from November 16, 2003, News-Sentinel
original URL:
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_2426607,00.html
Recent gains are amazing for ORNL
By Richard Powelson
November 16, 2003
Federal research work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has grown dramatically
the last three years in both expense and prestige - a sharp contrast to the
nuclear dumping ground that the area almost became two decades ago.
Oak Ridge's future looked dismal 20 years ago when Congress decided to stop
construction on the Clinch River Breeder Reactor there after $ 1.6 billion
had been spent, and federal audits had questioned its need.
Then the Department of Energy worked unsuccessfully for more than a decade
to store radioactive waste there, pending completion of a permanent burial
site in Nevada, but some members of Tennessee's congressional delegation
helped prevent that burden which raised many safety questions.
Even as recently as four years ago, ORNL seemed in danger of losing its
new flagship research project - the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron
Source accelerator. Plans for construction were halted when the House
Science Committee chairman read a critical U.S. General Accounting Office
report saying the project did not have reliable cost controls. New management
plans restored congressional faith in the neutron research center, which
hopes to find ways to make a variety of materials stronger, longer lasting or lighter.
Last week the Department of Energy gave ORNL a bigger seal of approval,
saying it is a good place for three of the nation's highest-priority
science projects to be proposed during the next 20 years.
Growth and success at the federal reservation at Oak Ridge is good news
also for the economy in nearby Knox County. ORNL employs about 4,000 people,
including many scientists, and already attracts about 3,000 guest scientists
per year. The University of Tennessee, based in Knoxville, is a co-manager of ORNL.
The national laboratory at Oak Ridge also already has developed one of the
world's faster computers and is competing for the federal contract of trying
to build the newest, fastest computer in the world. It also is winning funds
for technology to improve national security from terrorists.
A series of events has helped brighten Oak Ridge's future.
UT and Battelle, an international leader in technology research and development,
won the contract to manage ORNL in 2000. The marriage was mutually beneficial to
both UT and ORNL and broadened Battelle's stable of top research labs.
Battelle has noted big examples of the value of its past research and development,
including early advances that helped develop the invention of dry copying machines
used by Xerox, progress in recording technology that led to the compact disc and
work on a bar-code symbol for grocery packaging that allows automated scanning and
check-out and inventory controls.
ORNL has been fortunate also to attract influential champions in Congress. The lab's
local congressman, Zach Wamp, a Republican from Chattanooga, won a seat starting in
1997 on the Appropriations Committee, which sets spending levels for all federal programs.
U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a former medical researcher, has been serving this year
as the Senate's top leader after first joining the Senate in 1995. He is in an excellent
position to make sure that key senators know about ORNL's strengths.
And the state's newer senator, Lamar Alexander, this year became chairman of the Senate
Energy subcommittee, giving him a chance both to help make sure ORNL programs are effectively
using taxpayers' dollars and to focus more attention on national energy challenges
where ORNL may provide more leadership.
The Spallation project is under construction, getting full funding that it needs, and
still is expected to reach completion in 2006. Federal energy officials last week said
they want within 20 years two major upgrades of the project, which already is called the
world's largest civilian science project.
Richard Powelson, the News Sentinel's reporter in Washington, D.C., may
be contacted at 202-408-2727 or PowelsonR@shns.com
