State of the Laboratory -- 1997 (part 2)

Science & Facilities

Science excellence is the heart of Argonne, and our scientific facilities are the most visual manifestation of Argonne's capabilities and accomplishments.

The first objective in our strategic plan is to maintain excellence in science and technology programs, coupled with a commitment to emphasizing development and enhancement of unique facilities.

As you can see on this chart, our other objectives are: Exploiting our capability to mount complex, multi- disciplinary projects, targeting specific areas for managed growth, and expanding win- win collaborations. I will have more to say about each shortly.

Argonne's accomplishments and milestones in science programs during the past year are literally too numerous to mention in this presentation. I'll mention just a few of the more noteworthy ones.

• Our Magnetic Vortex Studies over the past few years yielded magneto-optical imaging for measurement of field and current distributions in high-temperature superconductors, and large-scale computer simulations coupled to analytical theory and experiments in vortex motion. Those and other achievements resulted in an R&D-100 award, the Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer, and international recognition as arguably the leading program in the rapidly evolving and very large field of vortex matter.

• Researchers from our high-energy physics division are playing a key role in the ZEUS electron-proton collider collaboration in Europe, which now has observed an excess of events in collisions involving high-momentum transfer to quarks in the proton. The event rate is higher than predicted by the Standard Model, and it might indicate the existence of "leptoquarks" -- speculative particles that combine the properties of leptons and quarks.

• Using the capabilities of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), we have measured the phonon density of states of thin films of iron and terbium. This ability to measure and thereby better- understand the thermal and elastic properties of thin films provides the basis for better devices in electronic data storage, computer processing, and telecommunications. This capability is remarkable in that we can measure phonons with less than one-million electron-volt resolution using 10,000 electron-volt X- rays, namely, better than 1:10 resolution.

• Late last year we received a multi-year award from the Defense Department to develop a rapid, sensitive device for the detection of microbial biowarfare agents. The project leverages our capabilities in genome sequencing-by-hybridization, and holds added potential for diagnostics for genetic diseases, forensic sciences, ecology and bioremediation, and pathogen monitoring in hospitals.

• In computational science, we employed Argonne's automated reasoning software to solve a Boolean algebra problem that had eluded many of the world's best mathematicians for more than 60 years. The New York Times quoted a scientist as calling the achievement "the most remarkable result in automated theorem-proving in 30 years."

• Working in concert with University of Tennessee scientists, Argonne chemists developed a new, high-performance chelating ion exchange resin called "Diphonix." It is now finding widespread commercial use in treating low-level radiation waste from nuclear power plants, purification of acid used in semiconductor manufacture, and extraction of radioisotopes from mixed wastes. We expect its major use ultimately will be in reducing iron concentrations in copper sulfate electrowinning solutions.

Diphonix is made and marketed by Eichrom Industries -- a company Argonne, and especially Phil Horwitz, helped establish. Eichrom sales are expected to increase from $3 million last year to $15 million this year.

In the months and years to come, we will exploit this laboratory's demonstrated capability to implement a wide range of activity -- from individual projects to complex, multi-disciplinary science and technology programs -- and we will target specific areas for managed growth. Among those targeted science growth areas are: Applications in math and computer sciences, as well as new mechanistic biology, applied sciences for energy and environment, and multi-disciplinary programs, centers, and consortia. In that latter area, we see significant opportunities for further expansion of Argonne's collaborative links with the University of Chicago.

Some of that collaboration will involve the laboratory's often-unique user facilities. I'll briefly cover just some of the accomplishments and milestones in the user facilities during the past year.

• APS continues to improve machine reliability and beam availability. Last September, we began construction of a low-energy undulator test line enclosure as an extension of the APS linear accelerator. This facility will develop and test novel, free- electron laser sources, which if successful will provide a new, unique capability and will also move us along a path toward a Fourth-Generation Synchrotron Radiation Source.

  Users in various CAT teams are beginning their experimental programs -- an exciting beginning of the bright scientific future of APS.

• We commissioned the Structural Biology Center at the APS last year, and among various early noteworthy achievements was data that allowed users to solve the structure of a potential human tumor suppresser protein. This Center, together with other similar CAT activities, will revolutionize our ability to solve protein structures in the coming years.

• IPNS passed its five-billionth-pulse milestone during a terrific year of scientific output, and the facility has commenced a program to enhance existing instruments to world-class performance levels.

• Researchers at the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System (ATLAS) produced beams of short-lived -- or "exotic" -- nuclei for use in nuclear astrophysics experiments. Also, our Physics department continues to make good progress toward a new Exotic Beam Facility, which leverages ATLAS and is a leading contender for the next major DOE nuclear physics facility.

