State of the Laboratory -- 1998

The following is the full text of Interim Laboratory Director Frank Fradin's "State of the Laboratory" speech, delivered on Sept. 23.

Thank you for coming this morning, whether you are here at the Advanced Photon Source, or watching this on one of several television or computer monitors at Argonne-East and Argonne-West.

Thank you too for your hard work during the fiscal year now ending. As you will hear in a moment, the state of this Laboratory is very good. Each of you helped make that happen.

And a personal "thank you" to everyone here from me.

Several months ago, when President Sonnenschein asked me to take on the job of interim laboratory director, I knew I would need cooperation and support from the entire Argonne team. I accepted the job because I felt certain I would get that cooperation and support. And I was right.

Together, we are again proving how much a good team can achieve.

I want you to know that I appreciate that — and you.

This would be a good time to take a moment to fill you in on the search for a permanent lab director. As those of you who were able to attend the search committee's open meetings earlier this month already know, the committee is aiming to complete the search next March. Then they expect to make recommendations to the Board of Governors. The Board of Governors will make the final selection with the concurrence of DOE.

The recent DOE decision to extend the university's contract to operate Argonne for another five years is key to a successful search process. As Hugo Sonnenschein said when he announced that decision, much of the credit goes to you for outstanding accomplishments.

As to how long the lab director search might last, "best guess" at this point is that the process will be complete and a permanent lab director onboard by next July.

I hope you are as pleased as I am that the search committee is building a candidate profile based in part on conversations and meetings with Argonne managers, senior scientists, employees, and even local community leaders. We all will be wellserved by this inclusive approach.

Brightening picture

Whoever the new lab director will be, he or she will benefit from a brightening R&D picture in Washington as well as at Argonne.

Just a few years ago, the talk was not about whether the federal R&D budget would be cut, but by how much … and where. Argonne's budget and employment were in gradual decline, rumors abounded that nationallab contracts would be routinely competed, and the future of DOE itself was murky.

Today, things are much different.

Washington is contemplating budget surpluses, some Congressmen are talking about actually increasing the federal investment in R&D, DOE's future looks brighter — though its achievements still are not widely known — and the department has a dynamic new Secretary. Bill Richardson is a man known and respected at the highest level of this government, and those of other nations.

Focusing on Argonne, last year we finally halted our long decline in annual operating budget. The FY98 budget is within one percent of FY97's. What's more, for FY99 we actually are forecasting a modest increase — a little over two percent. My objective is to make that FY99 increase the first step in a long, upward trend for Argonne.

We also have managed to slow the rate of decline in our employment, although we have yet to turn that around.

During the last, financially difficult five or so years, Argonne suffered less overall than most other multiprogram national labs, and we seem to be rebounding sooner.

That didn't happen by accident.

It happened because of who we are, how we work, and what we're good at.

I can illustrate what I mean by telling you what Secretary Richardson said when he announced the decision to extend the Argonne contract. He said, "I would like to congratulate the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory staff for their critically important contributions to science and excellent management over the term of this contract. This standard of performance gives us the assurance that the next five years of this relationship will reflect similar excellence in meeting our science and technology challenges and delivering benefits to the American people."

To me, the key phrases in that statement are:

• Critically important contributions to science
• Excellent management
• Standard of performance
• Excellence in meeting science and technology challenges, and
• Delivering benefits to the American people.

In fact, we can fairly say that, among the DOE multi-program labs, Argonne is as well-positioned as any lab to cope with the future ... and better-positioned than most. Let me give you just a few reasons why:

n In the Advanced Photon Source, we already have one of today's premier research facilities, and we are extremely good at foreseeing tomorrow's facility needs and proposing ways to meet them.

