[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
KEN CALVERT, California ED PASTOR, Arizona
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
TOM GRAVES, Georgia
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Rob Blair, Angie Giancarlo, Loraine Heckenberg,
Ben Hammond, and Perry Yates,
Staff Assistants
________
PART 6
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Page
Environmental Management, FY 2015 Budget......................... 1
Applied Energy Funding, FY 2015 Budget........................... 71
Science, FY 2015 Budget.......................................... 251
________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho, Chairman
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
KEN CALVERT, California ED PASTOR, Arizona
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
TOM GRAVES, Georgia
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mrs. Lowey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Rob Blair, Angie Giancarlo, Loraine Heckenberg,
Ben Hammond, and Perry Yates,
Staff Assistants
________
PART 6
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Page
Environmental Management, FY 2015 Budget......................... 1
Applied Energy Funding, FY 2015 Budget........................... 71
Science, FY 2015 Budget.......................................... 251
________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
91-276 WASHINGTON : 2014
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia NITA M. LOWEY, New York
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
TOM LATHAM, Iowa JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
KAY GRANGER, Texas JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho ED PASTOR, Arizona
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas SAM FARR, California
KEN CALVERT, California CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
TOM COLE, Oklahoma SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida BARBARA LEE, California
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
TOM GRAVES, Georgia MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
KEVIN YODER, Kansas BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota
STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas TIM RYAN, Ohio
ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska HENRY CUELLAR, Texas
THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine
CHARLES J. FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
DAVID P. JOYCE, Ohio
DAVID G. VALADAO, California
ANDY HARRIS, Maryland
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama
MARK E. AMODEI, Nevada
CHRIS STEWART, Utah
WILLIAM L. OWENS, New York
William E. Smith, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2015
__________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, April 8, 2014.
ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT FY 2015 BUDGET
WITNESS
DAVE HUIZENGA, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY, ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT,
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Simpson. I would like to call the hearing to order.
Sorry, we are about five minutes late starting, but good
morning, everyone.
We have before us today David Huizenga, Senior Advisor for
Environment Management to the Secretary of Energy. We welcome
you back to this Subcommittee.
Mr. Huizenga, we greatly appreciate the work you have done
over the past two years. Leading a program that is fraught with
such daunting technical, management, and regulatory challenges
is no easy task. We look forward to your testimony on these
important cleanup activities.
The budget request for the Office of Environmental
Management totals $5.6 billion, $209 million, or a 3.5 percent
decrease below the fiscal year 2014 enacted level. I do not
include in those figures the $463 million for a federal
contribution to the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and
Decommissioning Fund that has served to mask the reductions in
the request for the department's cleanup activities.
The department is currently facing some very difficult
challenges in its cleanup program. What has been proudly
referred to in the past as the nation's only operating
repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, is currently not
operating. The recent activities at WIPP are very serious, and
by all accounts are likely to have a significant impact on
conduct of the operations there. We hope to hear more from you
today on how you are ensuring the safety of the public and our
workers, as well as how the events at WIPP will impact cleanup
plans there and at other sites. The public's faith and
confidence in the department's ability to protect public health
and the environment as it carries out its mission is at stake.
That confidence will be particularly important as the
department enters into negotiations to modify its cleanup
agreements. The department has either already missed, or is
poised to miss, cleanup milestones at a number of sites. As a
result, the department is looking to change the terms of its
cleanup agreements so that it can move forward with more
feasible plans. If those proposals are to be considered
credible, the department must address an embedded culture that
has allowed poor project management and weak quality practices
to impact progress.
We are eager to hear what progress you have made to change
the course of this program so that the department can safely
and reliably meet its commitments.
Please ensure for the hearing record that responses to the
questions for the record and any supporting information
requested by the Subcommittee are delivered in final form to us
no later than four weeks from the time you receive them. I also
ask that if members have additional questions they would like
to ask, to submit them to the Subcommittee for the record, and
that they do so please by 5 p.m. tomorrow.
With those opening statements, I would like to yield to our
ranking member, Ms. Kaptur for any opening comments that she
might have.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, Mr.
Huizenga for being here today. It is good to see you again. And
thank you for taking time to discuss the environmental program
with us.
