State of the Laboratory -- 1993

Normally, we open this meeting with the Argonne symbol on the screen. Today, we have chosen the Chinese character for "crisis."

One reason is to emphasize that this is a very different year than we have faced in more than a decade. The other reason is that the Chinese character for crisis combines the signs for "threat" and the one for "opportunity."

We can foresee both in our immediate future.

The threat is that the new administration might wipe out the single largest program at Argonne. Along with it, we would lose about 1,500 jobs. A broader threat is that all research funding is harder to come by.

The opportunities are just as real. The emphasis of a new administration plays directly into some of Argonne's major strengths. These include environmental research, support of industry -- R&D easily perceived as useful to the average citizen -- and support of science and math education.

Our crisis is not evident in budget figures through 1993. We continue the healthy growth that has characterized the last five years. In fact, that $425 million for operations in '93 is from my super conservative Chief Financial Officer. If I believe the most recent estimate from the division Directors, we will be spending up to $492 million.

That is a gain of roughly 10 percent over the previous year. It compares very favorably with the average increase in research throughout the United States in '93, which is only about 2.9 percent.

Integral Fast Reactor

We had been told that DOE would order the shutdown of our western facilities by May 1 and reprogram this year's budget toward closing costs of that facility. We don't believe that will happen, because it would require approval of four congressional committees.

However, in the '94 budget proposal to Congress, the Integral Fast Reactor is zeroed out, except for about $22 million for a minimum level of pyroprocessing work at our fuel cycle facility. Another $59.2 million would be to shut down Argonne-West facilities. Even that is about $23 million lower than we estimate it would take in '94 shut-down costs.

Argonne has proposed to the Congress that funding be provided to continue our research. That viewpoint has been strongly endorsed by editorials and news items in such publications as the Christian Science Monitor, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Crain's Chicago Business and the Portland Oregonian.

We have also received strong support from the Illinois and Idaho congressional delegations, our neighbors, our employees and their friends.

Of course the question arises as to why was this proposal made to eliminate the IFR?

It isn't the technical record of the project. For six years we have an unbroken string of successes.

First, we proved the safety of the IFR concept by demonstrating it shuts itself down without mechanical or human intervention when faced with accident conditions like those that caused the Three Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl disaster.

Then, we proved the economy of the concept by running reactor fuel to 20 percent nuclear burnup compared to the five percent average for current commercial reactors.

This year, we just demonstrated the ability of the IFR to recycle its own waste by casting long-lived actinides found in nuclear waste into fuel and putting them back in the reactor to generate electricity.

We have started to determine how the IFR can recycle used fuel from commercial light-water reactors. And we know that we can burn plutonium dismantled from American and Soviet weapons.

The reason for the cutback isn't financial. It will cost us more to shut down the Argonne-West facilities than to complete the research.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this cutback is a payoff to those people on the environmentalist fringe who believe that the only good nuclear program -- even the most successful -- is a dead one. If they are successful, they can in one stroke shut down America's last full-capability reactor R&D center at the same time that they cut off what the National Academy of Sciences has termed the most promising advanced-reactor program in the nation.

Ironically, since Argonne is still recognized as the top reactor center in the United States, we continue research on advanced design for an expert system to monitor sensors on critical operating components of nuclear power houses. And we have other work coming in on the safety of eastern European reactors.

Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about our ability to keep alive both the IFR and Argonne's role as the nation's reactor center.

Advanced Photon Source

However, I'm not a bit cautious in my optimism about the Advanced Photon Source.

We have received a new funding profile that increases the total estimated cost of the project by $12 million to $468 million, recognizing the cost added by funding delays in past years. The 1994 budget also includes $18.7 million in "catch up" funds to partially make up for that slippage. `Ninety-four will be APS's biggest spending year.

It follows a year of benchmark achievements. The final concrete pour was completed 21 months and 54,600 cubic yards of concrete after it began.

Argonne and the Department of Energy have taken beneficial occupancy of the linac-injection building, the early assembly area for magnets, the utility building and the booster-synchrotron tunnel. Only two major technical areas remain officially unoccupied.

We have made comparable progress in organizing the future users of the light source. The major users will be members of collaborative access teams, or CATs, each one responsible for building, operating and paying for at least one APS sector.

Of those teams, 15 received approval on their proposals to build beam lines. Eight have had their conceptual designs approved. And two have submitted management plans for review.

These CATs currently represent more than 500 individuals, 72 different universities, 18 research laboratories and 28 industrial firms. They come from 29 states and six foreign countries.

We still face three major challenges. One is to get DOE to fund a basic-energy-sciences research center. That would provide primary access for a lot of Argonne scientists to the synchrotron.

The second is an instrumentation initiative that will assure prompt startup of the CATs' beam lines. And the third is to get state support for the lodging facility.

Energy, environmental and biological research

However, we did manage to get in the '94 budget a line item for creation of the Structural Biology Center at the photon source. That is just one of several areas that promise future growth for the disciplines currently administered under the energy, environmental and biological research group.

Another is our pioneering effort to develop a method to speed the identification of gene patterns in DNA, the blueprint found in every cell that determines hereditary characteristics. We have set a record of one million hybridization measurements in one day. Our goal is 10 million per day.

We also have opened up an entire new field of activity for national labs: to tie advanced research to the improvement of life in the inner-city. To do so, we have formed a partnership with a community self-help organization called Bethel New Life in the West Garfield Park area of Chicago.

Through it, we will use Argonne's expertise to make abandoned industrial sites more attractive to potential buyers by characterizing and certifying of their environmental status.