• We are heavily invested in basic research.
• We remain a strong center of competence in nuclear energy and nuclear waste treatment technology.
• We are a dynamic national leader in computational science.
• Our energy and environmental science programs are strong.
• The State of Illinois and the Illinois Congressional delegation are totally supportive.
• Our geographic location at the nation's crossroads could not be better.
• And our exceptionally broad base of research programs and capabilities serves us well. What's more, we already have core competencies in most of the key R&D areas which will help shape this nation's future — among Argonne's major initiatives are scientific simulation, structural genomics, a fourthgeneration light source, the exotic beam facility, transportation, nuclear energy research and nonproliferation, biotechnology and environmental technologies.

Argonne's research ability also is widely known, and widely regarded.

For example, we are one of the top 10 institutions in the world in physical science citations, according to Institute for Scientific Information.

Argonne ranks eighth in the listing and is the only national laboratory in the top 10.

Key programs

In short, we have the key skills, the right facilities, and a worldwide reputation for excellence. That sounds to me like the formula for a bright future.

Let's now briefly touch on some of our key programs, and what's happening in them. This is not intended to be a comprehensive "tour." It's rather a few quick "stops" to help everyone understand exactly how broad Argonne's capabilities are.

A good place to begin is Energy & Environmental Science and Technology.

Energy and Environmental

Science and Technology

In a year marked by many significant achievements for Argonne, perhaps the event which won us the widest international acclaim was the signing of a fiveyear, 19milliondollar partnership to fully develop and commercialize biochip technology. Argonne's Center for Mechanistic Biology and Biotechnology developed the biochip with the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow.

Our new corporate partners are Motorola and Packard Instrument Company.

The contract was announced in Washington, with the Secretary of Energy presiding over a news conference in which we, Motorola, Packard, and the Russian government took part. Newspapers and wire services worldwide reported the event … and the comment by Secretary of Energy Federico Peña that "we could very well be witnessing the birth of a new multibillion-dollar industry that will allow our children and their children to live in a substantially healthier world."

A Packard executive put it this way: "With a commercial biochip to rapidly and economically perform genetic analysis, within a few years we should see better pharmaceuticals developed more rapidly, faster and more accurate medical diagnostics, a heightened ability to assess and possibly repair environmental damage, and better, more hardy and healthier crops."

Potential applications of the biochip are almost too numerous to mention. As just one example, the University of Chicago would like to begin using biochips to analyze adultonset diabetes in a clinical setting.

This biochip agreement among DOE, Motorola, Packard, Engelhardt, and Argonne is one of the largest biotechnology jointresearch agreements ever signed by a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory.

In a very different kind of research, Argonne researchers also are studying the skies.

At our recently established Argonne Boundary Layer Experiments — or ABLE — atmospheric study area just east of Wichita, Kansas, we are observing features of the lower atmosphere that affect various weather and climate processes. A consortium of scientists has conducted an extensive experiment on daytime processes, and next year we plan experiments on nighttime processes. This work contributes to our understanding of weather, hydrology, and the atmospheric carbon balance.

And speaking of carbon, Argonne this year developed a new ultra-hard, low-friction amorphous carbon coating that is slicker than Teflon and hard enough to show promise for use in automobile engine parts. Our coating may have the lowest coefficient of friction of any material in the world. It also can be produced in large amounts quickly. It's non-toxic and adheres well to many kinds of substrates, including plastics. No wonder it earned an R&D100 Award.

Some important possible applications are in automobile and engine parts like turbocharger rotors and fuel injector components. Others include oil-less bearings, spacecraft mechanisms, rolling and sliding gear systems and bearings for ultrahigh vacuum instruments.

The new material's coefficient of friction is 20 times lower than molybdenum disulfide, and 40 times lower than Teflon.

Minimal friction achieved in another way — in this case by superconductivity — is the key technology in a 150kilogram prototype flywheel we have been testing in collaboration with Commonwealth Research Corporation.

The objective here is to employ a flywheel moving on hightemperature superconducting bearings to store electrical energy economically and for long periods of time. Once that can be done, an electric utility can run its generating equipment at optimal levels around the clock, "storing" electricity produced during offpeak hours for use during periods of high demand. That, in turn, would mean fewer powerplants, less fuel, less pollution, and lower electricity costs.

