ORNL: THE FIRST 50 YEARS--CHAPTER 8: DIVERSITY AND SHARING
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Review (Vol. 25, Nos. 3 and 4), a quarterly research and
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In the 1970s, the Laboratory moved beyond its war-rooted
preoccupation with nuclear power to research fields embracing all
energy forms. By the early 1980s, that journey was complete. In the
words of Associate Director Alex Zucker, ORNL had become "a
multiprogram research and development laboratory having a variety
of energy-related missions of national importance."
Emphasis on the Laboratory's multiprogram character was in part a
response to the "Reagan revolution" of the 1980s, when fierce
debates arose over the proper balance between the public and
private sectors. The Reagan administration, in fact, proposed to
abolish DOE and severely curtail the activities of the national
laboratories. Energy policies, the administration stridently
proclaimed, should be shaped by the private sector. If government
had any role at all, it should be narrowly confined to questions of
basic research.
President Reagan appointed James Edwards, a former governor of
South Carolina and oral surgeon with little background in energy
policy, to preside over DOE's dissolution as the nation's "last"
Secretary of Energy. The president planned to transfer its residual
functions to the Department of the Interior under James Watt or to
the Department of Commerce under Malcolm Baldrige.
Aiming for major reductions in the public sector, in 1981 the
Reagan administration initiated executive reviews of most federal
agencies, including DOE laboratories. Kenneth Davis, Deputy
Secretary of Energy under Edwards, directed an Energy Research
Advisory Board to survey the laboratories' work. Congress conducted
similar investigations.
Investigators distinguished among three kinds of laboratories:
single-purpose specialty, exclusively weapons, and broadly diverse
multiprogram. Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Brookhaven were on the
original list of multiprogram laboratories, but it soon expanded to
include more than a dozen DOE laboratories.
Vocal criticisms of these multiprogram laboratories arose from
universities, consulting firms, and industrial laboratories.
Because of the laboratories' excursions during the 1970s into
diverse energy research agendas, critics saw them as subsidized
competition. One industrial executive, for example, charged: "When
I find Oak Ridge planting trees to see if they can't grow them a
little closer together and faster, which the paper companies could
do; testing solar cells that there are 300 companies already set up
to test; and so on, I just wonder if we haven't lost our sense of
focus altogether."
Admitting the missions of national laboratories had become diffuse
and perhaps "unfocused" during the 1970s, Laboratory leaders asked
whether more precise definitions of the roles of all
laboratories--national, private, and university--would help clarify
the situation and foster a healthier and more robust national
research program. Truman Anderson, chief of Laboratory planning and
analysis, urged that national laboratories should "assume a broader
role in a new partnership with industry and universities." This new
partnership was to reshape Laboratory activities throughout the
1980s and into the 1990s.
Program diversity enabled the Laboratory to weather the intense
scrutiny of 1981; so, too, did the administration's pronuclear
stance, which ameliorated its initially harsh approach to
government-sponsored energy programs. Commenting on the effects of
Reagan's policies after his first year in office, Laboratory
Director Herman Postma declared: "The impacts so far, while
unwelcome and frequently painful, have been rather moderate
overall, and certainly less severe than at many of our sister
laboratories." Indeed, Postma thought the Reagan policies may have
had some salutary effects, notably in restoring an equitable
balance between basic science and applied technology.
During the early 1980s the Laboratory staff was reduced by about
700 persons as a consequence of Reagan administration cost-cutting
measures. However, the Laboratory's multiprogram character,
together with its ties, through Union Carbide, to the Y-12 and K-25
plants, allowed the cuts to be handled largely by transferring
personnel and not filling positions when people retired or
resigned.
The first year of the Reagan revolution would prove the most
unsettling for the Laboratory. Deep recession in 1982 and growing
federal budget deficits soon fostered less hostile views of
Laboratory activities within the administration. A national
consensus emerged that viewed scientific and technological
innovations as the nation's "ace in the hole" for breaking the
cycle of budget deficits, high unemployment, and unfavorable trade
balances. In 1982, Herman Postma observed that support was building
in government for concerted efforts to "encourage high-technology
development as the best hope for the nation's economic future."
Along with other DOE laboratories, Oak Ridge endured the loss or
retrenchment of some programs and staff reductions during the early
1980s but emerged in a stronger position later in the decade. Some
ORNL employees took positions in Martin Marietta Energy Systems,
Inc., with the Data Systems Research and Development Organization
or with DOE's Hazardous Waste Remedial Action Program (HAZWRAP). In
time, the Reagan administration abandoned efforts to dispense with
DOE, as well, in part because of congressional opposition, in part
because of the heavy weight of bureaucratic inertia, and in part
because DOE laboratories emerged as critical research centers for
the Reagan-inspired Strategic Defense Initiative.
Thus, the Reagan administration's strenuous reform efforts did not
seriously sap the overall strength of the Laboratory. These
efforts, however, did rearrange Laboratory priorities and programs.
For example, Reagan policies forced the Laboratory to reduce the
size of its fossil-energy program, and the administration proposed
budget cuts that would have scaled back its energy conservation
program had the funds not been restored by Congress. When the
administration terminated the government-sponsored synthetic fuels
program in favor of supply-side, market-driven energy initiatives,
funding for the Laboratory's coal research dwindled. To maximize
the return on its diminished resources, DOE decided to conduct all
its coal research in laboratories linked to the Bureau of Mines.
The administration also looked unfavorably on energy conservation,
but the Laboratory's energy conservation program survived an early
round of cuts and rebounded to eventually enjoy renewed vigor.
STAR WARS
In March 1983, President Reagan espoused an antimissile defense
initiative that aimed to break the nuclear stalemate by shifting
the battlefield to outer space, where an impenetrable defense
umbrella would forever protect the United States from nuclear
attack. Declaring that the Strategic Defense Initiative would make
nuclear weapons obsolete by rendering an attack futile, the
president proclaimed that the proposal held promise for "changing
the course of human history." Critics dubbed the initiative "Star
Wars"--a flight of fancy charted by an ill-informed president that
falsely promised to turn the world's fiercest technological force
into its most reliable sentinel of peace.
In truth, scientific opinion was deeply divided on the long-term
prospects of this proposal. Beyond the huge price tag, however, one
thing was certain. Devising space satellites capable of destroying
nuclear missiles would require major scientific and technological
advances. Resources at DOE's national laboratories--both in skilled
personnel and sophisticated equipment--would be vital to any chance
for success.
Managed by David Bartine, the Laboratory's Star Wars research
agenda, which was set by the Department of Defense, focused on
designing reactors to power space satellites and lasers; flywheels
for energy storage and pulsed power; and particle accelerators for
producing beams to destroy missiles from space. Studies of highly
focused beams of hydrogen particles, able to destroy the electronic
components of a missile, evolved from the Laboratory's fusion
energy experiments in which beams of neutral hydrogen atoms were
used to heat plasmas to high temperatures.