• Argonne's new Center for Computational Science and Technology was designated a "DOE high-end computing resource center" as it extended the lab's high-performance computing, advanced visualization, and multimedia facilities. We also participated in more than 60 experiments in wide-area computing as part of the national I-WAY project, we installed a new-generation IBM Scalable PowerParallel System, we established a Distributed Supercomputing Laboratory, we very successfully competed for DOE grand- challenge computation science applications, and we expect our involvement with advanced simulation to grow.

• As part of our effort ultimately aimed at establishing a new meteorological research laboratory, the Argonne Boundary Layer Experiment facility -- or ABLE -- this year completed installation of three sites for remote sensing of wind velocity and temperature profiles in the lower three kilometers of the atmosphere.

• And finally, in facility accomplishments during the past year, we opened the attractive and functional Argonne Guest House, due to support from the State of Illinois and excellent project management by Dave Moncton and his team. By the way, I use the Guest House Restaurant often, and it's excellent.

Facility-related growth areas identified in the strategic plan include Advanced Photon Source beamline development, exploitation, and initiatives, and the proposed Exotic Beam Facility that I mentioned. In addition to those and the possible Fourth Generation Light Source mentioned earlier, other future directions include a Virtual Laboratory as part of the DOE 2000 initiative, the MINOS Long-Baseline Neutrino Detector in concert with FermiLab, and our continuing role in the Large Hadron Collider project in Europe. Of course, there are others and the list will continually evolve.

Energy & Environment

Within the areas of Energy and Environment, Argonne actually has three types or classes of programs -- energy programs, environment programs, and programs with both energy and environmental benefits. Let's begin with energy programs.

Argonne long has been known for its energy programs, and we expect to enhance and expand that reputation in the future. Today, we have the strongest nuclear-energy and spent-fuel R&D capability in the U.S. if not in the world.

Over the last year, we have continued to transform and enhance our nuclear energy programs from the past focus on the Integral Fast Reactor to a number of nuclear energy technology and nuclear environmental programs.

As you know, we also have a number of important non-nuclear energy programs -- including the leading high-temperature superconductivity programs, a very strong battery and fuel-cell program, high-potential advanced transportation technologies, and demonstrated skill in industrial technologies.

Here is a "short list" of the lab's many achievements and milestones in these areas during the past year.

• DOE last year approved establishing our International Nuclear Safety Center, after which the Russians established their own. The two centers jointly have started four projects and are close to agreement on another three. All this work is applicable to nuclear safety worldwide.

  The activities under that center are being expanded to include the advanced nuclear technology initiatives. Our objective is to become the premier DOE nuclear energy program in this area for the U.S. and international nuclear power reactors.

• In December we dedicated the Locomotive Diesel Engine Research Facility, a multi-year cooperative effort with General Motors' Electro- Motive Division (one of the two largest companies of that type in the world) focused on improving performance and reducing emissions of an all-new, 16-cylinder, 6,000-horsepower locomotive engine.

Taken together, these milestones and accomplishments clearly evidence our broad, strong energy-technology base on which to continue to build.

Environmental Programs

Environmental science and technology is one of Argonne's important program areas, and our reputation for excellence and innovation in segments of this field is expanding rapidly.

We have several important nuclear environmental technology programs, including electrometallurgical treatment of EBR-2 spent fuel, nuclear reactor D- and- D, and nuclear environmental control technologies.

• Last July, a major milestone was the commissioning of "hot" operations of the electrometallurgical treatment of EBR-II spent fuel in the Fuel Conditioning Facility at Argonne- West. This is the premier DOE R&D program in nuclear spent- fuel management and technology development, and offers the potential for DOE to eliminate many potential safety hazards and save billions of dollars of maintenance and storage costs over the next several decades.

  A National Academy of Sciences committee reviewed the status of the program last week and said it was very pleased with our progress.

  We are processing EBR-II driver assemblies and analysis thus far indicates effective removal of fission products from uranium products, with concentrations reduced by factors ranging from 1,000 to 10,000.

• In nuclear reactor decontamination and decommissioning -- or D&D -- technology, we initiated the D&D project for the Janus reactor and are in the process of a large-scale technology demonstration project on the CP-5 reactor. In that CP-5 demonstration, 58 D&D technologies are being evaluated, and 13 D&D technologies have already been demonstrated.

  This is a partnership program with ComEd, Duke Power and others. D&D is a very important element of utilities companies' reactor end- of- life programs, as well as their overall energy availability strategies.