Our flywheel program has not yet reached the storage threshold for commercial applications, but we expect to move closer to that mark during the coming year.

One EEST program area moving quickly over thresholds and into a rapidly expanding future is our transportation research. In fact, one reason Secretary Richardson is coming to Argonne on Friday is to dedicate our new Transportation Technology R&D Center in Building 362.

We have built two significant transportation facilities which together represent more than $2.5 million of DOE investment in Argonne's automotive research — our Fuel Cell Test Facility, and our Advanced Powertrain Test Facility for hybrid vehicle components.

In FY99, we also will invest more than a million dollars in a high-power lithium-ion hybrid vehicle battery program. We will significantly expand Argonne's role in the DOE automotive materials program. We will build a new single-cylinder truck engine test facility with Caterpillar as a CRADA partner, and with General Motors ElectroMotive Division, we will expand our locomotive engine test facility to incorporate emissions research.

And by the way, for anyone who has wondered what comes of Argonne's Laboratory Directed Research and Development investment, I want to point out that a small LDRD investment led to what is now our large and growing advanced battery program.

Engineering Research

I'm pleased to be able to tell you that we have made major progress in demonstrating electrometallurgical technology for treatment of EBR-II spent fuel and blanket assemblies in the Fuel Conditioning Facility at Argonne-West.

We have established normal operating conditions for treatment of fuel assemblies, and have completed treatment of about threequarters of the 100 driver fuel assemblies currently authorized.

All process equipment necessary for treatment of blanket assemblies is installed in the Fuel Conditioning Facility and processing has begun. Our goal is to process 25 blanket assemblies by next June.

We also have moved forward in R&D leading to waste forms for disposal of waste streams from treatment of EBR-II spent fuel. A reference ceramic waste form — glass-bonded sodalite — for disposal of fission-products is now established, and demonstration equipment for producing this waste form is now operating in a glovebox. R&D of the metal waste-form needed to dispose of cladding and zirconium from the fuel has been completed, and we have cast demonstration waste-form ingots. Clearly, considerable opportunities exist for extending that technology to the 150plus types of spent nuclear fuel stored in Idaho.

In decontamination and decommissioning — or D&D — this year we completed the first Large-Scale Demonstration Project, funded by DOE for the demonstration of D&D technologies. That happened in conjunction with the CP-5 reactor D&D project. The project demonstrated 23 novel D&D technologies. Argonne's Strategic Alliance Partners in the project were Florida International University, Commonwealth Edison, Duke Engineering and Services, ICF Kaiser, and 3M. We now are involved with DOE and several utilities in a consortium planning future D&D activities.

On the global nuclear energy front, the U. S. International Nuclear Safety Center at Argonne and our partner, the Russian International Nuclear Safety Center in Moscow, have expanded the scope of our collaboration. Joint projects now are aimed at continuing improvement of nuclear safety worldwide in the specific areas of advanced monitoring and diagnostics, advanced simulation, accident management technol- ogy, materials properties, and the Nuclear Safety Database. In addition, Argonne's work in coordination of plant safety evaluations for Soviet-designed reactors has improved safety at these reactors

Last November, Argonne contributed to a landmark international nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and the Republic of Kazakstan. Under this umbrella agreement, a project to move spent fuel from the BN-350 reactor, which we expect will greatly reduce proliferation risks, was started. Argonne's dry storage technology also will be used for long-term storage of the fuel, and we have the technical lead role in fuel characterization and packaging.

Argonne's Reduced Enrichment Research and Test Reactor Program saw a promising completion of the irradiation testing of a new lowenrichment uranium fuel for conversion of high power research reactors.

For nuclear energy ingeneral, one new and possibly significant trend is an increasing recognition in Washington that nuclear energy can be an important component of America's future energy production mix. In fact, the Clinton administration now has actually proposed new programs for nuclear energy R&D.

