Materials
and Processing.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Doug Lowndes and his colleagues
used laser technology to make high-temperature superconducting
films. Steve Pennycook, in turn, used a new imaging technique with
a scanning transmission electron microscope, which he developed at
the Laboratory, to view the step-by-step development of these films
in an effort to advance the process and improve the product.
Following in the footsteps of the laboratory's original Graphite
Reactor researchers, today's ORNL researchers continue to study
carbon. For example, Bob Clausing and Lee Heatherly research thin
diamond films that can be used as abrasives and cutting tools in
the electronics industry. Laboratory scientists Bob Compton and
Bob Hettich have observed that large all-carbon molecules, called
buckyballs, can take on additional electrons, which suggests they
may find applications in batteries and superconductors. Compton
and Hettich also have studied fluorinated buckyballs that may be
used as a lubricant.
Carbon is only one source of material investigations at the
Laboratory. In alloy development, C.T. Liu, Claudette McKamey, and
Vinod Sikka have forged iron aluminide alloys that can be used in
corrosive, high-temperature environments.
In ceramics, George Wei, Ron Beatty, Paul Becher, and Terry Tiegs
have shown that silicon carbide whiskers effectively reinforce many
ceramics and keep them from cracking at high temperatures. Tiegs
and his colleagues also developed a potentially tough cutting
material--tungsten carbide bonded by nickel aluminide--which may
find many industrial uses. And Laboratory researchers are now
guiding development of improved silicon nitride for use in
high-temperature engines, such as gas turbines.
Using polystyrene, the main ingredient of styrofoam cups, ORNL
researchers led by Al Mattus in the Chemical Technology Division
developed a strong, deterioration-resistant superconcrete that
could be used for bridge supports and toxic waste containers. Solid
State Division researchers led by John Bates developed thin films
for advanced microbatteries to provide backup power for computer
memory chips. These developments show that the Laboratory will
continue to play an important role in the Age of Materials.
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Laboratory efforts to quantify and resolve threats to the global
environment began as early as 1968, when Jerry Olson of the
Environmental Sciences Division initiated studies of carbon dioxide
levels in the world's atmosphere. David Rose, who spent a few years
at ORNL before returning to the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, stimulated studies of ways to control carbon dioxide
emissions. In 1976, Alex Zucker expressed concern about global
warming--that is, the potential for Earth's surface temperatures to
rise largely because of increased carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere--and he assembled a team composed of Olson, Charles
Baes, and Hal Goeller, all of ORNL, and Ralph Rotty of Oak Ridge
Associated Universities' newly formed Institute for Energy Analysis
to study the problem and recommend appropriate Laboratory actions.
Observing that carbon dioxide concentrations in the air had
increased steadily since the Industrial Revolution, the team
identified the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, pinpointing the
crucial role of oceans in absorbing carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere and the great uncertainties connected with the problem.
With DOE support, the Laboratory began analyses of emerging global
environmental concerns related to energy use. The burning of fossil
fuels and forests was cited as the prime cause of the steady
buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Fossil fuel burning
also was linked to the formation of acids in the atmosphere, which
rain down on forests hundreds of miles from their diverse sources.
During the late 1970s, Henry Shugart and David Reichle proposed to
DOE a study of the global carbon cycle and its relationship to
fossil fuel burning. This ORNL proposal was one of several that
encouraged DOE to launch a major global carbon dioxide program.
With Reichle, John Trabalka, and Michael Farrell of the
Environmental Sciences Division providing leadership, the
Laboratory adopted an interdisciplinary research strategy to
identify the sources, distribution, and consequences of global
warming and acidic rain deposition. This effort, in turn, sparked
vigorous experimentation at the Laboratory on global
biogeochemistry.
Laboratory scientists used computer modeling to estimate how
additional accumulations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might
induce future global climate changes. Some models predicted intense
global warming, with potentially devastating effects on trees and
crops. In the field, Laboratory scientists examined tree rings and
fossil pollen grains taken from lake sediments to detect past
climatic conditions and trends. For example, using fossilized
pollen recovered from sediment taken from Tennessee ponds, Hazel
Delcourt and Allen Solomon reconstructed changes in regional
vegetation over 16,000 years. With this paleoecological evidence,
they estimated the future effects of carbon dioxide concen-trations
on vegetation and the climate.
The greenhouse effect and acid rain were truly global challenges,
and quantifying their results and devising potential solutions
required an understanding of complex physical, chemical, and
biological processes on a global scale. The Laboratory's approach,
therefore, expanded to include global monitoring, measurement, and
modeling using the largest, fastest computers available. The
Laboratory took the lead in formulating global carbon simulation
models and became responsible for managing the DOE research effort,
subcontracting studies to universities and other laboratories and
establishing the National Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis
Center to compile and disseminate data.
To investigate acid rain and its effects, the Environmental
Sciences Division installed rainmaker simulator chambers in a
greenhouse and programmed them to control raindrop size, intensity,
and chemical composition; for comparison purposes, they built an
identical system using unpolluted water. These experiments examined
the consequences of prolonged ecosystem exposure to rain polluted
by sulfur and nitrogen oxides, ozone, and other materials. The
accumulated data helped set regulatory standards for environmental
protection.
In the late 1980s, the Electric Power Research Institute and other
agencies funded Laboratory studies of the effects of acids on
streams in the Appalachian, Great Smoky, and Adirondack mountains.
Ernest Bondietti managed this project, which sought the cooperation
of a dozen universities in the eastern forest region. Early results
indicated that acids in mountain streams had natural geologic
sources in addition to human-induced sources created largely by
industry and transportation.
ORNL acid-rain researchers made important contributions to the
National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP) as well as
the Integrated Forest Study. They found that atmospheric
deposition of sulfur and nitrogen oxides is twice as high in the
Great Smoky Mountains as in the New Hampshire mountains. They
observed that acidic cloudwater is linked to reduced growth in
high-elevation trees. They learned that ground-level ozone is more
damaging than acid rain to U.S. crops. Relying partly on ORNL
research, NAPAP concluded in 1990 that acid rain has harmed only a
small number of lakes and forests; even so, the amended Clean Air
Act called for stricter controls on U.S. emissions.
At the Laboratory's Walker Branch Watershed, Dale Johnson and
Daniel Richter conducted forest-nutrient cycling research on the
soil-leaching effects of acid deposition, and in 1992 the
Laboratory announced the watershed would be the site of the first
large-scale field studies of the effects of global warming on
forest growth.