John Moyers headed a team from the Engineering Technology Division
and other divisions for design of a nuclear reactor to provide
power bursts for the lasers and weapons aboard space vehicles.
Their concept centered on a boiling-potassium reactor, perhaps with
flywheels for energy storage. Even if never needed for national
defense, the reactor might power long-distance space exploration to
Mars and beyond.
Although some Star Wars research was classified, two of the
Laboratory's announced achievements included powerful particle
beams and mirrors for surveillance satellites. Taking advantage of
the negative-ion sources developed as a result of fusion energy
research, Laboratory scientists devised the "world's highest
simultaneous current density output and pulse length"--that is, a
particle beam that remains tightly focused for thousands of miles,
like a spotlight rather than a floodlight. In cooperation with
scientists from the K-25 and Y-12 plants and from industry, the
Laboratory also conducted research on beryllium mirrors and windows
that would permit space satellites to sense the heat of missile
launches on Earth. These mirrors and windows were devised,
fabricated, and polished in Oak Ridge in cooperation with Martin
Marietta Aerospace of Denver. From this effort emerged the
Laboratory's Optics MODIL (Manufacturing Operations Development and
Integration Laboratories), which has entered into several
cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with
industrial firms.
The media seemed more interested in the Laboratory's killer bees
research than its Star Wars work. At first glance, star wars and
bee wars may seem to have little in common, but the efforts of
researchers in both fields to track flying objects at long
distances enabled them to find a common ground of scientific
investigation. Newspaper journalists and television reporters
enjoyed reporting Laboratory efforts to detect the migration
patterns of the Africanized bees, dubbed killer bees, that moved
north from Central America during the 1980s, posing a threat to
national honey production.
Howard Kerr, an experienced amateur beekeeper, became interested in
finding ways to detect and track the movements of killer bees. He
and his Laboratory colleagues considered tracking them with
radioisotopes, spotting them with infrared devices, or identifying
their presence in hives by detecting their characteristic buzzing
with acoustical devices. This approach would provide scientists
with opportunities to disrupt the bees' mating patterns. To Kerr
and his colleagues, the threat that killer bees posed to honey
production in North America was a serious matter; their research
continued as the bees migrated across the Rio Grande River into
Texas during the 1990s.
ENERGY SYSTEMS
In 1982, the Laboratory spruced itself up for the Knoxville World's
Fair, building a visitor's overlook on a nearby hill and opening
some facilities to tell crowds attending the fair and nearby
attractions about energy and environmental research taking place at
Oak Ridge's national multiprogram laboratory. At the same time, the
Laboratory also became an anchor for a proposed technology corridor
championed by Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexanderr's overlook on a
nearby hill and opening some facilities to tell crowds attending
the fair and nearby attractions about energy and environmental
research taking place at Oak Ridge's national multiprogram
laboratory. At the same time, the Laboratory also became an anchor
for a proposed technology corridor championed by Tennessee Governor
Lamar Alexander.lass-encased offices built to market the region's
scientific and technological advances. In effect, corridor
advocates were seeking to create a Silicon Valley in East Tennessee
that would draw on the complementary skills of the region's three
major institutions--Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University
of Tennessee, and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
As the World's Fair celebration began, the Laboratory was surprised
by news that Union Carbide, after nearly 40 years in Oak Ridge (34
years at the Laboratory) would withdraw as the operating
contractor. Three days after the World's Fair opened in May 1982,
Union Carbide management announced that the company would
relinquish its contract for operating the Laboratory and other
Nuclear Division facilities in Oak Ridge and Paducah, Kentucky,
although it agreed to serve until DOE selected a new contractor.
The terse announcement read by Roger Hibbs of Union Carbide said
the decision not to renew the contract resulted from the company's
strategy of "concentrating its resources and management attention
on commercial businesses in which it has achieved a leadership
position. The corporation has no other defense-related operations."
Seventy organizations, ranging from Goodyear, Boeing, Westinghouse,
Bechtel, and the University of Tennessee down to small firms,
expressed an initial interest in succeeding Union Carbide. After
careful consideration, DOE decided to keep the Oak Ridge and
Paducah facilities under a single contractor. A year after Union
Carbide's decision, DOE requested proposals for operating the
Laboratory and the other facilities, and late in 1983 it received
formal responses from a half dozen corporations and companies. It
narrowed the field to three--Westinghouse, Rockwell, and Martin
Marietta. In December, it accepted the proposal of Martin Marietta
Energy Systems, part of the Martin Marietta Corporation, known
nationally for its defense and aerospace work.
Martin Marietta Corporation was formed in 1961 by the merger of
Glenn Martin's aircraft company with Grover Hermann's
American-Marietta Company. Aircraft pioneer Glenn Martin, a partner
with Wilbur Wright, built bombers for the Army during World War I;
later, the firm built such famous aircraft as the "China Clippers"
and the Enola Gay. Grover Hermann, an entrepreneur from Marietta,
Ohio, had organized one of the first industrial conglomerates in
the United States. Known best for its defense and aerospace
contract projects, Martin Marietta Corporation managed production
of aluminum and construction materials and supervised
government-sponsored defense, space, and communications
initiatives. With its corporate headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland,
it had five operating companies employing 40,000 people at 128
sites throughout the nation. In 1984, it had major contracts for
the space shuttle and MX missile designs and research laboratories
located in Denver, Orlando, and Baltimore. To administer the
Laboratory and other Oak Ridge and Paducah facilities, it formed
the subsidiary Energy Systems, Incorporated.
To the relief of Laboratory management and personnel, the
transition from Union Carbide to Energy Systems began in January
1984 and proceeded on schedule with minimal impact on Laboratory
staff or activities. In April 1984, Energy Systems took full
responsibility for Laboratory operations along with the K-25 and
Y-12 facilities in Oak Ridge and the Paducah gaseous diffusion
plant in Kentucky. Later, DOE added the Portsmouth, Ohio,
enrichment facilities to the Martin Marietta operations contract.
Although day-to-day operations remained much the same, the change
in administration brought new long-term directions for the
Laboratory. Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., was the first
contractor-operator at the Laboratory without a chemical
engineering background; its roots lay in prompt delivery of
high-quality technology under contract with government and other
agencies. Its agreement with DOE for operating the Laboratory,
moreover, contained innovative provisions, including reinvesting a
percentage of its annual fee as venture capital in Oak Ridge,
developing an Oak Ridge technology innovation center, and pursuing
an aggressive technology transfer program.
To accelerate spin-off of Oak Ridge technology to industry, Energy
Systems proposed to license DOE patent rights for technologies
developed at the Laboratory. In 1985, DOE approved this proposal.