• In our advanced nuclear environmental effort to develop mixed- waste treatment technologies, during the past year we treated contaminated soils and wastewater from Argonne-East using phosphate ceramics. The process is very promising and has been scaled up to produce 55- gallon waste forms and is being applied to treat Waste Experimental Reduction Facility ash in Idaho.

  In addition to those important nuclear programs, we also have several non- nuclear environmental quality strengths -- including environmental control technologies, site assessment, characterization and remediation, and policy analysis and risk-management technologies.

• One of Argonne's highest potential environmental capabilities is site characterization. We capitalized on that capability by creating QuickSite, a cost- and time-effective approach to environmental site characterization. It quickly became recognized as the methodology-of-choice for all characterization programs in any regulatory framework. It has been successfully employed by the Departments of Energy, Defense, Interior, and Agriculture. The Agriculture Department is applying QuickSite to its environmental programs in the Midwest, and has had many sites characterized -- better, faster, and at lower cost. We also have begun marketing QuickSite to the private sector.

Argonne programs and initiatives in environmental science and technology include the Argonne National Atmospheric Laboratory, our Decontamination and Decommissioning Technology Center, and advanced nuclear environmental technology.

Combined Energy & Environmental Programs

As I said earlier, many of our energy and environmental programs actually provide clear benefits in both areas.

Three major energy initiatives include advanced nuclear-reactor technology, transportation technology, and our industries-of-the-future initiative.

Our transportation initiative includes establishment of a Center for Advanced Transportation Research which will combine our automotive engine, Intelligent Transportation System, railway, manufacturing, advanced materials, and vehicle-related recycling efforts.

Let's focus on milestones and accomplishments in two of these dual-benefit programs.

Argonne's "Industries of the Future" program focuses on key industries that are eager to reduce both their energy consumption and their environmental impact. Among those industries are steel, aluminum, petroleum refining, and chemicals.

As part this program, we developed a steel de- zincing technology and helped a company bring a 75,000-ton-per-year de- zincing pilot plant on-line. There is also a letter of intent for a 200,000-ton-per-year commercial plant which we expect will be built and operating by the Fall of 1998.

We also demonstrated a technology to reduce organic fouling in working refineries , we are working with the National Petroleum Council, the American Petroleum Institute, and others to "roadmap" R&D needs, and we have demonstrated or are field-testing several plastics recovery or separation processes.

Another class of project involves our applying our core competencies to broader purposes. One example of that is our application of Argonne's growing simulation and modeling capability to a Defense Department Logistics and Mobility Modeling project. We developed bridge-load analysis and port-simulation models, used our advanced animation and visualization capabilities, and linked the simulation and scheduling systems. In the future, we hope to employ this capability in industrial and non-military government applications.

Intellectual Property & Tech Transfer

One important "business area" for DOE and Argonne -- and one that cuts across our Science, Energy, and Environmental products and services -- is what's called "intellectual capital" and how we transfer ours to industry.

A good example how such intellectual capital benefits Argonne as well as society is our recent technological breakthrough in development of a way to reduce substantially the cost of converting natural gas to synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that is a fuel stock.

To quote Secretary Peña in his testimony to Congress last week: "The new ceramic membrane developed at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, under a CRADA with Amoco, eliminates the need for making pure oxygen, thus significantly reducing costs (by about 30%)." It operates with air passing on one side, and natural gas on the other, with a catalyst on the surface of the membrane on the gas side. Oxygen atoms from the air are "pulled" through the membrane to the gas side where the reaction to syn-gas occurs.

The technology has attracted much industry interest. DOE is expected to announce soon the selection of the industrial team it will contract with for construction of an engineering pilot plant. DOE and the industrial team each will finance half the $70- million cost of the plant.

These are the kind of announcements that, during a meeting with us last week in Washington, Secretary Peña said are at the top of his priority list, and our challenge is to continue to provide them.

In another instance, Argonne worked closely with Caterpillar Inc. to develop a simulator for use in Caterpillar's foundry process to perform more than 300 simulations of the casting process for more than 70 different parts. Caterpillar credits the simulator with improving product quality, cutting the rejection rate, and yielding both economic and environmental benefits for the company.

The Argonne-developed rapid ceramic prototyping technology for tooling is being analyzed at Ford Motor Company's research laboratories.

And Superconductive Components Inc. in Ohio has become a world leader in high-temperature superconducting levitators, which it manufactures under an Argonne license.

There are many more examples than this, and the number of industry achievements and R&D partnerships linked to Argonne "intellectual capital" continues to grow.

(Continued)