This and other research supported a steady growth in the
Laboratory's environmental sciences program. With about 200
full-time employees and more visiting university faculty and
students than other divisions, the Environmental Sciences Division
built an international reputation.
In July 1989, Trivelpiece announced formation of a Center for
Global Environmental Studies to be managed by Robert Van Hook and
Michael Farrell from the Environmental Sciences Division. "Its
goal," Trivelpiece said, "will be to achieve better understanding
of global air, land, and water environments and more accurately
predict the consequences of human activities on the world's
ecological balance." The center would concentrate on the causes and
effects of such global challenges as greenhouse warming, ozone
depletion, acid rain, and deforestation.
By the early 1990s, the Laboratory had conducted major studies of
ways to avoid ozone depletion, or what the media commonly call the
"ozone hole." In cooperation with industry, the Laboratory joined
the search for acceptable substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) in refrigerants, insulation, and commercial solvents.
Studies at the Laboratory's Roof Research Center in the Energy
Division, for example, focused on testing foam-board insulation
made with ozone-safe CFC substitutes.
HOT AND COLD FUSION
Fusion energy researchers were shocked when two chemists from the
University of Utah announced in a March 1989 press conference that
they had achieved cold fusion, or fusion at room temperature. By
passing electricity through chunks of palladium metal immersed in
jars filled with electrically charged heavy water, they said they
had produced heat and the neutron by-products of a fusion reaction.
If true, the discovery offered an inexpensive alternative to "hot"
fusion as an unlimited energy source.
Trivelpiece learned of this announced accomplishment from the front
pages of his weekend newspaper. "I used the only scientific tool
available to me that weekend--a push-button telephone," he later
remembered, "and called everyone I knew who might be able to help
me and I tried to find out as much as I could."
His discussions with Laboratory colleagues revealed they thought
the chances were slim for cold fusion but that the Laboratory
should investigate it fully. The Laboratory accelerated studies of
cold fusion the following week. Teams in the Physics, Metals and
Ceramics, Chemical Technology, and Engineering Physics and
Mathematics divisions energized a dozen electrochemical cells to
test the claims of cold fusion researchers, using more sensitive
neutron detection devices than those available to the purported
discoverers of this energy source.
Michael Saltmarsh of the Fusion Energy Division chaired a
Laboratory committee compiling information on these experiments,
and within a month, he testified before a House science committee
that the Laboratory had been unable to detect excess heat or
radiation in its cold fusion experiments.
This and reports from ORNL and other national laboratories
discredited the discovery of cold fusion. Frank Close, an ORNL-
University of Tennessee Distinguished Scientist, published a
critique of the short-lived cold fusion events, emphasizing the
importance of following accepted scientific procedures when "new"
phenomena are reported. Still, limited experimentation continued in
the hope that some yet-to-be-explained phenomenon was occurring.
Achieving magnetically confined hot plasma, therefore, remained a
major technological challenge at the Laboratory and throughout the
world of science. This pursuit assumed cooperative global
proportions during the 1980s, especially at the Laboratory's
large-coil test stand named the International Fusion
Superconducting Magnet Test Facility.
All major industrial nations conducted research on fusion power
during the 1980s and on the superconducting magnets to be used in
fusion energy production. In cooperation with the International
Atomic Energy Agency, DOE approved construction of a large magnetic
coil facility at Oak Ridge to test huge superconducting
magnets--three designed and fabricated in the United States by
General Electric, General Dynamics, and Westinghouse and three
overseas in Japan, Germany, and Switzerland. All used
specifications written at the Laboratory so that the magnets would
fit into the test facility.
The Laboratory installed the six magnets, weighing 45 tons each, in
the toroidal (doughnut-shaped) facility. When its stainless steel
vacuum chamber lid was lowered into place atop the magnets and the
proper vacuum was achieved, its liquid helium refrigeration system
chilled the magnets to almost absolute zero. Paul Haubenreich,
assisted by Martin Lubell, managed comparative testing of the
magnets during 1986 and 1987, checking their ability to withstand
thermal, mechanical, and electrical stresses and determining
whether superconducting coils were practical for confining the
plasma of fusion reactors.
The magnet test facility operated reliably during 22 months of
testing, and the magnets performed well, setting records as the
largest superconducting magnetic coils in size, weight, and energy
ever operated. This project marked the first time that four
nations--the United States, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland--had
submitted unique versions of similar equipment to collaborative
testing for evaluation of their performance, reliability, and
costs.
The 1988 report on the experiment stated that the magnetic coils in
operation had exceeded their design parameters, indicating that
much larger magnets could be built using similar design methods.
The report observed that the successful international cooperation
marking the large coil tests boded well for other cooperative
global ventures in fusion research.
These conclusions proved useful in the design of the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) planned as a joint effort
of the United States, Russia, Japan, and the European Community.
This thermonuclear reactor was being planned as the first fusion
reactor in which studies of ignited and burning plasmas could be
conducted.
Within the political and scientific communities of the United
States, some observers recoiled at the costs of long-term fusion
research, fearing that federal research funds would not be
available for the long haul. After all, scientists projected that
successful fusion energy generation would not occur until the
mid-21st century. "Let us not grow weary while doing good," warned
William Happer, chief of DOE's Office of Energy Research. Quoting
a letter from the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, Happer continued,
"For in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."
The Laboratory expected to play a significant role in the ITER
program, and Paul Haubenreich, manager of the large coil tests,
went to Europe for several years to work in that program. Charles
Baker of ORNL is now leading the U.S. effort in designing the ITER.
After completing the large coil tests, Martin Lubell and the
Laboratory's superconductivity team turned to potential commercial
investigations of motors using low- and high-temperature
superconducting materials. A team that included Bob Hawsey of the
Applied Technology Division, Bill Schwenterly of the Fusion Energy
Division, Keith Kahl of the Engineering Technology Division, and
Ben McConnell of the Energy Division built and operated the first
superconducting motor by 1990. Tests and improvements of this
device could lead to development of smaller, lighter, more
energy-efficient motors.
STELLAR PERFORMANCE
Other Laboratory advances in fusion energy research during the late
1980s and early 1990s included improved plasma fueling and heating
devices and construction and testing of the Advanced Toroidal
Facility (ATF), a stellarator fusion reactor shaped more like a
cruller than a doughnut. Much of this work was done under the
supervision of John Sheffield, director of the Fusion Energy
Division.