Energy Systems could now license the right to manufacture products
or provide services based on science and technology developed at
the Laboratory.
This approach would facilitate technology transfer because
companies acquiring such rights would not have to face competition.
In return, the companies would pay royalties or license fees to
Energy Systems, which would be reinvested in product refinement,
prototype production, royalty shares for inventors, university
programs, or other technology transfer activities. This initiative
was in accord with President Reagan's policies encouraging
private-sector growth and economic development through transfer of
valuable scientific findings to the world of commerce.
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
At the time of the 1984 transition, Director Postma had four
associate directors administering technical activities. Don Trauger
oversaw nuclear and engineering technologies, including the
Chemical Technology, Engineering Technology, Fuel Recycle, and
Instrumentation and Controls divisions, together with the
Laboratory's nuclear reactor, fuel reprocessing, nuclear safety,
and waste management programs. Murray Rosenthal supervised the
Laboratory's research in advanced energy systems performed by the
Energy and Fusion Energy divisions along with the conservation,
fossil energy, and fusion programs. Alex Zucker administered the
physical sciences research conducted by the Physics, Chemistry,
Analytical Chemistry, Solid State, Engineering Physics and
Mathematics, and Metals and Ceramics divisions. Chester Richmond
headed biomedical and environmental research activities conducted
by the Biology, Environmental Sciences, and Health and Safety
Research divisions; the Information Center complex also was
assigned to him. Support and services divisions reported to the
executive director, Kenneth Sommerfeld.
HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT
The Laboratory's biomedical and environmental programs may have had
the most direct influence on American life during the 1980s. At
least, the environmental and health problems they addressed
dominated the news media during the decade. In keeping with trends
at DOE, funding for Laboratory environmental and health research
increased. As a result, the Laboratory's Environmental Sciences
Division, directed by Stanley Auerbach and later by David Reichle,
and its Health and Safety Research Division, directed by Stephen
Kaye, flourished. By the end of the 1980s, nearly a quarter of the
Laboratory's program budget supported environmental and health
research.
The Laboratory's basic ecological research continued to concentrate
on understanding the processes by which contaminants move through
the environment and on identifying the ecological effects of energy
production. When the National Environmental Research Park opened as
an outdoor laboratory in 1980, studies of southern and Appalachian
regional ecosystems continued. The Laboratory also expanded its
hydrologic and geochemical expertise in support of DOE waste
management programs to examine the effects of waste on the
environment.
The Laboratory's study of indoor air pollution, started in 1983 by
members of the Health and Safety Research Division for the Consumer
Product Safety Commission, received a great deal of media
attention. Laboratory surveys found that residents of newer homes
with tighter construction and improved insulation were exposed to
indoor air pollution. Of special concern was radon gas, a decay
product of natural uranium in the ground that seeped upward and
concentrated in the more tightly sealed homes. If inhaled, it was
considered a potential cause of lung cancer. Manufacturers soon
were selling radon detection kits to homeowners and urging them to
vent the gas from their homes if the levels of indoor radon
exceeded government guidelines.
Risk assessment, whose practitioners analyze the potential risks
posed by energy technologies and industrial processes, emerged as
an important field within the Laboratory. Such assessment involves
extensive use of computer modeling, laser optics, and advanced
instrumentation to detect and examine the impacts of energy- and
chemical-related compounds on ecosystems. Much of this work
concentrated on specific chemicals cited as potential agents of
contamination by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The ecological challenges presented to the Laboratory during the
1980s extended from the region and nation to the world beyond.
Biomedically, long-term studies of carcinogenesis, mutagenesis, and
other damages to organisms continued with major support from the
National Cancer Institute and other institutes of the Department of
Health and Human Services.
Within the Biology Division, research changed dramatically during
the 1980s because of the advent of genetic engineering and
recombinant DNA technology. Biologists learned to alter genes as
simply as they had combined and separated chemicals in earlier
times. This expanding capability permitted them to characterize
cancer-causing genes, clarify the mechanisms for regulating genes,
produce scarce proteins for studies, and design new proteins. Major
Laboratory research initiatives included basic studies of proteins
and nucleic acids, together with DNA repair, DNA replication, and
protein synthesis, which relate to the response of biological
systems to environmental stresses.
A Biology Division group led by Fred Hartman, for example,
endeavored to use protein engineering to improve crops. Hartman's
group sought to alter a plant enzyme so that it no longer used
oxygen to break down carbohydrates while synthesizing them from
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If they could successfully alter
this enzyme to improve its efficiency, they might increase the
growth and yield of plants useful for food and energy production.
As funding for basic sciences declined in favor of support for the
applied sciences, the number of Biology Division researchers shrank
during the 1980s to less than half the number employed during the
1960s. It retained a distinguished staff, however, and took pride
in the fact that 17 biologists who had worked at the Laboratory
were elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
The Laboratory's emphasis on production, development, and use of
radiopharmaceuticals contributed to improved public health in
several ways during the 1980s. F.F. (Russ) Knapp's Nuclear Medicine
Group in the Health and Safety Research Division made news by
developing new radioactive imaging agents for medical scanning
diagnosis of heart disease, adrenal disorders, strokes, and brain
tumors. Stable isotopes produced in the calutrons of the Chemical
Technology Division were converted into radioisotopes such as
thallium to provide the tracing material for millions of heart
scans, which contributed substantially to national health care. By
the end of the 1980s, DOE estimated that nearly 100 million
Americans annually received improved diagnosis or treatment partly
as a result of medical isotope research and production at the
Laboratory and other DOE facilities.
Another medical advance arose from work at the Solid State
Division's Surface Modification and Characterization Collaborative
Research Center. Here, various ion-beam and pulsed-laser techniques
were used to improve and characterize the properties of materials,
giving them harder surfaces, more resistance to wear and corrosion,
and improved electrical or optical properties. Applied initially to
such semiconducting materials as silicon for solar cells, these
techniques later proved beneficial in the development of other new
materials, including surgical alloys.
Each year, for example, thousands of patients had been fitted with
artificial hip joints made of a titanium alloy. Because body fluids
caused corrosion and wear in each implant, they had to be replaced
after about 10 years. At the Laboratory, James Williams and
collaborators implanted nitrogen ions into the titanium alloy to
modify the surface. Ion implantation made the artificial joints
much more resistant to wear and the corrosive action of body
fluids, significantly increasing the lifetime of such joints. This
process was incorporated into a new line of medical products
marketed by a private company.
New devices in the Biology and Health and Safety Research divisions
made possible the imaging of single atoms and of DNA strands during
the 1980s. Scanning tunneling microscopes, developed in 1980 and
first used for research on semiconductor surfaces, were built at
the Laboratory during the decade. These microscopes, which gave new
meaning to the word microscopic, could image supercoiled DNA
molecules, showing structural changes and the binding of proteins
and other substances to the strands of genetic material. Operated
by David Allison, Bruce Warmack, and Thomas Ferrell, the new
electron and photon microscopes promised to assist in mapping and
determining the sequences of chemical bases in genes, thus opening
new frontiers in biological research.
