SNS challenge SNS challenge |
| Bill Appleton, associate director for the Spallation Neutron Source. Photo by Jim Richmond |
y all accounts, January 21 was a good day. The highlight, of course, was the visit to ORNL by Vice President Al Gore, who pledged administration support for the Spallation Neutron Source, the major neutron science facility that the Lab aims to build on the Oak Ridge Reservation by the year 2005.
Gore's stopover, and the $157 million he announced for the SNS in the President's FY 1999 budget request, made it an especially good day for Associate Director Bill Appleton. Among ORNL's associate directors, Appleton's mission is the most focused: Get the SNS built, and built at Oak Ridge. It's almost a do-or-die mission.
A concern among Lab administrators is that ORNL's lack of a big new science facility makes it a vulnerable target when budgets get tight. With the SNS a reality, ORNL will be in a much stronger position to argue its case as a scientific institution vital to the national interest.
"I believe that the SNS is the most important project at the Lab," Appleton says. "All the other DOE energy research labs have a large anchor facility except ORNL—Argonne has its Advance Photon Source, Berkeley has the Advanced Light Source and Brookhaven has its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider."
So it becomes a question of "what makes ORNL indispensable?"
ORNL's previous push for a large facility, the Advanced Neutron Source, fell by the wayside largely because of its $3 billion-plus price tag. The ANS was also a nuclear reactor, which handicapped it politically. The SNS, on the other hand, is a particle accelerator, a more accepted technology. Estimated at $1.3 billion, it's also going to be far less expensive.
The administration's budget request represents a milestone of political support that the ANS never enjoyed. That's probably why Appleton was smiling so broadly in those photos with the V.P. He also may have been pleased that the nation was taking steps toward getting something it needs—a state-of-the-art facility for neutron science.
"One of the most unique things DOE does is design, construct and operate major scientific facilities—R&D can be done somewhere else," Appleton says. "And usually the motivation for DOE to build a major facility comes from an established need in the scientific community.
"The neutron community has been pushing for a new source. But it was the dogged persistence of ORNL staff that stimulated the studies and convinced DOE that a new neutron source was needed."
One realization after the ANS died on the budget table was that ORNL probably couldn't make the SNS happen alone. The SNS will be the product of a five-laboratory consortium—Los Alamos, Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven and ORNL. The arrangement brings in expertise resident at all five labs. It also makes SNS more viable politically.
"The five-lab consortium is the key," Appleton says. "Without it, we wouldn't be in the running. It makes sense from a technical point of view: It allows us to end up with 200 people who know how to operate and upgrade the facility, while the builders will remain with their home labs.
And with five states involved, it also makes sense from a political point of view.
"We're in about as good a position as we can be at this stage. We started with $8 million in FY 1997, then got the $23 million for conceptual design and are now looking toward the $157 million. The ANS never got that kind of commitment and money. Our congressional representatives also have been very important. If Rep. Wamp and Sens. First and Thompson hadn't stood up in 1996, we wouldn't have gotten that first $8 million for the SNS."
At the same time, a green light for the SNS could be the all-time example of "getting what you wished for." Constructing the SNS will be an enormous and pressure-laden task.
"Ramping up that quickly means a management challenge the Lab hasn't faced in 30 years," Appleton says. "The key is in hiring more good people and getting them to work. At the same time we're ramping up toward a 2005 completion, we've got to get it approved by Congress. Seven years sounds like a long time, but it's not. And without the full $157 million to start construction, we can't stay on schedule. That will make costs go up, and that can be the kiss of death.
"We have a Herculean task ahead of us, but we have really good people working on the project—José Alonso, John Cleaves, Tony Gabriel and Herb Mook lead important efforts—and we're in the process of hiring a lot more people."
Appleton's career at ORNL started in 1967 in Solid State Physics, doing research in ion beam interactions with solids. He entered the management arena and eventually became associate director of Advanced Materials, Physical and Neutron Sciences. He guided the effort to get the ANS built, and when the SNS was made its own directorate, he moved over from AMPNS to take the helm.
The Appletons have become a very prominent household in the community. His son Bill heads a nationally known high-tech software firm, Cyberflix, and is taking on a growing role in Knoxville's economic development; son Tom is in a rock band that recently signed a national recording contract.
Appleton laughs that in the space of one week he was in the news because of the Gore visit, son Bill was featured in People and Southern Living magazines, and another son Tom was featured in the Knoxville paper's entertainment section.
If Pop winds up least famous of all, it probably won't matter. "I had a great time doing research, and I enjoyed being AD for AMPNS. We did a lot of great stuff. The only reason I'm in management at all is so I can give something back."
If ORNL gets the SNS, Bill Appleton will indeed have gotten his wish. —B.C.