Pioneered by Stanley Milora and Chris Foster at the Laboratory,
fueling fusion plasmas by freezing deuterium and later tritium into
pellets and firing them into reactors became the standard fueling
method worldwide. The Laboratory became DOE's lead agency for this
plasma fueling technology. For the ever-larger fusion reactors, the
Laboratory fabricated bigger pellets, discharging them into plasmas
using an electron beam accelerator to vaporize their back ends and
provide a rocketlike forward thrust. The Laboratory also completed
a radiofrequency facility in 1985 to test the use of radio waves
for heating fusion plasmas, and it joined with Japan's energy
institute to conduct collaborative testing at Laboratory reactors
of the structural alloys that are candidates for fusion devices.
The Laboratory designed and built the ATF to supplant its Impurity
Study Experiment tokamak of the 1970s. Called a torsatron or
stellarator, the ATF had a helical field for plasma confinement
provided entirely by external coils, instead of relying on currents
within the plasma as the tokamaks did. Aiming to create more stable
plasmas, the ATF afforded a steady, rather than a pulsed,
operation, which utility systems prefer for electric power
generation.
After four years of construction, the Laboratory in 1988 completed
its precision-crafted stellarator, with more than twice the plasma
volume of previous stellarators. Its principal purpose was to
determine the plasma pressure and stability limits for improved
toroidal designs. Testing soon identified a "second stability"
phase in the plasma, which was termed a major advance in
fundamental plasma physics. The Laboratory sought funding during
1992 for a restart and continued testing of this stellarator, which
was the only fusion machine in the United States capable of
operating in a steady state.
Funding shortages in fusion energy motivated some Laboratory
researchers to apply their technologies in other arenas, such as
space applications, materials development, and environmental
cleanup. Theorists employed computer modeling to design an ion
thruster that one day may be used on space missions to Mars and the
other planets. Beam experts studied etching technology for
improving semiconductor chips, and pellet-injection researchers
tried cleaning surfaces with dry ice pellets at high velocities.
Fusion researchers Hal Kimrey and Terry White, who used microwaves
to heat fusion plasmas, collaborated with other researchers in
using microwave processing to sinter ceramics, to treat radioactive
waste, and to clean contaminated concrete.
Interest in microwave technology spread to other Laboratory
divisions. Bob Lauf of the Metals and Ceramics Division and Don
Bible of the Instrumentation and Controls Division, for example,
invented a variable-frequency microwave furnace that employed the
same technology used for jamming Iraqi radar during the Persian
Gulf War.
Although scientists had not achieved a self-sustaining controlled
fusion reaction by 1993, clearly the Laboratory's fusion research
was producing dividends in a number of practical applications.
PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
Global scientific cooperation is a two-way international highway.
In the 1980s, ORNL's Physics Division dispatched two of its large
calorimeters and 10 of its scientists under Frank Plasil to the
European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland to
participate in experiments aimed at observing individual quarks
outside nuclei. The experiment fired oxygen nuclei into target
nuclei of carbon, copper, silver, and gold at ultrahigh energies,
dramatically demonstrating the conversion of energy into matter.
The Laboratory calorimeter team saw particles bombarding the gold
nuclei multiply into many more particles.
Trivelpiece was credited with persuading the Reagan administration
to explore mysteries of the nucleus through construction of a
Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), a 53-mile oval track to be
built underground in Texas where two opposing beams of protons
would circle and collide. Scientists seeking to determine whether
quarks are the fundamental units of matter or whether they can be
further subdivided will run experiments on this huge proton
racetrack. It will be the world's most powerful accelerator, if
Congress agrees to fund the project to its completion.
Laboratory participants in the SSC project have worked on the
design of detectors needed to determine the results of particle
collisions. In 1989, the Laboratory formed an Oak Ridge Detector
Center, directed by Tony Gabriel. The center hoped to be at the
forefront of developing central-system particle detectors for the
SSC that could track and measure the directions and initial
energies of secondary particles produced by the collisions.
Recognizing the value of these devices to global science, the
Laboratory consulted physicists from many nations for the detector
designs, which were still under development in 1993.
MAPPING GENES
Inspired by an Office of Technology Assessment report on detecting
inherited mutations in human beings, the DOE Office of Health and
Environmental Research in 1987 launched an international campaign
to map and sequence the three billion chemical base-pairs in human
DNA. Charles Cantor and colleagues at Columbia University had
mapped the E. coli bacterium, and Larry Hood and fellow researchers
at the California Institute of Technology had developed automated
sequencing equipment. Among the practical benefits of sequencing
the human genome could be new diagnostic tests and therapies for
genetic diseases.
Through participation in long-term international studies of the
survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, Laboratory
researchers had obtained experience in human gene studies. During
the 1970s, the Biology Division had devised gene-mapping techniques
for the study of mutagens and carcinogens. Searching for genes that
might inhibit cancer, they had identified individual genes and
assigned them to specific chromosomes. Laboratory capabilities were
further enhanced by development during the 1980s of improved
scanning tunneling microscopes that could obtain images of DNA
strands. These microscopes could help determine the locations of
genes on cell chromosomes (mapping) and the arrangement of DNA
bases in the genes (sequencing) of the human genome. Sponsored by
DOE and NIH, the human genome initiative, an immense
computer-intensive investigation, became global in scope, with
several nations sharing the research and its costs.
The Laboratory, however, had no externally funded human genome
projects when the director of DOE health and environmental research
programs visited Oak Ridge in 1990. Several "seed" money research
projects set the stage for convincing DOE that the Laboratory
should be involved in the genome challenge. Six Laboratory
divisions were subsequently participating in genome research,
focusing on learning the order of chemical bases that make up DNA
and locating specific genes to determine their functions.
Using mass spectrometry, gel electrophoresis, radiolabeling, laser
ionization, and other research techniques, the Laboratory obtained
information on the genome. It also provided a forum for
international exchange of genome information through its Human
Genome Management Information System, located in the Health and
Safety Research Division. In addition, ORNL developed a computer
program called GRAIL (Gene Recognition and Analysis Internet Link)
that helps researchers identify genes from DNA sequence data.
The Laboratory also received funding for human genome research
because it has been a gold mine of knowledge about mouse genetics,
starting with the research of William and Liane Russell. More
recent work, in fact, has been particularly relevant for human
health. ORNL mouse studies led by Waldy Generoso in the mid-1980s
showed that ethylene oxide, which is widely used by health care
workers to sterilize medical supplies, can cause mutations in mice.