A team of Environmental Sciences and Chemical Technology
researchers sought to use microorganisms in bioreactors to rid the
environment of PCBs and other toxic wastes. Experiments along Bear
Creek in Oak Ridge indicated that aerating and watering
PCB-contaminated soil encouraged growth of micro- organisms that
could digest PCBs and convert them into less toxic substances. This
success led to additional investigations into bacterial
capabilities for digesting and converting other toxic materials.
For many years, researchers in the Health and Safety Research
Division analyzed the accuracy of personnel dosimeters for the
Laboratory and outside agencies. Other agencies mailed dosimeters
to the Laboratory, and the devices were checked by exposure to
measured radiation at the Health Physics Research Reactor. In
1989, the Laboratory opened the Radiation Calibration Laboratory
for checking dosimeters, radiobiological experiments, and related
purposes. This laboratory helped fill the research needs stymied by
closure of the Health Physics Research Reactor.
ADVANCED ENERGY SYSTEMS
Murray Rosenthal's advanced energy systems activities, including
the fossil energy, conservation, and fusion programs, were
threatened with loss of program support during the early Reagan
years. The Reagan administration dispensed with most of the fossil
energy program, severely curbing fossil energy research at the
Laboratory. However, after a brief and limited decline, the energy
conservation program began to grow again. The fusion program,
moreover, continued to progress and received DOE and congressional
approval to build two substantial plasma confinement experiments.
One of the ORNL fusion projects, known as the Advanced Toroidal
Facility (ATF), was the world's largest stellarator. The
stellarator concept had been investigated earlier in the United
States at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, but it was difficult
both to analyze and build. Most of the U.S. effort was devoted to
the newly invented tokamak. However, stellarator development was
continued elsewhere in the world, most notably in Germany, Japan,
and the Soviet Union. ORNL recommended to DOE that the prospects
for this fusion approach were promising enough that the United
States should reenter the field. After a period of review, DOE
concurred and the ATF was built at the Y-12 Plant on the site of
earlier tokamaks using major pieces of equipment remaining from
that program.
The other experiment that evolved from the Laboratory's ELMO Bumpy
Torus program was known as EBT-II. After a contract to build EBT-II
had been awarded, the Fusion Energy Division's refined analysis of
the original Elmo Bumpy Torus program indicated that EBT-II's
performance would not be as promising as predicted earlier. The
Laboratory recommended that its EBT-II program be terminated, and
a panel of fusion experts agreed.
Energy conservation, so popular during the Carter administration,
received a cold shoulder from the Reagan administration. One
critical official, declaring that energy conservation meant "being
too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter," contended that
higher energy prices would provide the only incentive needed for
conservation. The administration mandated sharp cuts in
conservation research funding, forcing the abrupt termination of
some energy conservation projects at the Laboratory. Congress,
however, restored some of the budget reductions, and the energy
conservation program flourished again during Reagan's second term.
In energy conservation research, Eric Hirst and his colleagues in
the Energy Division evaluated the benefits and costs of utility and
government conservation programs that offered homeowners
information on, or even incentives for, cutting the use of
electricity. They recommended continuing support for installation
of attic insulation and double-pane windows, for caulking and
weatherstripping, and for insulating water heaters.
In the 1980s the Laboratory managed a DOE program that developed
and tested technologies designed to make electric power systems
safer, more reliable, and more efficient. ORNL staff, led by Toim
Reddoch and Paul Gnadt, helped plan, design, and conduct a
successful automated distribution experiment for Athens, Tennessee.
The experiment was a milestone in changing the patterns of
electricity use, or load management, which was first explored at
ORNL by Hugh Long.
As another example, David Greene and associates in the Energy
Division collected data on the use of energy for transportation.
They developed models for predicting how much energy would be used
under various transportation scenarios, such as increasing fuel
efficiency of new cars and using "smart" cars to help drivers avoid
congested areas and reach their destinations faster.
Laboratory studies of improved building insulation continued, and
George Courville, Michael Kuliasha, and Bill Fulkerson sought the
creation of a Roof Research Center. This program, initiated in 1985
as a cooperative effort of DOE and the building industry, measured
transfer of heat through roofing structures, assessed how
structures reflected or absorbed solar energy, and projected how
long the structures would last. In climate simulation facilities
added to the Roof Research Center in 1987, instrumented roof
structures provided data for computer modeling of roofing designs.
At this unique industrial user facility directed by Paul Shipp and
Jeff Christian, roofing research identified significant convective
heat losses in common blown attic insulation and worked with the
building insulation industry to devise more efficient systems.
In cooperation with the National Bureau of Standards and industry,
Laboratory studies of improved home appliances produced significant
results as well, notably in development of absorption heat pumps
for heating and cooling that could be powered with natural gas
instead of electricity. The Energy Division's Michael Kuliasha and
Robert DeVault managed subcontracts with industrial firms to
improve and commercialize these heat pumps. Thanks to these and
other innovative ventures, the Laboratory's conservation and
renewable energy program recovered its losses; in fact, its annual
budget rose from $28 million at the start of the decade to $46
million by 1988.
In the nuclear power industry, proper welding is as critical to
safety as it is in most other industries--perhaps even more so. The
Welding and Brazing Group established at the Laboratory in 1950,
therefore, had many opportunities to improve welding technology and
gained worldwide recognition for its contributions.
National energy production has been hampered when poor welds shut
down nuclear power plants, coal-fired plants, and petroleum
refineries. In 1985, when Alex Zucker asked welding specialist Stan
David and physicist Lynn Boatner to review Laboratory research on
composite materials, they concluded that a multidisciplinary attack
on fundamental welding problems could be fruitful.
PHYSICAL SCIENCES
The Laboratory's physical science research efforts, under the
direction of Alex Zucker and later Bill Appleton, focused on
nuclear physics, chemistry, and materials science. Researchers used
the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility, neutron scattering
facilities at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, the Surface
Modification and Characterization Research Center, and other new
facilities.
Basic research on the chemistry of coal and solvent extraction
continued at the Laboratory, but the loss of most of the fossil
energy program took several divisions into the field of
bioconversion as a potential source of energy and improved waste
disposal management.
Bioconversion research sought to use microorganisms to convert
organic materials--sewage, solid wastes, woody biomass, coal, or
corn--into fuels. Rather than liquefying coal with heat and
pressure, for example, Charles Scott and teams in the Chemical
Technology Division turned to bioreactors in which microorganisms
convert coal to liquids. In another case, the Laboratory cooperated
with the A.E. Staley Corporation, a corn products company with a
plant near Loudon, Tennessee, to improve fermentation of corn using
a fluidized-bed bioreactor in which bacteria converted almost all
the sugar in corn into ethanol, which can be used as a petroleum
substitute.