We can develop more energy-efficient, low-cost housing. We expect to upgrade current job sources, like their waste recycling center. We can train local residents in the technical skills involved for remediation, construction and waste recycling. And we offer science and mathematics support to local schools.

We are under pressure from the government and the public to show that the research we conduct -- and which they pay for -- is relevant to the "real world." West Garfield demonstrates that point dramatically.

Another unconventional laboratory for Argonne is the 34,000-square-mile area of the Great Plains. There, we are administering the world's first major field study of cloud formation and global climate change. We are also developing computer capabilities to handle the flood of information brought in from these monitors.

At the other extreme -- underground contamination -- pioneer efforts are succeeding in characterizing waste buried in the earth without digging into those areas and purifying contaminated ground water with sound waves.

The new administration's interest in alternate motor fuels is reflected both in Argonne research and in our lab fleet, which now includes vehicles powered by methane, ethanol and natural gas.

Physical research

Some of our growth will be in traditional areas -- but with non-traditional tools. For example, we are receiving $1.7 million through 1994 to develop ways to carry out experiments in biology, physics and chemistry on advanced computers.

Massively parallel computing capability is key to these initiatives and to other major future growth areas. A big step forward into that future is being accomplished at this moment. We are assembling on site the first 32-processor version of IBM's new massively parallel SP-1 computer.

Conventional computers contain a single processor that solves problems one step at a time. But parallel computers have many processors, enabling them to break huge problems into many parts and work simultaneously -- or "in parallel" -- on each part.

Argonne has put together a consortium of industrial, university and government researchers to use the machine on what have been called "Grand Challenge" problems. These are problems with broad scientific and economic impact that require unprecedented computational power for solution.

We have leapfrogged some of our sister laboratories by creating this partnership with "Big Blue," the dominant computer maker in the world. We are also in some pretty good industrial and academic company with this consortium. Those advantages, along with the parallel computing expertise that we have developed over many years, are good reasons to expect significant growth in this area.

Most of you are aware of the important role that the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source has played as a user facility at Argonne. We are now engaged in a design competition for the creation of an advanced pulsed neutron source, which will provide 75 times more neutrons than the IPNS and top every existing source in the world.

In this competition, we enjoy cost savings by using existing physical plant at the old Zero Gradient Synchrotron complex. And we enjoy a global reputation in both technology innovation and user-friendly administration.

Meanwhile, our other accelerator systems have done well in the '93 budget and the '94 proposal. ATLAS, with its new Fragment Mass Analyzer and APEX target areas, is being funded at a higher level. And our experimental Wakefield Research center -- which raises particles to higher energies in shorter distances than conventional accelerators -- continues to establish itself as the primary national center for such research.

Technology transfer and educational outreach

During the presidential campaign, the two parties were out-promising each other on tech transfer and science and math education. In both areas, Argonne continues to be a leader.

In the two years since tech transfer formally became a mission of the laboratory, industry contacts and requests for assistance have increased from about 25 per month to more than 200 per month. Industry visitors to the laboratory have increased from 400 per year to more than 4,400.

We have signed 29 cooperative research and development agreements, or CRADAs, worth $25 million, and expect a total cumulative contract value of $100 million in fiscal 1993. In addition, Argonne has signed 48 cost-shared agreements worth $17 million under the High-Temperature Superconductivity Pilot Center.

Many Argonne initiatives in science and math education have gone national. One is the Science Bowl competitive quiz for high school teams. Another is the New Explorers television program.

Among new DEP Initiatives this year will be an effort to truck sophisticated laboratory equipment to inner-city schools for one-day demonstrations.

Non-programmatic successes

Whatever programmatic opportunities arise, our support operations have been upgraded in recent years to enable us to exploit them.

We have invested about $22.4 million over the last 10 years in new buildings for security, electronics, the Visitor Reception Center, transportation and child care. Add to that $31.2 million to upgrade buildings and roofs, $48.1 million for upgrading infrastructure -- like roads, steam system and water lines -- and $11.8 million for compliance, health and safety improvements.

Our expenditures in environment, safety and health total $96.8 million since the beginning of intensive effort in 1987. I believe this money has been well invested to make Argonne a safer and healthier environment for our employees.

We are also decontaminating and decommissioning some old eyesores, like Experimental Boiling Water Reactor, and bringing our entire waste management system up to modern-day standards.

There are still some areas where we have a lot to do. One of them is greater participation by women and minorities in opportunities at Argonne.

Over the last five years, the percentage of women in the Argonne work force has risen from 25.1 to 27.1 percent. The percentage of women managers has gone from 6.3 percent in 1988, to 10.9 percent in 1991, to 12.9 percent in 1992. And we now have appointed our first woman division director since 1950.

These figures represent progress, but give little cause for satisfaction. We will be putting even more intensive effort on advancing women, racial minorities and cultural diversity, generally, at Argonne.

And finally, we have entered into a new quality-management program at Argonne. You will be hearing more about this effort to improve performance through the participation of the people on the job in providing ideas and making decisions.

Threats and opportunities

Let me summarize the state of the lab by saying that any change can represent threat or opportunity. We don't know precisely all the threats or opportunities the new, still-evolving administration brings. But we will meet them.

For example, DOE is in the process of re-organizing. We expect to change our organization to respond better to the new system. This is part of on-going renewal process at Argonne.

We have shown competence in adjusting to change in the past. I believe we will continue to demonstrate that competence in the future.