In one of his first public statements as Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson said nuclear power would be critical to reaching the cuts in U.S. carbon emissions sought by the administration under a proposed global warming treaty.

He pointed out that nuclear power is safe. And he used exactly those words.

Whatever may come of this new willingness in Washington to consider a nuclearenergy option, Argonne's historic role in nuclear energy, along with our international programs and nuclear energy research projects, put us in a strong position to compete successfully in whatever new programs may result.

Advanced Photon Source

"New" continues to be the norm at the Advanced Photon Source, as research users schedule more hours, and the number of hours delivered expands rapidly. In just the past year, the number of hours scheduled increased by 44 percent, and the number of hours delivered grew by 73 percent.

The APS has the capacity to provide 70 independent sources of Xrays. Already, 40 X-ray sources are ready for users, with 34 beamlines operating or near operational. In FY98, the APS had more than 1,000 users — up more than 70 percent from FY97 — and the number continues to grow.

APS beam stability now is 1.5 microns vertically, and 4.5 microns horizontally. To get an idea of exactly how stable that is, consider that a sheet of paper is about 50 microns thick. This tolerance is roughly equivalent to passing a 9 mm bullet cleanly through a 10 mm bull's eye at a range of one kilometer.

No disturbance of the beam is negligible on this scale. Vibration caused by cooling water flow, nanometer motions of the ground caused by tidal forces on the earth, and minute expansions and contractions of the ground beneath the Storage Ring as the temperature changes from night to day, all must be sensed and corrected.

And before we discuss the research going on at the APS, let me say a couple of words about the degree of precision achieved by the men and women who operate this giant machine.

APS accelerators are run by teams of operators, scientists, and engineers on duty aroundtheclock. They monitor computers that are examining more than 80,000 variables in the operation of the facility.

The beam position monitors alone provide information on particle beam position, shape, current, bunch length, energy and beam loss 250 million times per second.

The real-time orbit control system is a dedicated array of 20 special computers linked by their own fiber optic communication network. It measures the beam position everywhere in the ring 4,000 times per second and commands steering corrections around the ring at a rate of 200 per second.

In making such precision the operating "norm," the APS team has become an excellent model of consistency and reliability.

As for the research underway at the APS, it is both impressive and diverse. For example, researchers from Argonne's Environmental Research Division used the APS to study corn and soybean roots, and turned up valuable insights into ways to improve agricultural crops, as well as ways to clean up contaminated environments.

Our research into how agricultural crops and fungi coexist symbiotically demonstrated that fungi help improve a plant's absorption of minerals in needed amounts. This research may also lead to new approaches to environmental remediation of contaminated soil.

That project also required the use of a specialized X-ray microprobe that can image microscopicsized objects. Developed by scientists from Argonne, the microprobe can be used to analyze elements at spot sizes less than 0.5 microns, about half the size of a human white blood cell.

Argonne and Bell Labs researchers used the microprobe to map the elemental structure of an integrated miniature laser/modulator system. That is a key component in long-distance lightwave communications systems. The new structural information is leading to improvements in the way this important communications technology is manufactured.

In other research, scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina used the APS for a major advance in radiography that could dramatically improve mammography and other medical and materials imaging.

The researchers developed a new imaging method that produces images never seen before in Xray mammography. This diffraction enhanced Xray imaging method was first developed by the BNL, IIT and UNC researchers at Brookhaven's National Synchrotron Light Source, and was significantly enhanced with the highbrilliance Xrays available at the APS.

The new method uses a single-energy fan beam of Xrays instead of the broad-energy beam of conventional imaging. The object is scanned through the beam, reducing scatter and helping to visualize low-contrast areas that otherwise would be lost, which could mean earlier detection of tinier tumors, saving more lives.

The improved method could be used in a laboratory setting within five years, and in clinical applications in 10 years, the researchers say.

And it's not just life scientists who are benefiting from the research tools at the APS. We physical scientists are enjoying research advances at the APS that are coming in the areas of Xray microscopy, X-ray diffraction and X-ray spectroscopy. Let me offer several examples.