Materials research rose to the forefront of the Laboratory's
efforts in physical sciences during the 1970s and 1980s. The
Laboratory was a pioneer in the development of new alloys,
high-temperature materials, specialized ceramics, and composite
materials. It also developed new techniques to modify surfaces of
materials, improving their properties. These successes placed it
in a position to contribute directly to industrial technology
applications.
The user facility attracting the greatest attention during the
1980s was the High Temperature Materials Laboratory (HTML). First
proposed in 1977 as part of DOE's Basic Energy Sciences Program, it
required a decade of efforts by Alex Zucker, Fred Young, John
Cathcart, Victor Tennery, James Weir, James Stiegler, Carl
McHargue, Ted Lundy, and associates to get the $20 million user
facility completed. Deferred by the Reagan administration in 1981,
persistent academic and industrial interest overcame the
administration's initial resistance and abruptly shifted the
project to the front burner. In that shift, the HTML was funded in
1983 by DOE's Energy Conservation Program, which had become a major
supporter of materials development. The award-winning HTML
building, which houses 49 laboratories and 72 offices for staff and
visitors, opened in April 1987.
The High Temperature Materials Laboratory fostered exactly the sort
of scientific research the Reagan administration demanded. Its
modern instruments, microscopes, furnaces, and other research
equipment have made possible the characterization, testing, and
processing of ceramics to help develop materials for the most
energy-efficient engines. Heat-resistant ceramic or intermetallic
components may be used for advanced highly efficient engines that
operate at elevated temperatures that would melt ordinary metal
alloys. The Laboratory's research in these fields promises to help
maximize the fuel efficiency of vehicle, aircraft, and rocket
engines. These materials also could promote development of
superconducting magnets, advanced electronic components, and
lightweight armor for tanks and other military applications.
In 1985 when President Reagan visited the University of Tennessee
in Knoxville, ORNL Director Herman Postma had an opportunity to
tell the president about Laboratory activities. Using its
development of wear-resistant artificial hip joints by ion
implantation as an example, Postma emphasized the Laboratory's new
role as a center for cooperative research with universities and
industry. Instead of closeting its research behind a fence, the
Laboratory had become a place that opened its doors to
collaboration and innovation. "We have large and unique facilities
in Oak Ridge, and we open them to users from throughout the
country," he told the president. "We have also helped the
University of Tennessee to establish centers of its own that are
privately funded by industry. Perhaps most importantly, we share
accomplishments."
Laboratory management made a bold decision in the mid-1980s that
changed the face of computing at ORNL. At the time Energy Systems
had a centralized Computing and Telecommunications organization,
and each division at ORNL assumed responsibility for its own
computers and scientific needs. Only the Engineering Physics and
Mathematics Division, directed by Fred Maienshein and later Robert
Ward, was conducting research on computing. ORNL management decided
to look beyond the supercomputers of the day and initiate an
aggressive program in the new architecture of parallel computing.
This decision laid the groundwork for the Laboratory to become a
winning competitor for a center of collaboration to solve computer
problems of national interest when parallel computing became the
wave of the future in the 1990s.
The Laboratory's responsiveness to a new set of national needs
brought it out of the doldrums of the early 1980s into renewed
prosperity. After setbacks during Reagan's first term, the
Laboratory's overall operating budget rose to $392 million in 1988,
slightly larger in constant dollars than it had been in 1980.
SEED MONEY SPREADS
Postma viewed the seed money program for exploratory studies as an
undiluted success. Since the program's beginnings in 1974, seed
money projects had brought about four dollars in new research
funding to the Laboratory for every dollar invested internally.
To build on this success, the Laboratory in 1984 established two
new exploratory research funding opportunities: a Director's
Research and Develop-ment Fund for larger projects and a Technology
Transfer Fund to encourage commercially promising research. It is
our "strong view," Postma asserted, "that the best judges of
technical opportunities are those doing the work and their peers."
Seed money projects provided grants of up to $100,000 for one
year's work, long enough for the work to produce results that could
attract attention and funding from a sponsor. The Director's
Research and Development Fund created in 1984 supported larger
projects, ranging from $100,000 to $600,000, selected from
proposals submitted by Laboratory divisions.
Among early projects supported by the Director's Fund was a project
managed by Don Trauger and James White to assess the commercial
feasibility of smaller, safer nuclear reactors. Promising designs
under study included liquid-metal-cooled reactors; process-inherent
ultimately safe (PIUS) reactors; small boiling-water reactors; and
high-temperature, gas-cooled, prismatic, and pebble-bed-fueled
reactors.
ROBOTICS
Another Director's Fund project of 1984 was the Center for
Engineering Systems Advanced Research (CESAR), which was
established in the Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division.
Headed by Charles Weisbin, this center focused on computer problem
solving through artificial intelligence resembling human reasoning.
The "reasoning" generated by machine-produced artificial
intelligence was to be exercised through remotely controlled robots
capable of working in such hostile environments as outer space,
battlefields, areas contaminated by radiation, or coal mines.
Since the days when the Laboratory recovered plutonium from the
Graphite Reactor and Waldo Cohn initiated radioisotopes production,
remote control of operations in hostile environments had been a
Laboratory specialty. Elaborate servomanipulators had been designed
and built to accomplish work from behind the protection afforded by
concrete or lead walls. Moreover, Mel Feldman, William Burch, and
leaders of the Fuel Recycle Division had become interested in using
robots to accomplish nuclear fuel reprocessing through
teleoperations from a distance--or, as Feldman put it, to project
human capabilities into hostile workplaces without the actual
presence of humans.
In the mid-1980s, the Laboratory formed a TeleRobotic task force,
managed by Sam Meacham, to acquire new programs and sponsors for
research in robotics and teleoperations. For this effort, the
Laboratory received support from NASA to develop the Man-Equivalent
TeleRobot for satellite refueling and space-station construction.
It also received funding from DOE's new Office of Civil Radioactive
Waste Management to assess applications of robotics and remote
technology for the proposed Monitored Retrievable Storage facility
that was intended to provide temporary storage for high-level
nuclear waste.
Members of the Fuel Recycle, Instrumentation and Controls, and
Engineering divisions contributed to the robotics program. Also,
the Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division broadened its
technological bases in robotics and artificial intelligence. These
initiatives led to the Robotics and Automation Council, the
precursor of the Laboratory's Robotics and Intelligent Systems
Program headed by Charles Weisbin and then by Joseph Herndon.