The findings led to regulatory limits on occupational exposure to
the gas. The research also suggested that, under certain
conditions, women exposed to mutagenic chemicals soon after
conceiving may be unwittingly putting their future children at
risk. In the 1990s Generoso and his colleagues found that male and
female mice respond differently to certain chemicals, and they
identified several female-specific mutagens. Their results suggest
that certain anticancer drugs pose genetic risks to women but not
to men.
DOE encouraged collaboration between the Laboratory's mouse experts
and the genome research centers. A Biology Division program led by
Richard Woychik and Gene Rinchik, for example, used transgenic mice
for genome research. These mice had genetic material with
deliberately inserted foreign DNA to help ascertain the locations,
functions, and molecular structure of human genes. In time, this
research would advance the understanding of human genetic
disorders.
The Laboratory, DOE, NIH and, more generally, the international
life sciences community hoped to obtain information on genes that
would help them determine, for example, which genes are responsible
for polycystic kidney disease, cystic fibrosis, and Huntington's
disease. With this information, scientists might be able to devise
methods for repairing these genetic disorders. Program advocates
implied this information might contribute eventually to
ameliorating mental health problems by identifying genetic causes
of manic depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease. The
most avid proponents asserted that successful completion of this
global project could place humans in control of their genetic
destiny, although critics questioned the wisdom and ethics of this
goal.
ENVIRONMENT, SAFETY, AND HEALTH
In June 1989, Admiral Watkins outlined a "new culture of
accountability" for DOE to regain its credibility in environmental
restoration compliance. He approved providing state agencies access
to DOE installations to monitor DOE compliance with environmental
standards and regulations. DOE also emphasized environmental,
safety, and health compliance in awarding fees to contractor
operators of its facilities, mandated full compliance with
Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and formed
"tiger teams" to assess field agency compliance and corrective
measures.
These measures were a belated response to the 1984 amendments to
the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which stipulated that
facilities handling hazardous wastes must reduce the generation of
such wastes and remediate areas containing waste. It soon became
apparent that remediating hazardous wastes would be time-consuming
and costly and that no cheap, quick fix would be available. John
Gibbons, former staff member of ORNL and director of the Office of
Technology Assessment and now President Clinton's science adviser,
recently declared, "Decades will be required for cleanup of certain
sites while others will never be returned to pristine conditions."
As an incentive to reduce wastes, the Laboratory adopted a
charge-back policy, billing waste disposal costs to the division
that generated the waste. Thereafter, Laboratory research and
development proposals incorporated waste disposal into their
estimated project costs, encouraging researchers to avoid using
toxic substances in their experiments. "It's a new mentality, a
cultural change," Tom Row insisted.
Row, who in 1991 became director of ORNL's Office of Environmental,
Safety, and Health Compliance, described major changes in
Laboratory waste disposal methods reflecting the new corporate
culture. Historically, the Laboratory had placed solid low-level
hazardous and radioactive wastes, such as contaminated glass and
cloth, into unlined trenches; now it packaged such waste in steel
cans placed inside concrete vaults that are eventually entombed in
earth berms equipped with monitored drainage systems.
Low-level liquid wastes, once disposed of using underground
hydrofracture, are now concentrated and compacted to reduce the
volume, then solidified and stored aboveground. The Laboratory's
high-level spent reactor fuel went to the Idaho or Savannah River
complexes, which had storage facilities for reactor fuel that
required reprocessing. The Laboratory's transuranic wastes were
stored on site in specially designed bunkers for eventual disposal
at a DOE centralized facility, perhaps the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant in New Mexico. One measure of the Laboratory's commitment to
environmental, safety, and health programs was its increase of
program personnel from 240 in 1988 to 390 in 1990.
In 1988, about 15% of the Laboratory budget was devoted to waste
management and remedial actions--and this was only the beginning.
To reduce waste management and remediation program costs, the
national laboratories were challenged to find ways to treat the
contamination without moving it. One ORNL response involved in situ
vitrification, which uses electric currents to heat underground
radioactive wastes to high temperatures, thereby converting them
into glasslike solids impervious to groundwater. Developed at the
Pacific Northwest Laboratory, in situ vitrification was tested by
Brian Spalding and colleagues at ORNL to isolate strontium and
cesium. Although still an expensive technique, in situ
vitrification may be used at some future date to treat the pits and
trenches that served as waste repositories during the Laboratory's
early years.
Another innovation was bioremediation, which uses microorganisms to
degrade hazardous chemicals. Laboratory teams developed
methane-consuming microorganisms to break down gasoline and other
solvents in soil. Additional research was under way in 1992 to
identify or modify microorganisms that consume other types of toxic
wastes.
Support also was given to environmental monitoring to determine the
extent of contamination and the success of the cleanup. Tuan
Vo-Dinh and Richard Gammage, both of the Health and Safety Research
Division, developed various light-emission and -detection
technologies, including fiber-optic technologies, for applications
such as health and environmental monitoring and enhanced computer
memory storage. Alan Witten of the Energy Division developed an
acoustic tomography system that uses sound waves and computer
analysis to image buried objects at waste sites; the technique also
has been used in New Mexico to locate the bones of a Seismosaurus,
the world's longest dinosaur. Other ORNL staff monitored air, soil,
surface water, and groundwater of the entire Oak Ridge Reservation
in support of remedial action projects. They provided new
information and analytical methodologies to support environmental
restoration and waste management.
TIGERS ON THE PROWL
To ensure full compliance with environmental, health, and safety
programs, Admiral Watkins dispatched "tiger teams" to DOE field
organizations for thorough operational and management inspections.
Within a month after the lengthy inspection, the Laboratory's
response team had corrected 366 deficiencies identified by the
tigers.
Trivelpiece declared the tiger team inspection largely a success,
although he also pointed out that the Laboratory had not received
a completely clean bill of health. "We did not come through
unscathed," he admitted. "There are a lot of problems: legacy
wastes from past practices and management deficiencies in meeting
environmental safety and health regulations." Yet, he thought the
tiger team inspection had served as a catalyst for improvement.
DEFENSE CHALLENGES
Visiting the Laboratory in 1992, President Bush referred to it as
an "arsenal of democracy." Although it is not a weapons laboratory,
the Laboratory has supported national defense at every opportunity.