X-ray fluorescence correlation spectroscopy is a powerful method for exploring particle dynamics. The technique employs an X-ray optics microbeam to study dynamics in surfaces, interfaces and biological macromolecules. Another technique, resonant inelastic nuclear X-ray scattering, is based on ultra-high resolution optics and use of APS undulators. It's being used to measure the phonon density of states in nanophase materials, and we expect it will prove useful in a host of studies in condensed matter physics.

One especially happy chapter in the continuing APS success story is the ongoing involvement of State of Illinois. As most of you know, Illinois Secretary of State George Ryan came here this year to dedicate the Argonne Guest House. What you may not know is that a new commercial beamline is under construction at the APS, thanks to $8.7 million in state funding. Illinois Governor Jim Edgar said the initiative "will help expand the successes of Illinois' Silicon Prairie to biotechnology and other exciting areas." He also pointed out, "Technology-driven companies will be able to conduct research important to their competitiveness, and there is the potential for new commercial ventures to stem from APS research."

The commercial beamline is expected to be heavily used by smaller business and industrial concerns that do not have any other access to the APS technology.

Physical Research

As I mentioned a moment ago, among the APS' many users are Argonne scientists engaged in physical research. So I thought I would start our review of Physical Research by illustrating that kind of teamwork.

Solvent swelling of coals and polymers is used to study their macromolecular structures and can be important in a number of chemical processes involving these amorphous systems. Argonne scientists, using a unique small angle X-ray scattering instrument constructed at the APS, now have shown that dramatic structural changes can occur very rapidly. Previous results using traditional methods of study had suggested that these are very slow processes.

In chemistry, the largest theoretical chemistry calculations ever carried out on actinides and lanthanides are helping us study the bonding characteristics of the chlorides of americium and europium. The result will be a better understanding of the separation processes under development in the Chemistry Division for the removal of trivalent actinides from mixed wastes. These massive calculations run on up to 500 processors at computer facilities here at Argonne and in California.

Research with especially broad implications for physics and astrophysics is about to get under way in an experiment called MINOS, for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search. The project couples Fermilab's ability to generate streams of neutrinos with Argonne's ability to detect them at our Soudan mine facility in Minnesota. Now, the MINOS facility design is complete and excavation of the cavity at the mine has begun. Construction of the beamline also is in progress.

The experiment should determine whether or not neutrinos have mass by measuring whether the neutrinotype oscillates with distance. If the answer is yes, the current theory of energy and matter in the universe — called the Standard Model — would have to change. And with an estimated 300 neutrinos per cubic meter everywhere in the universe, even very small neutrino masses would have profound influences on cosmology.

The MINOS experiment is a project of Argonne's high-energy physicists and their colleagues at 22 other institutions in the United States, Britain, Russia, and China. The MINOS experiment is scheduled to begin taking data in 2002.

An equally exotic device, the $20 million Gammasphere, has been operating at ATLAS since the beginning of the year. It is the premier detector in the world for high-resolution nuclear gamma ray spectroscopy. Essentially, it is a gammaray microscope.

In combination with the Fragment Mass Analyzer and the unique high-quality beams from ATLAS, the Gammasphere has for the first time allowed the study of the structure of exotic nuclei in two, hitherto inaccessible regions of the chart of the nuclei — especially those forms of nuclei that contain large excesses of protons and neutrons. In addition, physicists hope to find out if isotopes with the most unusual neutrontoproton ratios exhibit new characteristics which do not occur in stable nuclei. There are some tantalizing hints that the structure of nuclei — the way protons and neutrons arrange themselves inside the nucleus — may change as the nucleus approaches the extreme limits of protontoneutron ratio.