In 1985, the Laboratory began tests of a motor-driven robot that
could sense its surroundings through sonar and machine vision and
respond to computer commands relayed by radio. Investigators
Reinhold Mann, William Hamel, and associates improved the basic
design to create one of the world's most computationally powerful
robots. Nearly the size of a small car, it could sense its
surroundings, deal with unexpected events, and learn from
experience.
Acquiring funding from DOE, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, the Army, and the Air Force for robotics research,
the Laboratory formed the Robotics and Process Systems Division in
the early 1990s and initiated research aimed at devising remotely
controlled robots with "common sense." One early accomplishment was
the robotic mapping of waste-filled silos at DOE's Fernald, Ohio,
facility. The robotic effort helped DOE complete the project on
schedule and saved millions of dollars in the process.
In related work, the Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division
also engaged in "human factors" research to understand how to ease
the operator's mental work load to minimize errors in the control
of nuclear reactors. Such research was later used to evaluate
driver response to intelligent vehicles and highway systems.
In the words of one Laboratory scientist, robotics research
resembled a "Buck Rogers adventure." For children of today's
generation, Star Trek, not Buck Rogers, may be a more apt analogy
from the world of entertainment. But for both young and old, the
effort again proved science's unique ability to enliven the
imagination by turning the fantastic into reality.
CHERNOBYL'S FALLOUT
Oak Ridge, America, and all the world watched and worried in April
1986 as a radioactive cloud from the massive reactor failure at
Chernobyl in the Soviet Union circled the globe. The Three Mile
Island accident in Pennsylvania had taken place seven years before
but remained a fresh memory for many people concerned about the
safety of nuclear power. The far more serious accident at Chernobyl
renewed public fears and further dampened hope of reviving
commercial nuclear power in the United States. The Soviet tragedy
also caused a massive DOE reexamination of reactor safety
throughout the nation, including detailed inspection of reactors at
the agency's nuclear facilities. An industry that had been reeling
from mistakes and mishaps for two decades now went into a tailspin.
DOE funding for nuclear power research at the Laboratory had been
severely curtailed during the 1980s, even before the Chernobyl
accident. "ORNL used to be thought of as a nuclear energy
laboratory, a facility whose main mission was fission," Postma
remarked in 1986. "That obviously is not the case now." ORNL's
reactor research budget plummeted from $50 million in 1980 to $13
million in 1986, representing only 3% of the Laboratory's total
budget.
A few weeks after Chernobyl, Postma appointed a committee chaired
by Don Trauger to review safety at the aging High Flux Isotope
Reactor. After locating and assessing the data, the committee
learned the reactor's vessel had been embrittled more than
predicted by 20 years of neutron bombardment. In November 1986, the
Laboratory shut down the reactor and DOE kept it idle to conduct a
thorough investigation because of safety and management concerns.
These precautionary steps had severe impacts: they delayed neutron
scattering research and neutron activation analysis, slowed
irradiation testing of Japanese fusion reactor materials, and
reduced radioisotope production for medical research. The halt in
production of californium-252, an isotope vital for cancer research
and treatment and industrial uses, was especially critical.
Concerned about reactor safety management, DOE shut down all
reactors at the Laboratory in March 1987. To oversee a safe
restarting of at least some of the reactors, Fred Mynatt became the
associate director for Reactor Systems, and responsibility for
reactor operations was assigned to a new Research Reactors
Division. For the first time since its inception in 1943, however,
in 1987 ORNL had no nuclear reactors in operation.
For the Laboratory, the fallout from the Chernobyl accident had a
positive side because it stimulated reactor research supported by
DOE. ORNL scientists, for example, made calculations to determine
the time of the accident--information the Soviets would not reveal.
Relying on data on fission-product concentrations in Europe,
Laboratory researchers correctly predicted the chemical conditions
affecting the two releases of radioactivity from the stricken
reactor. In July 1986 ORNL assembled a team from several DOE
laboratories to model the Chernobyl reactor systems to better
understand the causes, course, and consequences of the accident.
The team concluded that the accident might not have happened if the
Soviet operators had thoroughly understood their reactor system.
FROM ARSENAL TO ENGINE
Although no longer strictly a nuclear laboratory, the multiprogram
laboratory at Oak Ridge during the 1980s savored its inheritance in
scientific research and experimentation. "The essence of a
laboratory is that it experiments," Postma said. "It explores, it
hurls itself against the limits of knowledge. In short, it tries.
Often it fails."
Still, the change in national administrations in 1981 and the
switch of contractor-operators in 1984 sparked a new phase of
research within the Laboratory. The cornerstone of this new age of
accomplishment was the expanding partnerships with industries and
universities. Between 1980 and 1988, the list of official DOE user
facilities at the Laboratory increased from 3 to 12 and the number
of guest researchers tripled. In 1992, 4400 guest researchers
worked at the Laboratory; 30% of these guests came from industry,
compared with 5% in 1980.
Technology transfer became the second highlight of the Laboratory's
surprising renaissance during the Reagan and then Bush
administrations. By transferring the Laboratory's scientific and
technological advances speedily into the private sector, the
administration and Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., hoped to
boost the national economy and improve the competitiveness of U.S.
products in international markets. As President George Bush summed
it up during a 1992 visit to Oak Ridge, the multiprogram laboratory
was being transformed from "the arsenal of democracy into the
engine of economic growth."
As the Cold War fades into history, the Laboratory's ability to
negotiate the challenging transformation from military arsenal to
economic engine is likely to determine how well it serves the
nation's interest in the 21st century and beyond.
SIDEBARS
ION IMPLANTATION OF MATERIALS
What do computer chips and artificial hips have in common? Both
have been significantly improved by the application of ion beam
processing, which had its beginnings in Oak Ridge.
Ion beam technology was first employed on a large scale at the Y-12
Plant in the electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes for the
atomic bomb that helped end World War II. Since the mid-1940s, ORNL
has made major advances in developing ion sources for physics and
fusion experiments and in using ion beams for materials processing.
Using calutrons, accelerators, and other devices, researchers
developed techniques for producing high-current beams of ions of
numerous elements for use by industry for ion
implantation--injecting ions (charged atoms) near the surface of a
material surface to modify its properties.
ORNL helped the electronics industry when Gerald Alton and others
used the calutrons to show that electrical junctions can be formed
in silicon by the direct implantation of boron and phosphorus ions.
Thousands of semiconductor samples were implanted in Oak Ridge for
industry in the early development of integrated circuits for
electronic applications.
The 1962 discovery by ORNL's Mark Robinson and Dean Oen of ion
channeling and its effects in crystals greatly improved the
understanding of the interaction of ion beams with solids and
advanced the use of ion beams for characterizing, analyzing, and
processing materials. The ion channeling effect was discovered
theoretically by a computer simulation that showed ions shooting
through the "channels" between rows and planes of atoms in
crystalline materials. The actual existence of ion channeling was
later demonstrated experimentally at a Canadian laboratory and
later at ORNL.