In addition to assisting the Strategic Defense Initiative, the
Laboratory undertook research during the 1980s for the Defense
Department that included investigations of defense materials,
battlefield logistics, robotics, instruments and controls, and
electromagnetic interference.
Also for the Defense Department, the Laboratory's radioisotopes
group directed by Neil Case developed isotope-powered lights using
radioactive emissions from krypton and tritium to excite phosphor
pellets, causing them to glow in the dark. These "plugless" lights
provided landing and distance markers for military and civilian
pilots in remote areas. In another case, Cabell Finch and Lynn
Boatner, both of the Solid State Division, developed doped crystals
for room-temperature promethium lasers. These crystals were suited
for satellite-to-submarine communications because their light can
be transmitted through water.
Led by the Energy Division's Samuel Carnes, in 1987 a Laboratory
team completed the final programmatic environmental impact
statement for disposal of the Army's stockpiled chemical weapons.
The team identified on-site incineration as the environmentally
preferred method of disposing of weapons.
When terrorist bombings plagued aircraft during the 1980s, a team
in the Analytical Chemistry Division devised an explosives sniffer
using mass spectrometry to test the air for suspect chemicals,
thereby determining in seconds whether explosives were present.
This development interested airport security firms, and Energy
Systems licensed the "sniffer" to a private company for commercial
use.
In addition, the Laboratory developed a direct-sampling ion-trap
mass spectrometer. Installed in a van, this equipment has served as
the basis of a mobile laboratory for rapid detection and
measurement of concentrations of organic pollutants in air, water,
and soil at sites targeted for cleanup. Providing test results much
faster than conventional methods, the device is expected to produce
substantial savings for the cleanup programs of both DOE and
Department of Defense sites.
Since 1946 when it assumed operation of the electromagnetic
separators at the Y-12 Plant, the Laboratory has had a major impact
on mass spectrometry, emerging as a world leader in the field. Like
an electromagnetic separator, a mass spectrometer uses electric and
magnetic fields to separate chemical elements, enabling scientists
to identify elements and measure the amounts present. Applications
have included safeguarding nuclear materials by determining whether
plutonium and uranium have been diverted illegally from facilities
for making nuclear weapons. Recently, thanks to the work of Joel
Carter, Scott McLuckey, and others, the Mass Spectrometry
Laboratory was completed at ORNL for developing and conducting
experiments with mass spectrometers.
Computer models developed by the Laboratory's Center for
Transportation Analysis in the Energy Division saw useful
application during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.S.
Transportation Command used the software to schedule deployment of
troops and equipment to the Middle East for Operations Desert
Shield and Desert Storm in the largest airlift operation in
history.
Successful national defense ultimately rests on economic
prosperity, and during the 1990s the Laboratory increasingly
focused its resources and staff on environmental and economic, not
military, matters. The key words for this operation were
"technology transfer" and "national competitiveness."
TECH TRANSFER
Laboratory efforts to transfer its technological advances to
industry began in 1962, when Weinberg established an Office of
Industrial Cooperation to reduce the time required for the civilian
economy to adopt scientific advances. Carol Oen and Don Jared
headed Laboratory technology utilization offices during the 1970s
and found partial success through spin-off firms often launched by
former Laboratory personnel. ORNL and other Energy Systems sites
also helped lure Science Applications International Corporation,
System Development, TRW, Exxon, Bechtel, and other corporations to
Oak Ridge by increasing public awareness of local technical
capabilities.
Legal barriers involving patents and nonexclusive licensing,
however, hampered quick technological transfer. Corporate
executives were reluctant to invest in technology without the
marketplace advantage of holding the exclusive rights to a
particular technology.
Recognizing these difficulties and the frustration of industry, DOE
initiated a technology transfer pilot project centered around newly
discovered high-temperature superconductors with the intention of
streamlining legal requirements at DOE laboratories. Oak Ridge, Los
Alamos, and Argonne national laboratories were designated as
High-Temperature Superconductivity Pilot Centers, and the three
worked closely with DOE under industry's watchful eye to devise
procedures that would accelerate transfer of supercon-ducting
technology from the laboratories to industry. ORNL's Tony
Schaffhauser, Louise Dunlap, Jon Soderstrom, and Bill Appleton
helped establish the collaborative arrangement that became a model
for the CRADAs legislated by Congress.
Aware of the latent economic potential of the national
laboratories, Congress passed the National Competitiveness and
Technology Transfer Act of 1989 to encourage technology transfer.
The Laboratory's new contractor-operator, Martin Marietta Energy
Systems, Inc., vigorously promoted this initiative. In 1985, for
example, Energy Systems signed an exclusive license with Cummins
Engine Company for use of modified nickel aluminide alloys in
diesel engines. The alloys were developed by C.T. Liu and his
colleagues. Energy Systems offered financial incentives to
Laboratory personnel who applied for patents as well. Laboratory
inventors received the first royalties for their innovations in
1987.
ORNL's successful collaboration with industry at the Roof Research
Center, High Temperature Materials Laboratory, and elsewhere
quickened the pace of transferring information on ceramics,
semiconductors, electronics, computer software, insulation, and
other commercially promising technologies. As a result, the
Laboratory led other DOE facilities in technology transfer, and its
program became a model for other government agencies to emulate.
Industrial firms expressed great interest in the Laboratory's
development of ceramic gel casting and ceramics reinforced with
whiskers made from silicon carbide. By 1989, 11 companies had
obtained licenses to use durable whisker-toughened ceramic
composites in metal-cutting tools. A gel-casting technology for
shaping ceramics, invented in the Metals and Ceramics Division, was
licensed to Coors Ceramics, Inc., which built a plant in Oak Ridge
to pursue this and related technologies.
Trane Company, a worldwide manufacturer of air-conditioning and
refrigeration systems, acquired a license for gas-powered
absorption chillers invented at the Laboratory by Robert DeVault.
These gas chillers were more economical and much more efficient
than electric chillers; the new devices could reduce primary energy
requirements as well as summer demands for electricity by shifting
commercial building air-conditioning loads to natural gas.