Much larger "bits" of matter are under study as part of another new DOE program at Argonne. This research involves the dynamic behavior of granular materials. Many scientific and technical issues are impacted by granular behavior — for example, mixing and segregation problems, the behavior of fluidized beds, processing of ceramic powders and so on. But no quantitative science has been available to describe this behavior. Recent theoretical advances by Argonne material scientists have made strides in this direction, and the new program combines new theoretical and experimental methodologies to put these materials on a proper scientific foundation.

One major user facility not being built at Argonne nonetheless has strong Argonne involvement. It's the Spallation Neutron Source — or SNS — at Oak Ridge. Argonne is one of five partners in the project. Our Intense Pulsed Neutron Source team is taking the lead on the instrumentation program. Because the IPNS is the most extensively used neutron source in the United States, our role will be to grow the user community — both in numbers and in the breadth of experiments — in preparation for the SNS.

SNS construction should begin in FY99, and the finished facility should begin operating in 2006.

Our other partners in SNS are Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos, and of course Oak Ridge. Such an extensive collaboration is a new approach to designing and constructing major DOE facilities, and it could become a model for building future ones. Oak Ridge coordinates and manages the collaboration, but the other participating laboratories are totally responsible for designing, constructing, and integrating their parts of the source into the final facility.

Turning to computational biology, a new Argonne technique can now help predict functional coupling between gene clusters. Using 29 genomes from WIT — an Argonne-developed system called "What Is There?" for the metabolic reconstruction of bacteria — researchers successfully reconstructed major portions of the metabolic pathways of the gene clusters.

A second Argonnedeveloped technique called global optimization code is proving a superior approach for solving protein structure problems. Computational results on a 200-atom protein fragment are spectacular — researchers found the solution on at least 40 percent of the cases, while competing techniques fail completely.

In computer science, Argonne's prototype ManyWorlds shared virtual reality system, the Voyager collaborative space recording and playback engine, and CAVE tools were demonstrated live on an astrophysical application in a week-long international meeting last October. The new Voyager engine is being used weekly to record collaborative sessions of DOE2000 members.

Our computer science team also has established the foundation for new integrated software environment called ALICE — for Advanced Large-scale Integrated Computational Environment — which integrates numerical, visualization, and steering software.

One final, important part of Argonne's Physical Research directorate is our Educational Programs. Last year, more than 700 undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty were part of our research participation programs — the largest in the nation. The university researchers came from 46 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

During the coming year, we intend to develop several new educational outreach programs with research divisions, university collaborators, the State of Illinois and DOE.

Operations

Now I would like to turn to Operations.

Although the Operations budget for fiscal year 1999 is flat, there nonetheless are programs planned and in progress which will benefit all of us.

Perhaps most visible among the building programs is the design and impending construction of a new $6.5 million Central Supply Facility at Argonne-East. With the completion of this project, we will finally be able to demolish the last remaining World War IIera Quonset huts in the east area, and provide new quarters for the laboratory's shipping, receiving, inventory and warehousing operations.

In other "infrastructure" work to improve the reliability and efficiency of the physical plant and to improve compliance with environmental and safety requirements, this year we received $11 million from the Multiprogram Energy Laboratory _ Facility Support (MEL-FS) program. This was the highest funding level among the six DOE multiprogram laboratories managed under the MEL-FS program.

Over the past year, we also completed the Laboratory Sanitary Wastewater Treatment Plant. This new plant dramatically improves the Laboratory's ability to meet Environmental Protection Agency requirements. In addition, the $10 million rehabilitation of the Central Heating Plant is nearing completion.

Of course, all the buildings and roads and shops and labs at Argonne mean nothing without the people who use them. So I want to spend my remaining time this morning talking about people.

And to begin with the type of story we don't hear about very often.

Back in 1991, Argonne's Environmental Management Office (EMO) was established as a limited-term program to carry out a number of major remediation projects. Almost 100 people have been involved with EMO recently. Not too many weeks ago, EMO finished the job it began. It made sense to absorb some ongoing tasks of the group into the ES&H division, and other ongoing tasks into the PFS division. So we have done that.