The channeling effect is critical in ion implantation because it
affects ion depth in crystals, which is crucial for making
effective semiconductor chips that form the heart of laptop
computers, automatic cameras, and other electronic devices. Because
of the importance of the crystal lattice in the transport of ions
in solids and in radiation damage phenomena, Robinson developed the
computer code MARLOWE, which continues to be the standard for the
simulation of ion beam interactions with crystalline matter.
In the early 1970s, Bill Appleton initiated an experimental effort
using ion beams for implantation and other processes for modifying
semiconductors, metals, insulators, and ceramics to improve their
surface properties. Since then, ORNL researchers have used ion
implantation to produce new materials for electronic, optical, and
tribological uses. New implantation techniques have been developed
to deposit thin films and fabricate improved optical waveguides.
Artificial hip joints can last much longer if implanted with
nitrogen ions, according to ORNL research. Jim Williams, Bill
Appleton Ray Buchanon (guest scientist from the University of
Alabama at Birmingham), and others in the Solid State Division
discovered that implanting surgical alloys used in prosthetic
implants made them tougher and more resistant to wear by corrosion.
The technology was developed and transferred to industry. By the
early 1990s ion implantation was used on about half of the
artificial hips and knees sold in the United States, with a
potential savings of about $100 million a year by preventing rework
of failed joints.
Because of the enthusiastic following of collaborators from
universities and industry, ORNL in 1980 formed the Surface
Modification and Characterization Research Center. Ion implantation
facilities were expanded, and by 1990 the center had four
accelerators for high-current, high-energy implantation and
low-energy ion beam deposition. Each year about 100 scientists from
universities, industries, and national laboratories engage in
cooperative research projects at the center. Through research and
collaboration, ORNL's work in ion implantation can be expected to
be a source of many new exciting applications in science and
technology.
RAISING THE QUALITY OF ROOF RESEARCH
During the mid-1980s DOE established its Roof Research Center at
the Laboratory to cooperate with industry in the development of
more energy-efficient and durable roofs for homes and businesses.
The idea for such a center was conceived at the Laboratory by Jim
Robinson, and George Courville and Dick Huntley guided the design,
construction, and initial operation of the facility. Researchers at
this unique user facility, with industrial sponsors and advisors,
test roofing systems in a climate simulator.
The Center's research improves understanding of the thermal and
physical characteristics of various roofing systems and insulating
materials. This information helps identify roofing materials and
insulations that last longer, hold more heat, and use materials
that are less damaging to the environment.
For example, ORNL researchers have determined that some types of
blown-in insulation in buildings in the northern United States
permit air movement within the insulation, resulting in natural
convection. Compared with conduction, convection allows more heat
to escape from within a building to the outside. The researchers
confirmed that natural convective heat loss in some loosefill
fiberglass insulations can be responsible for as much as half of
the heat loss at very low temperatures. As a result of this Roof
Research Center achievement, the private firm Energy Savings
Solutions developed a thin plastic-wrapped fiberglass batt that can
cover existing insulation to nearly eliminate convection losses. In
addition, Minnesota improved its state building code to require
insulation manufacturers to guarantee the performance of their
products during the coldest weather expected.
The Roof Research Center is also being used to determine how
ozone-safe roof insulation responds to aging as heat flows through
it. The roof foam used for thermal tests contains
hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), which do not persist nearly as
long in the stratosphere as ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs). One outcome of this work may be an improved HCFC-blown
roofing insulation that is nearly as efficient as CFC-blown
insulation in keeping wanted heat in and unwanted heat out. As a
result, it may be possible to speed the elimination of CFC
insulation for roofs and help preserve the stratospheric ozone
layer that protects humans from hazardous solar radiation.
Providing industry with unparalleled opportunities for testing roof
system responses to precipitation, stresses, and energy flows, the
center establishes new standards for roofing research. Owners of
new buildings or new roofs benefit directly from the new standards
and the nation gains an improved energy and environmental outlook.
QUEST FOR FAIL-SAFE REACTORS
Light-water reactors require redundant and expensive emergency
systems to prevent fuel melting if they lose coolant. During the
1980s, citizens worldwide expressed increased concerns about the
reliability and safety of emergency cooling systems.
Laboratory researchers concluded that complex cooling systems would
be unnecessary in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. In 1988
John Cleveland of ORNL's Engineering Technology Division found
merit in this conclusion when he participated in landmark safety
tests at Germany's Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchs Reaktor (AVR). To
observe gas-cooled reactor performance after sudden coolant loss,
researchers deliberately stopped the coolant flow to the reactor.
The reactor ran for five days without any coolant other than
natural convection and conduction to its steam generator and
through its walls. The test demonstrated the reliability of an
inherently safe reactor.
This demonstration augured well for fundamentally safe and
economical nuclear power, although a commercially viable unit
remains years away. Oak Ridge and German scientists continued to
collaborate on designing larger modular high-temperature gas-cooled
reactors based on the inherently safe principles illustrated at the
AVR.
In the United States, the Department of Energy has initiated
studies of 350-megawatt (thermal) modular high-temperature
gas-cooled reactors to produce electricity and tritium for defense
purposes.
NEUTRON SCATTERING RESEARCH: BORN IN OAK RIDGE
The use of neutron scattering to obtain valuable information on the
properties of materials was pioneered in Oak Ridge. Ernest Wollan
installed a modified two-axis X-ray diffractometer at a beam port
of the Graphite Reactor in November 1945, and he was joined in this
work several months later by Clifford Shull. The research by these
two scientists and their associates laid the foundation for
widespread application of neutron scattering techniques throughout
the world and for the preeminent position of these techniques in
many areas of scientific research. Their first two-axis neutron
diffractometer is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, D.C.
Wollan and Shull, both of the Laboratory's Physics Division, were
well prepared for their pioneering efforts in this new field of
research. Both had strong backgrounds in X-ray physics and X-ray
diffraction techniques, and they quickly recognized the potential
of neutron scattering for nuclear and solid-state studies. Within
a few years, they and their associates had established neutron
scattering as a very valuable, quantitative experimental technique;
demonstrated the importance of neutron scattering in determining
the positions of hydrogen atoms in materials; observed the
existence of ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism; reported
fundamental results on ferromagnetic materials; and measured the
nuclear scattering amplitudes for more than 60 elements and
isotopes.
The determination of hydrogen positions in materials was of such
interest to ORNL crystallographers that a separate program was
established in the Chemistry Division under Henri Levy to study
hydrogen bonding in crystals. Levy and Selmer Peterson were
pioneers in developing the neutron scattering technique for
detailed structural analysis of single crystals. Bill Busing,
Harold Smith, Ray Ellison, Dan Danford, George Brown, Carroll
Johnson, Paul Agron, Bill Thiessen, and Al Narten joined the
Chemistry Division program at later dates. As the program moved to
more advanced reactors, the experiments shifted to more complicated
materials and to more sophisticated equipment. Automatically
controlled instruments to orient samples and to position detectors
were designed and built, and significant information was obtained
on atomic structure and bonding in a large number of materials. The
first minicomputer-controlled diffractometer was used in this
research, and computer programs were developed for data analysis,
which were rapidly adopted by crystallographers throughout the
world.