Energy Systems issued its first royalty-bearing license in nuclear
medicine to Du Pont in 1989. Prem Srivastava and associates in the
Health and Safety Research Division synthesized a chemical compound
to make radiolabeled monoclonal antibodies more useful for cancer
detection. Du Pont expected to market this development to medical
research institutions.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
The National Competitiveness and Technology Transfer Act of 1989
amended the Atomic Energy Act to make technology transfer a
principal mission of DOE and its laboratories. The act allowed
contractor-operated laboratories such as ORNL to work directly with
industrial firms, universities, and state governments on jointly
sponsored research and to share information through CRADAs. "The
labs are now open for business," proclaimed William Carpenter,
Energy Systems' chief of technology transfer.
In 1990, the Laboratory entered its first CRADA, joining an
international chemical consortium to study chemicals that could
serve as alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons. More CRADAs
followed. During his February 1992 visit to the Laboratory,
President Bush highlighted this technology transfer program at the
signing of a CRADA with Coors Ceramics to develop precision
machining of ceramics.
Touring the High Temperature Materials Laboratory and addressing a
crowd in front of the building, President Bush praised the $3.6
million CRADA with Coors as an excellent way to take technology
directly to markets and create new jobs. "The High Temperature
Materials Laboratory is a world-class facility," he declared, "and
in the race with other nations in making precision parts, America
will get there first." After Trivelpiece and Joseph Coors signed
the CRADA, the Coors executive presented the president with a
ceramic golf putter as a light-hearted sample of the products that
could flow from the materials research.
Speaking in Knoxville later that day, the president promised
significant increases in funding for science education and the
National Science Foundation. Thus, the president's brief visit to
Oak Ridge and Knoxville framed, in national terms, two of the
Laboratory's most important initiatives of the 1990s--technology
transfer and science education.
FUTURE CHALLENGES
When listing the future priorities of the "broadest based and most
multidisciplinary of the DOE national laboratories," Alvin
Trivelpiece highlighted his hope that the Laboratory will become
the center for excellence in research reactors. Its HFIR and TSF
reactors were back in service, although the latter, which was
funded primarily by a Japanese-sponsored program for breeder
reactor shielding studies, was shut down in October 1992.
In 1992 the Laboratory continued to press for funding to design and
construct a major new reactor to replace the aging HFIR. Named the
Advanced Neutron Source (ANS), studies of this proposed reactor had
begun in 1984 as a Director's Fund project, with initial funding
from DOE coming in 1987. Leadership in neutron scattering research
had passed from the United States to Europe during the 1970s when
a reactor was built at Grenoble, France, with a neutron flux and
experimental facilities superior to those at Oak Ridge and other
DOE laboratories. Backed by reports of several important national
committees, Laboratory management insisted that building the ANS
would regain world leadership for the United States by providing
the most intense steady-state neutron beams in the world and
state-of-the-art neutron scattering facilities. The ANS research
reactor would also be used for isotope production, neutron
activiation analysis, and research on radiation effects in
materials.
Managed initially by Ralph Moon and David Bartine, the project was
later placed under Colin West, who directed the conceptual design
of the ANS with the aid of prominent scientists throughout the
world. Surrounding the reactor would be a national research center,
with adjoining structures housing laboratories for neutron
scattering and other experiments, as well as offices for scientists
from both the Laboratory and elsewhere.
The initial ANS design called for heavy water to cool the reactor
fuel and reflect neutrons back into the core. (The High Flux
Isotope Reactor uses ordinary water as coolant and beryllium as a
neutron reflector.) Studies by the Laboratory and the Idaho
National Engineering Laboratory led to selection of a split-core
configuration with uranium silicide fuel in aluminum-clad plates.
These features would permit a 200- to 350-MW powerhouse, compared
with the original 100-MW rating of the High Flux Isotope Reactor.
Noting that the Laboratory had built and operated 14 nuclear
reactors (counting the 1955 Geneva conference reactor and the Pool
Critical Assembly), Murray Rosenthal observed that the proposed ANS
would become the Laboratory's 15th reactor and the first one built
since 1966. Colin West estimated that the 350-MW reactor and modern
beam facilities would provide neutron beams with intensities at
least 10 times those of the HFIR and at least 10,000 times greater
than those available to Ernest Wollan and Clifford Shull at the
1943 Graphite Reactor. John Hayter, scientific director for the
project, said that plans for the new reactor include about 30 beam
lines and beam guides, many of which would serve more than one
instrument. The facility would have special features such as
neutron mirrors for beam delivery and two cold sources (tanks of
liquid deuterium) to slow some of the neutrons before they are
transported to the "guide hall" for experiments.
The conceptual design involved personnel from national
laboratories, industries, and universities, plus researchers from
Germany, Japan, and Australia. More than a thousand non-Laboratory
scientists are expected to conduct research annually at the ANS
when it becomes operational. With the aging High Flux Isotope
Reactor operating at slightly reduced power to prolong its life,
early completion of the ANS seems vital. "When the HFIR reaches the
end of its useful life, we will need a new reactor to enable U.S.
scientists to conduct neutron scattering studies to make progress
in certain key fields," Trivelpiece asserted. "I think we need to
make a full court press, and I regard this project as the
highest-priority technical facility pursued by the Laboratory."
Other ongoing reactor programs at the Laboratory included the
modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor research program,
promising safety and investment protection features unavailable in
other efficient reactor concepts. The Laboratory also provided
research and design review support for the liquid-metal fast
reactor with potential for greatly extending the nuclear fuel
supply, and it reviewed and researched DOE's work with improved
light-water reactors of modular size and improved safety
characteristics. Laboratory work on advanced controls for reactors
for DOE and renewal of the licenses of aging nuclear power plants
for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was expected to continue.
Established in 1943 as a nuclear reactor site, chemical separations
facility, and scientific laboratory, the Laboratory continues to
build upon these traditional strengths in 1993. Nevertheless,
ORNL's broadening investigations of alternative energy sources;
environmental, safety, and health concerns; and strategies for
improving national economic competitiveness absorb ever-larger
portions of the Laboratory's budget and energies as it approaches
the end of the 20th century. The Laboratory's future seems to lie
not so much in its ability to do research in specific nuclear
projects as in its deeply rooted ability to undertake large-scale,
complicated projects that address national and international needs
and concerns. How well it performs in a variety of energy and
environmental fields could well determine the Laboratory's future.
These efforts, in turn, could help chart America's future, helping
the nation retain its leading role in an increasingly complicated
and competitive world.
SIDEBARS
ALEX ZUCKER: FROM CYCLOTRONS TO CENTRAL ADMINISTRATION
Alex Zucker served the Laboratory for more than 40 years both as an
eminent physicist and a skilled administrator. His career
culminated in 1988 when he was appointed acting Laboratory
director, replacing his long-time associate Herman Postma, who
assumed the post of senior vice president of Martin Marietta Energy
Systems, Inc. Before becoming acting director, Zucker had been an
associate director for the physical sciences for years.
