Statement of

Dr. James F. Decker
Deputy Director
Office Of Energy Research
U.S. Department Of Energy

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry

March 13, 1997

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss how the Department of Energy carries out its Research and Development (R&D) function, and more specifically how the Department performs its national security and basic science missions.

The Department of Energy has four major missions areas: energy resources, national security, environmental quality and science. A fifth mission, economic productivity, is a derivative outcome of work in each of the four major mission areas.

The Department has clearly defined statutory missions. The laboratories have capabilities that help the Department execute these missions, and which also help other government agencies meet their mission objectives. Capabilities for meeting the Department's R&D mission also exist in academia and the private sector. How the Department uses the laboratories, academia, and industry varies substantially from mission to mission. It also varies substantially across various elements within a single mission area.

Each of the four major missions of the Department have a significant R&D component. These R&D programs define specific problems that must be tackled to serve each mission area. Senior department officials and their program managers, in consultation with peer reviewers, advisory committees or other external parties, determine where the best solutions to these problems can be found within academia, the Department's laboratories, and the private sector.

The general principle used by the Department's senior officials and program managers in allocating the over $6 billion the Department spends on R&D is to invest in the most effective R&D performer for the research activities that need to be accomplished. In general, the laboratories are selected for:

o R&D for which national security requires a high degree of security and specialized knowledge;

o Building and operating large scientific user facilities that are beyond the scope of what industry or universities can afford or sustain;

o Research that relies on multi-disciplinary expertise and an ability to address large-scale, complex problems; and

o Mission-focused research that requires results with more urgency than can be anticipated from other R&D performers.

Each of the Department's mission areas has different needs and allocates its resources among laboratories, universities, and industry in a different way. The laboratories are used most extensively in pursuit of the Department's national security and basic science missions, with nearly 100 percent and 73 percent, respectively, of their R&D funds being expended at the laboratories. In contrast, only about 45 percent of the Department's R&D program in the Environmental Quality mission area and 37 percent of the Department's Energy Resources R&D programs are conducted at the laboratories. Nearly 20 percent of the activities at the DOE multi-program laboratories are supported by other Federal agencies or private organizations, to take advantage of capabilities developed for the Department's missions.

The Department is a major contributor to the science and technology enterprise of the Nation. Research ranges from the most basic studies of the ultimate constituents of matter to the discovery and advancement of new, breakthrough technologies-not only in the areas of energy, but also in high-performance computing, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, materials and the environment, to name just a few. Virtually every aspect of American life--from medicine, to manufacturing, transportation, communication, energy, defense has benefitted from, and in some cases been transformed by, the fundamental scientific discoveries of the Department's laboratories in the past 50 years.

Over 65 Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry have been awarded to scientists whose research was supported by the Department or who used Departmental facilities. Projects supported by DOE have won 383 "R&D 100 Awards" over the years since their inception. These are awards are granted by R&D Magazine for the most important technology developments in the country. The Department has received more than twice the number of such awards as any other government or private sector organization.

It might be helpful to the Committee to turn to the two mission areas whose work is primarily accomplished at the DOE national laboratories, national security and basic science.

The Department's national security mission is to reduce the global nuclear danger. This is accomplished through the maintenance of a safe, secure and reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons and through efforts to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. To meet these ambitious objectives, the Department seeks to preserve institutional capabilities as well as achieve programmatic R&D goals. Although some funds are spent in the universities, in collaborations with industry and other Federal agencies, the three major recipients of most national security R&D funding are Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Sandia National Laboratory (SNL). These laboratories are unique and irreplaceable repositories of the expertise that underlies the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Funding allocated to the defense laboratories depends not only on each laboratory's individual strengths (for example, LANL, accelerators; LLNL, lasers; SNL, microelectronics) but also on the need to comply with Congressional, Administrative, and Departmental (Defense and Energy) directives.

The national security mission requirements are tremendously challenging and require a significant level of funding to maintain the facilities and the necessary cadre of technical experts. Moreover, the extreme sensitivity of nuclear weapons work limits where work can be performed. If higher quality R&D on a specific topic can be performed elsewhere, funds may be spent outside these laboratories. In general, however, national security's mission and mandates, as well as the laboratories' unique capabilities, have led to a determination that the best place for DOE to spend its national security R&D funds is at its national-security-oriented laboratories. This provides the dual benefits of (1) performance of world class R&D in support of its mission requirements and (2) the maintenance of capabilities and facilities to respond to national security needs.