In the Physics Division, Wollan and Shull were joined by Wallace
Koehler in 1949 and Mike Wilkinson in 1950, and this group helped
to explain a variety of phenomena in magnetic materials. Shull left
ORNL for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955, and
shortly afterward Joe Cable and Ray Child joined the program. In
the late 1950s and early 1960s, this group discovered the rich
array of exotic magnetic structures in the rare earth metals and
alloys--one of the most significant and exciting achievements in
the history of neutron scattering. Ralph Moon joined the group in
1963, shortly before Wollan retired and the group was transferred
into the Solid State Division.
When the Oak Ridge Research Reactor (ORR) began operating in 1958,
ORNL had a brief edge over other research facilities in neutron
source intensity. In addition to the programs in crystallography
and magnetism, in 1962 Mike Wilkinson and Harold Smith, both then
in the Solid State Division, initiated a program of inelastic
scattering to investigate the dynamic properties of atoms in
solids. They were soon joined by Robert Nicklow and Herbert Mook.
The group constructed a triple-axis spectrometer at the ORR, which
was based on an instrument developed at the Chalk River Laboratory
in Canada.
With the startup of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) in 1966,
ORNL once again had the most intense neutron source for research in
the world. This high intensity, together with state-of-the-art
instrumentation at the four HFIR beam ports, allowed experiments to
be performed that had not been possible previously. Eventually,
each of the beam ports was equipped with at least two instruments,
and some of them at the time of installation were unique in the
world.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, strong efforts were made by ORNL
and DOE to permit scientists from other organizations to use the
HFIR facilities for both cooperative and proprietary research. The
National Center for Small-Angle Scattering Research, which was
strictly for the benefit of users, was established under an
interagency agreement between DOE and the National Science
Foundation (NSF); it included the design, construction, and
operation of a sophisticated small-angle neutron scattering (SANS)
facility at the HFIR using NSF funds. Wallace Koehler and Robert
Hendricks were leaders in the project, and Koehler became the first
director of the national center. George Wignall, who later became
the national center's director, and John Hayter, who is scientific
director of the Advanced Neutron Source project, came to ORNL to
use the SANS facility for the study of polymers and colloids. In
addition to the national center, a more formal user's program was
initiated for all ORNL neutron scattering facilities, a special
cooperative program was started with scientists from Ames
Laboratory, and DOE established a cooperative neutron scattering
program at ORNL with Japanese scientists as part of the U.S.-Japan
Agreement on Cooperation in Research and Development in Science and
Technology. The programs hosted about 150 users a year until late
1986.
In November 1986, the HFIR was shut down for more than three years
because of concerns about safety and management of the reactor. The
user programs were suspended until the summer of 1990, but interest
in performing research on the HFIR instruments has increased
rapidly since then. Unfortunately, the neutron scattering
instruments are old, and the best facilities for research are found
in Western Europe. The Advanced Neutron Source, which is planned
for ORNL, would provide the highest-intensity neutron beams in the
world, furnish new state-of-the-art instruments, accommodate over
1000 users annually, and undoubtedly return leadership in this very
important field to the United States. The neutron is a unique and
remarkable probe for studying materials, and neutron scattering
research provides information that is essential in development of
new and better materials for many technologies. The Advanced
Neutron Source would permit these important investigations to
continue well into the next century.
THE STATES OF THE LABORATORY
In 1951, while serving as ORNL's research director, Alvin Weinberg
offered the first "State of the Laboratory" address. Since then,
Laboratory directors have mused over the Laboratory's
accomplishments, direction, people, and future in an annual talk
that has become a tradition. Early addresses were classified,
subsequent addresses were attended by invitation only, and in 1966,
the public was invited for the first time.
If the directors were to collectively ponder the activities and
nature of the Laboratory, they might agree on the maxim, "The more
things change, the more they stay the same."
Consider, for example, the Laboratory's history of concern for
environmental management discussed by directors Weinberg and Herman
Postma. Commenting on Laboratory activities in 1969, "the year of
the environment," Weinberg wrote:
The nuclear energy laboratories have, for obvious reasons,
been concerned with the environment since the beginning of the
Manhattan Project. Handling large quantities of radioactivity
without endangering the biosphere and particularly without
endangering man was part of our task in 1943 when ORNL was
started, and it remains an important part of our job. Our
concern with the environment gradually broadened, and now some
10 percent of everything we do at ORNL is related to the
environment.
Postma, given the benefit of hindsight, later reflected on these
same environmental management activities. In 1989 he said:
[There is] growing concern about environmental abuses that occurred
over the years...We understand the problems (and) we now know how
to solve them. . . Our ability to understand, manage, and resolve
environmental problems has been demonstrated but it has required a
tremendous effort and has been costly.
On another score, Acting Director Floyd Culler called 1973 the
"time of transition" and spoke about the following changes that had
rippled through the Laboratory in the wake of the energy crisis.
If I believed in destiny, I would be tempted to think that ORNL was
predestined to play its most important roles in the next scenes of
the great energy dilemma. Destiny or not, we now have the
challenge to participate in the most difficult and complex research
and development program ever to be proposed. I think that we are
ready for the task, but ready or not, we shall be asked.
Change is not always easy, however. When in 1972 the Laboratory was
increasingly in the public eye, Weinberg wrote:
We find ourselves increasingly at those critical intersections
of technology and society which underlie some of our country's
primary social concerns. During 1972 these involvements have
boiled over into a series of incidents that make many of us
long for the good old days when what we did at ORNL was
separate plutonium, measure cross sections, and develop
instruments for detecting radiation.
Twenty years later, Alvin Trivelpiece offered a similar observation
in his 1992 address but with an additional proviso: "You can't go
back again."
Many of us look back with certain fondness or nostalgia for the
good old days of the AEC, but I don't think there is any way we can
work as we did back then. The Laboratory staff has learned to
operate in its present circumstances. The AEC and the ERDA are
gone, and the old ways of doing business are not coming back.
The American public is more concerned about the environment than
ever before. Today, the public does not trust DOE. Members of the
public want independent verification of the many facts we generate,
and their demand for more audits and oversight will continue. Such
audits are intrusive, invasive, and a fact of life. We are going to
have to learn to work in this climate and compete for scientific
and technical programs at the same time. It is not easy now, and it
is not likely to get any easier.
(keywords: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, history)
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Date Posted: 2/22/94 (ktb)