Zucker left his mark on the Laboratory in many ways. As a
physicist, he conducted pioneering research in nuclear physics in
the early 1950s at ORNL's 63-inch cyclotron, which he helped
design. There they observed 20 new nuclear reactions, such as the
fusion of nitrogen nuclei and the formation of the heavier nuclei
of fluorine, sodium, and aluminum by bombardment of oxygen and
carbon targets with beams of nitrogen nuclei.
The results of their nitrogen fusion studies eased the fear that
detonation of a hydrogen bomb might set Earth's atmosphere on fire.
As a manager, he was instrumental in bringing many Laboratory
projects to fruition, helping to overcome formidable administrative
and budgetary hurdles. His managerial skills, for example, helped
bring into being the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility and the
High Temperature Materials Laboratory. Zucker also lent an
administrative hand to acquiring funding for the Laboratory's
proposed new research reactor, the Advanced Neutron Source.
A native of what is now Croatia, he received a B.A. degree in
physics from the University of Vermont and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in physics from Yale University. He came to the Laboratory in 1950
and spent his first 20 years conducting nuclear physics experiments
and studying reaction mechanisms and the scattering of heavy ions
and protons.
Throughout his career, Zucker has influenced not only the
Laboratory's specific agenda but broad trends in U.S. science. He
served as executive director of the Environmental Studies Board of
the National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering
between 1970 and 1972, has been a member of the editorial advisory
board of Science magazine, is chairman of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers National Laboratory Technology Transfer
Committee, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Zucker left the Laboratory in the spring of 1992 to become special
advisor to Clyde Hopkins, president of Energy Systems at the time
(and also a former ORNL administrator). He retired in January
1993.
CERAMICS AND ENERGY: IT'S A MATERIALS WORLD
Created by John Frye in 1952, the ceramics research group at the
Laboratory was later managed by Lou Doney, Bill Harms, Jim Scott,
Walt Eatherly, and Vic Tennery. During the early decades, this
group concentrated on developing ceramic fuels for nuclear
reactors. Unlike metal fuels, ceramic fuels would not melt during
high-temperature reactor operation. The early ceramics research
contributed to the adoption of ceramic uranium dioxide pellets
inside zirconium alloy tubes as the standard fuel in light-water
reactors worldwide. For gas-cooled reactors, ceramics research
developed tiny spheres of nuclear fuel with special coatings to
prevent release of fission products into the helium coolant.
Studying ceramics for nuclear reactors led the Laboratory ceramic
research team into related fields. While studying uranium dioxide
during the 1960s, for example, Wayne Clark and Ted Chapman invented
a method for growing single crystals of this material incorporating
tungsten metal fibers. This ceramic matrix composite proved useful
in electronic devices.
When the Laboratory became involved in broad energy research during
the 1970s, ceramics research was applied to materials in addition
to nuclear fuels. As industry shifted from imported oil and natural
gas to coal burned in hotter, more energy-efficient furnaces for
many manufacturing processes, it became interested in identifying
corrosion-resistant materials for high-temperature furnace liners
and heat exchangers. Ceramics were a logical choice for such
applications, and Laboratory ceramics researchers led by Vic
Tennery focused on meeting these needs.
They learned that silicon nitride and silicon carbide could
maintain their strength and resist corrosion at the high
temperatures of advanced gas turbines and heat exchangers. On the
other hand, these brittle materials can fail at high temperatures
because of internal flaws produced during their manufacture.
Using electron microscopes to reveal ceramic structure, Laboratory
researchers studied ways to improve the processing of these
materials to make them more uniform and fracture resistant. They
learned how to reduce ceramic brittleness by reinforcing the
materials with silicon carbide whiskers, just as straw was used to
reinforce the adobe clay used in Pueblo houses. Whisker-reinforced
ceramics now are used in high-speed cutting tools.
In 1985, DOE approved a program at the Laboratory to develop
ceramics for advanced heat engines, which will use fuel more
efficiently than current engines. Led by Tennery, Tony
Schaffhauser, Ernie Long, and Ray Johnson, Laboratory research
developed structural ceramics for use in the high-wear parts of
large diesel engines and experimental gas turbines being developed
for transportation and electricity production.
With strong support from industry, the Laboratory opened a High
Temperature Materials Laboratory in 1987. Here, Laboratory
scientists and engineers cooperate with industrial and university
researchers exploring ceramics and other materials development. The
presence of this unique user facility has encouraged several
industrial firms to build plants in Oak Ridge.
Recently, Laboratory and industrial researchers have discovered how
to make silicon nitride materials self-reinforcing, thereby
achieving the same goals as whisker-reinforced ceramics. The latest
silicon nitride materials have found use in engines for cars and
trucks. These and other new ceramics developed at the Laboratory
will find wide use in industry.
DIRECTOR ALVIN TRIVELPIECE
Selected in 1988 to succeed Herman Postma as Laboratory director,
Alvin Trivelpiece shared the dual expertise of Eugene Wigner and
Alvin Weinberg before him. A chemical engineer, Wigner had become
a physicist; biophysicist Weinberg had become a nuclear physicist.
Trivelpiece was an electrical engineer who became a physicist.
Trivelpiece earned his doctorate in electrical engineering in 1955
and taught the subject at the University of California for years.
In 1966, he went to the University of Maryland as a professor of
physics while serving as the assistant director of fusion research
for the AEC. After working in private laboratories and
technological companies in California, he returned to Washington in
1981 as director of the DOE Office of Energy Research. He was
serving as an executive officer of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science when selected as Laboratory director.
Extensive knowledge of both engineering and science is important in
managing such an amalgam of science and technology as Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. Trivelpiece had that depth of knowledge and,
in addition, had worked in government, academia, and industry. This
broad experience was excellent preparation for leading the
Laboratory into new partnerships with universities and industrial
firms in efforts to achieve faster technology transfer to the
commercial marketplace.
PRESIDENT ZACHARY TAYLOR AND THE LABORATORY: PRESIDENTIAL VISIT
FROM THE GRAVE
Shortly after breaking ground for the Washington Monument on July
4, 1850, President Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War, fell
ill. When he died suddenly a few days later, the cause was listed
as gastroenteritis--inflammation of the stomach and intestines.