But I didn't want to allow EMO to fade into the pages of the history without my saying "thank you" for a jobwelldone. All of you who have worked in EMO during the past seven years are to be commended for your team's completion of upgrades to pollution control facilities, and completion of remedial environmental actions that benefit the entire Lab. You have done us all proud during your time in EMO, and I assure you that we will, of course, remain vigilant in our commitment to environmental stewardship at Argonne.

Safety is vital

Of all the "people" issues, none is more vital than safety.

When things are going well, it's easy to sometimes believe that the safety training, and safety procedures, and safety restrictions, and safety reports are overly timeconsuming and "get in the way." But I want to tell you as forcefully as possible that these lectures, courses, procedures, and restrictions save lives and prevent injuries.

And when they are not followed, people get hurt — and sometimes die.

At the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, one person died and two others suffered lifetime disabilities because a CO₂ firesuppression system was not properly locked out. At Los Alamos, a worker was crippled for life because a high-voltage line was not shown on a drawing.

Here at Argonne, our record is good, but not perfect. There have been several troubling "near misses" — a worker misconnected a sling and he or others could have easily been killed when the load fell; a worker bypassed an interlock and unknowingly worked in an operating accelerator beam, and a chemist narrowly avoided possibly serious eye injury because of safety glasses.

These stories are all true. They all are recent. And they all were avoidable.

I expect each of you to take your safety and the safety of those you work with very seriously. That is doubly so if you are a supervisor. Systems are in place to provide the support you need, and I expect you to use all of those systems to make your work place as safe as is feasible; but only you can keep yourself safe. Ultimately, the person best able to keep you safe is — you.

So the next time you're reminded to keep your training courses current, or ensure an inspection is done on time, or submit timely and complete reports, remember why this is required. And do it. Meeting safety requirements is about avoiding injury or even death. I cannot think of anything that's more important than that.

Along with concern about the safety of our employees, we also must be concerned about establishing and maintaining a positive environment where people can do their best; an environment where each individual is respected and valued for his or her contributions and uniqueness. One way to build such an environment is by understanding, appreciating, and using the diverse skills and perspectives of all employees in order to build effective teams, and improve productivity.

No two of us are the same. That's not a weakness — it's a significant strength.

In fact, the excellent research conducted at Argonne results in part from this rich, dynamic mix of people, scientific disciplines, cultures, and program objectives. It's important that we recognize the value of that diverse mix, and that we work to maintain it by reaching out to the science community, to students and their teachers, to industry, to Argonne's neighbors, and to the American public.

For Argonne's future, we must recognize Argonne's diversity as an asset, and we must continue to attract people from diverse backgrounds to Argonne. Both those things require your support and commitment.

To get a firsthand glimpse of America's diversity, and have a great time in the process, be sure to mark April 30th and May 1st on your 1999 calendars. Those are the dates of Argonne's next open house, and it will be larger and more elaborate than any ever held here before. That's because our open house next year is part of the Chicago area's Project Millenium. In addition to our own divisions, we also will have corporations, colleges, and other organizations from throughout the Chicago area exhibiting here.

The open house will be promoted throughout the region, too. So we expect far more visitors as well as many more exhibitors.

I hope you come, and that you bring your family and friends too.

A brighter 1999

In closing then, we are moving into a brighter 1999. If we continue working as we have, I believe we will be able to preserve most of our current programs, enhance and expand several of them, and attract new ones to Argonne. We will do that because of the Argonne advantages I outlined earlier —

• Excellence in science and technology
• A growing reputation inside and outside the science community
• World-class facilities and the respect of our users
• Broad, diversified research base
• Basic-research competence
• Nuclear energy competence
• Energy and environmental science competence
• Support from the State and our Congressional delegation
• Support from the University of Chicago and DOE
• Argonne's convenient location … and
• The finest team of people assembled anywhere.

In that list I of course save the most important advantage until last. That Argonne advantage is you.

How you perform will determine how Argonne fares.

Superior performance yields superior results.