The three weapons laboratories rely on the support of the rest of the weapons complex, i.e., the Savanna River Site, Kansas City Plant, Pantex, Oak Ridge Y-12, and the Nevada Test Site, industry and academia to provide additional technological and research input. External scientific review bodies also evaluate the overall status and direction of the weapons program. The recruitment and retention of a world class technical staff, however, remains a critical factor in enabling the weapons laboratories to accomplish their missions.

Because most of the national security R&D is concentrated 3 laboratories, much of the technical program management is delegated to the laboratories. The Department's Office of Defense Programs staff focuses on policy and priority decisions.

As a result of its basic science mission, the Department plays a pivotal role in maintaining U.S. leadership across the frontiers of science. The Department's basic science program comprises the largest federally funded program of basic research in the physical sciences and a large fraction of federally funded efforts in the environmental sciences, life sciences, mathematics and computing. Scientific discoveries that advance knowledge in the basic sciences supported by the Office of Energy Research provide the foundation for technical advances not only in the Department's applied technology programs, but also in other areas such as agriculture, engineering, production of goods and services, and other technical applications.

The Office of Energy Research sets research directions and priorities, plans coherent and integrated research programs using an appropriate mix of performers, ensures that the highest quality research is funded, and coordinates its research efforts with applied research and development programs of the Department and with research performed by other agencies and by other nations.

A variety of mechanisms are used to set directions and establish priorities for research. The Office of Energy Research follows Administration and Congressional guidance to help establish priorities for broad areas of research. Standing advisory committees direct attention to evolving national needs and scientific opportunities. For example, in the last few years, advice from the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee and the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee has led to significant changes in program direction. The Department also requests in-depth studies from the National Academy of Sciences on specific program questions or policy. Program managers in the Office of Energy Research frequently use workshops to help focus research on problems relevant to the Department and to explore new directions. These workshops are sponsored jointly with other Offices in the Department, industrial organizations, and other agencies so that the needs of the technologies and interagency issues are reflected in the research programs.

Once the direction of a program is established, the primary responsibility for the structure, quality, and direction of the research rests with the Energy Research's program managers. The national laboratories are preferred performers for complex projects that utilize multiple scientific disciplines and require technical management competence. Universities are the performers of choice for research best carried out by a small group of investigators.

For the case of research best performed by individual investigators, proposals for new research are solicited by program managers and then sent to several expert scientists for review. The reviews of these scientific peers are important for program managers who make decisions for awards, generally for a three to five year period. This peer review process helps ensure that work that is supported is relevant to the Department's needs, is of high quality, and is likely to be successful. For ongoing research, program mangers promote exchanges of information among research performers and reviewers to assess progress. Individual awards are reviewed annually for satisfactory progress, and usually undergo external peer review when investigators submit another research proposal.

The DOE civilian laboratories do not receive their basic science funding in large, line item allocations. Energy Research's program managers are responsible for determining the best mix of R&D performers to meet the basic science mission requirements. A consequence of this distributed approach to funding is that the decisions in Energy Research exert a major influence on the shape of the laboratories and the quality of their work, and therefore the quality of these decisions strongly affect the quality of the laboratories. Programs at the civilian laboratories are externally peer reviewed every one to three years.

A special role accepted by the Department's Office of Energy Research is to provide large-scale, leading edge facilities at the national laboratories for public and private R&D. The Department, through its laboratories, is the country's major designer, builder, and operator of large research facilities (that is, particle accelerators, synchrotron radiation light sources, neutron sources, high-temperature materials and combustion laboratories, electron microscopes) that require multi-disciplinary capabilities that only the laboratories can deliver and are too costly for companies or universities to provide for themselves. Every year more than 15,000 scientists from 275 colleges and universities, nearly 50 Federal laboratories, and more than 260 private sector companies in all 50 states utilize the Department's research facilities. The Department's scientific research facilities are a national resource that not only advances the missions of the Department, but also contribute to the excellence of the Nation's science and technology capabilities.

In closing, allow me to make one main point about the R&D function in the government: one size does not fit all. The management of the Federal government's broad spectrum of basic and applied research programs is extremely complex. There is no single model that fits all missions and all types of research. Management approach and the mixture of research performers (laboratories, universities, industry) appropriately varies with mission requirements and type of research. I have attempted to illustrate this point by describing how the Department of Energy manages its national security and basic science missions. While both rely heavily on the national laboratories, each uses their laboratories in different but extremely successful ways. Our results are the envy of the world.