Some historians suspected that Taylor's death may have had other
causes, and in 1991 one convinced Taylor's descendants that the
president might have suffered arsenic poisoning. As a result,
Taylor's remains were exhumed from a cemetery in Louisville and
Kentucky's medical examiner brought samples of hair and fingernail
tissue to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for study.
In the Analytical Chemistry Division, Larry Robinson and Frank Dyer
headed the Taylor investigation, using neutron activation analysis
to measure the amount of arsenic in the hair and nail samples.
After placing the samples in a beam of neutrons from the High Flux
Isotope Reactor, Dyer and Robinson looked at the gamma rays coming
from the samples for the distinctive energy levels associated with
the presence of arsenic. Arsenic is among the easier elements to
identify through neutron activation and can be detected in a few
parts per million. Most human bodies contain traces of arsenic, so
the essential issue in the Taylor case was whether the samples from
Taylor contained more arsenic than would be normal after 141 years
in the crypt.
Working late in the evenings, Dyer and Robinson in a few days
calculated the arsenic levels in the samples and sent them to the
Kentucky medical examiner for his decision. After reviewing the
test results, the examiner announced that the arsenic levels in the
samples were several hundred times less than they would have been
if the president had been poisoned with arsenic. This finding
acquitted several of Taylor's prominent contemporaries of the
suspicion of murder and proved that history and science share a
common quest for truth.
INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH SCIENCE
The relationship between science and technology is a subject in
which historians and policymakers take great interest. In the
classic paradigm, scientists seek knowledge of basic physical
principles or natural laws and technologists apply this knowledge
to invention. Albert Einstein exemplified 20th-century scientists.
He identified general and specific physical laws that subsequently
were verified by experiments. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and the
Wright brothers were epitomized 20th-century technologists.
Science, to borrow a phrase, is the mother of invention, according
to theory. Einstein's theories certainly led to inventions, the
atomic bomb and nuclear reactor counted among them. But did the
Wright brothers know anything about science? How about Thomas
Edison or Henry Ford? Who or what were the scientific mothers of
their inventions?
The issue has affected policy decisions for decades. If science is
the mother of invention and technology is only applied science,
then pumping funding into science will produce inventions useful to
a society and profitable for business. It has happened: nylon,
radar, radio, television, transistors, and lasers are examples.
If, on the other hand, useful inventions and technological
improvements can be produced without increased scientific
knowledge, then why not take the short cut? Allocate funding
directly to technology to achieve quick results and reduce or
eliminate funding for science.
Differing science-technology paradigms adopted during the
Laboratory's first 50 years have had a major influence on its
budget and activities. Funding for basic sciences, especially
nuclear science, was strong during the Laboratory's early years.
During the 1960s and 1970s, substantial increases in the Laboratory
budget for technology development came in response to demands for
more "socially relevant" science and for solutions to the national
energy crisis, and in the 1980s, the policy pendulum swung back
toward "high-risk, high-return" basic science.
Yet, the traditional distinction between science and technology is,
and always has been, blurred at the Laboratory. When Arthur Compton
sent Enrico Fermi to Oak Ridge in 1942, he wished him success with
his "greatest of all practical physics experiments."
The Laboratory's leadership throughout its first 50 years has come
from managers with multiple areas of expertise. Eugene Wigner was
a chemical engineer who became a physicist. Alvin Weinberg was a
biologist and a physicist. Floyd Culler was a chemical engineer who
acquired great understanding of science. Herman Postma and Alex
Zucker were scientists who worked closely with the engineering
design of fusion and cyclotron devices. And Alvin Trivelpiece is an
engineer who became a physicist. These men managed the application
of the Laboratory's industrial capabilities to the solution of
scientific challenges.
To reverse the classic paradigm, sometimes technology becomes the
mother of science. Scientists apply new technology to their own
research. In astronomy, as a prime example, telescopes, radios,
rockets, and satellites have provided astronomers new insights into
the functioning of the distant universe. Swift application of
technological innovations to scientific research also has marked
the Laboratory's history.
The Laboratory represented, at its founding in 1943, a merger of
science and technology, and this diversity has been one of its
great strengths throughout its history. The emphasis placed on one
aspect or the other of the Laboratory's character has changed over
the years, but the effort has always had the same goal: a melding
of theory and application that serves as a catalyst for
advancement.
THE BUSH VISIT: MOLDING THE FUTURE
On February 19, 1992, President George Bush visited the Laboratory
to witness the signing of a $3.6 million, three-year cooperative
research and development agreement (CRADA) between the Laboratory
and Coors Technical Ceramics Company. The agreement, co-signed by
Joseph Coors, Jr., president of Coors, and Director Alvin
Trivelpiece, could lead to precisely shaped ceramic parts for
multiple uses, including the highly efficient and durable
high-temperature engines of the future.
"You're pointing our country toward the next American century,"
President Bush told the 800 Laboratory employees who attended the
signing ceremony. "This agreement," he said, "combines in one
place the resources of government with the energy and inventiveness
of private enterprise." He added that the future of U.S.
competitiveness in the world marketplace depends on research and
development.
President Bush was only the second U.S. president to visit the
Laboratory (unless you count Zachary Taylor, whose remains were
analyzed for arsenic in 1991). President Jimmy Carter visited ORNL
in 1978.
President Bush delivered his message in front of the High
Temperature Materials Laboratory, which he toured. He cited this
CRADA as one in a series of pathbreaking initiatives that would
help overcome the obstacles government currently faces in sharing
its technology with private industry. CRADAs are research
partnerships between government laboratories and private companies
made possible by the National Competitiveness Technology Act of
1989.
President Bush called the High Temperature Materials Laboratory "a
world-class advanced materials testing facility" that would be
instrumental in helping "American industry...take a world lead in
making precision ceramic parts. We're in a race with other nations
in this multimillion-dollar market, and we will get there first
with the best product, thanks to the hard work of the people right
here and the imagination of your scientists."
The president said that the Laboratory and Coors researchers would
"attack one of the obstacles to wider use of durable, efficient,
and lightweight ceramic parts--machining ceramics without
destroying their desirable qualities." The collaborative work,
which will also involve staff members of the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant,
will take place largely in the new Ceramic Manufacturability Center
in the High Temperature Materials Laboratory.
(keywords: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, history)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please send us your comments.
Date Posted: 2/22/94 (ktb)