- The weapons laboratories are Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL),
and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). LLNL and LANL are weapons design
laboratories while SNL is the engineering laboratory.]
- Brigadier General Anthony Tolin, USAF, Strategy and Policy, Joint
Staff, private briefing on the Nuclear Posture to the National Security
Subgroup of the Task Force, October 14, 1994.
- Steven Andreasen, Strategic and Nuclear Affairs,
National Security Council, private briefing on Presidential Decision Directives
to the National Security Subgroup of the Task Force, August 9, 1994.]
- Current weapons designs are secure, safe and
reliable. There is no threat to the nation that would justify the development
of a new nuclear weapon at this time. If weapons in the stockpile should
develop problems that cannot be resolved, and that raise doubts about their
reliability or safety, consideration could be given to the option of replacing
them with modernized versions of earlier, very robust, well-tested designs.
However, the safety and reliability record of the stockpile indicates the
successful resolution of all past weapons problems; any future reliability or
safety problems should be first analyzed and solved -- if possible -- by the
replacement of specific components or addition of new safety features if
needed.]
- The Jason Stewardship report entitled Science Based
Stockpile Stewardship, August 10, 1994.
- Strategic Energy Research and Development Task Force, Chaired by Daniel
Yergin, President, Cambridge Energy Research Associates.]
- Technology for a Sustainable Future, National Science and Technology Council,
1994
- "DOE Needs to Expand Use of Cleanup Technologies."
GAO/RCED-94 - 9205 .
- "Cleaning Up The Department of Energy's Nuclear Weapons Complex," The
Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office, Washington, DC.
May 1994. This reference contains an extended discussion of DOE 's managerial
practices, its approach to risk assessment and to the incorporation of new
technologies on remediation efforts.
- Ibid
- For example, after the forced shutdown of Rocky Flats, in the fall of 1989,
acidic plutonium solutions were left in a half dozen tanks in one building,
with concentrations up to 125 grams of plutonium per liter. They remain there
to this day, with seals and gaskets deteriorating and occasional leaks
occurring. It would have required 2 weeks to one month to process and
eliminate the immediate risk. There is 70 miles of piping containing Pu-nitric
acid solution with 30 kg of Pu in them.
- Business Week, Aug. 2, 1993.
- National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators - 1993, Appendix
4-11, p. 346. The data referenced here are obtained from NSF-conducted surveys
and should be interpreted with caution since DOE does not budget its research
according to the categories used in the surveys. In reality, it is sometimes
difficult to make the distinction between basic and applied research in those
laboratories where the work is mainly applied R&D.]
- The same preference for the laboratories is true of the DOE R&D budget as
a whole. The majority (62%) of all DOE-sponsored research and development is
done in the DOE laboratories, with most of the rest being done at the
universities (9% ), federal laboratories (8%) and industry (18%).
- These data were obtained from the responses of nine
laboratories to a survey questionnaire prepared on the Panel's behalf. (INEL
did not respond to the survey but does very little basic research.) The survey
used the same definition of `basic research' that is used by the National
Science Foundation: "The objective of basic research is to gain more complete
understanding of the subject under study, without specific applications in
mind. In industry, basic research is defined as research that advances
scientific knowledge but does not have specific immediate objectives, although
it may be in fields of present or potential commercial interest." An
independent GAO survey of ten DOE laboratories found that 16% of their total
R&D fell in the basic research category. The laboratories' responses to
the Panel's and GAO's surveys indicate that they may see their R&D activity
as more applied in nature than do the DOE respondents to the NSF survey
referred to in Note 2.
- The panel attempted to determine in what proportions the different kinds of
basic research described in the preceding paragraphs occur at the laboratories.
According to the results of the survey carried out by the panel, basic research
that is related to large user facilities accounts for 55% of all basic research
at the laboratories; basic research that involves large interdisciplinary teams
but that is unrelated to large user facilities accounts for another 34%; and
general/single investigator basic research of the type most similar to
university research accounts for the remaining 11%.
- Richard Nelson, Richard Rosenbloom, and William Spencer,
"Shaping a New Era",
November 1994 (DRAFT)
- Post-CRADA follow-up work at the laboratories would be classified as `work
for others', for which the industrial partner is required to pay the full cost.
Many industrial partners would at that point be inclined to pull the work back
into their own facilities. Since the laboratories would then lose their
DOE-budgeted CRADA financial resources, in the absence of independent review
there might be a tendency for valid and successful CRADAs to continue beyond
the completion of technology transfer and into product development or some
other industrial activity.
- A technological development plan which outlines, over time, the evolution of
technological capabilities and provides milestones by which progress can be
measured.
- Fortune Magazine, November 14, 1994, pg. 146