Obviously, your program has massive challenges and
responsibilities, and the legacy of the Manhattan Project is an
obligation we, as a country, must continue addressing. One of
the supplements to our hearing notes this morning, obviously,
showed the historical cleanup sites and the sites remaining,
and I think overall we have to say the country has made
enormous progress, and we want to hear about that progress
today. You are one of the stewards of that effort, and a most
important one.
The recent shutdown, however, of the Waste Isolation Plant
and the changes the department is pursuing at Hanford are
illustrative of not only the dangers posed by remaining
materials, but also the technical and budgetary challenges that
further complicate the eventual success of your department's
efforts.
Further, I have lingering concerns about the department's
safety culture. With such a critical mission at stake, the work
environment at your sites must ensure employee concerns are
addressed in a timely manner and without fear of retribution,
for heaven's sake.
Given the constrained fiscal environment, it will be
crucial that all resources are employed to their fullest
potential. In this austere budget setting, issues of project
management and corporate governance are increasingly vital to
the success of the department's mission. The department must
follow through with strong leadership and fundamental
management reform, and failing to do so will significantly
inhibit the execution of this mission, as well as the
department's credibility.
I hope that you will take some time today to update us on
your actions in this regard, and I look forward to our
discussion today.
Finally, Mr. Huizenga, I would like to thank you, your
staff, and OMB--and yes, you heard that correctly, OMB--for
partially addressing my concerns about Portsmouth funding. Last
year, the site had a $44 million shortfall, in large part
because of reduced proceeds from uranium tailings. And I worked
with the chairman and our Senate colleagues to ensure that
layoffs due to funding shortfalls in 2014 would not occur. The
budget request for 2015 has increased appropriated funding for
the site by $22 million in recognition of the softness in the
uranium market.
As you know, the site is not in my district, but it is in
my state, in one of the highest unemployment counties in the
country. Ohio cannot afford additional job losses, and I
appreciate your attention to these concerns as we move forward
on many fronts, certainly in the strategic battles arena.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Huizenga.
Mr. Huizenga. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning to you
and to Ranking Member Kaptur and other members of the
Subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to represent the
Department of Energy's Environmental Management Program, to
discuss the many positive things that we have been doing under
this program, what we have achieved, and what we plan to
accomplish with the 2015 budget request.
The request of $5.62 billion will allow the Environmental
Management Program to continue the safe cleanup of the
environmental legacy brought about from five decades of nuclear
weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy
research. The request, as you noted, Mr. Chairman, includes
$4.865 billion for defense cleanup activities and $463 million
for the defense contribution to the UED&D fund, should Congress
reauthorize the fund. The request also includes $531 million
for the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning
cleanup activities, and $226 million for nondefense
environmental cleanup activities.
EM continues to pursue its cleanup objectives guided by
three overarching principles. Most importantly, we will
continue to discharge our responsibilities by conducting
cleanup with a safety-first culture that integrates
environmental, safety, and health requirements and controls
into all of our work activities. After safety, we are guided by
a commitment to comply with our regulatory and our legal
obligations. And finally, to be good stewards of the financial
and natural resources entrusted to us.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Environmental
Management Program, and we have achieved a great deal in that
time. When EM was created in 1989 as Representative Kaptur has
just pointed out, it was charged with cleaning up 107 sites
across the country with a total area equal to Rhode Island and
Delaware combined. In the 25 years since, EM has completed 91
of those sites and made significant improvements and progress
on the remaining 16. Sites like Rocky Flats in Colorado and
Fernald in Ohio, both of which were once housing large
industrial complexes, are now wildlife preserves that are also
available for recreational use.
In December, at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak
Ridge, we completed the demolition of the K25 building. With
the congressmen, we were able to spend some time together
seeing the progress we made on what was once the largest
building under one roof in the world.
The President's 2015 budget request will allow us to
continue to make significant progress in our ongoing cleanup
mission. To provide just a few specific highlights of what we
will do with the 2015 request, with these funds we will
complete the treatment of 900,000 gallons of high-level liquid
waste in Idaho. They will allow us to empty the four remaining
sites' aging waste storage tanks. We will continue construction
of the waste treatment immobilization plant which will allow
progress to immobilize the Hanford tank waste into a solid
glass form for permanent disposal.
Consistent with the department's objective to immobilize
that waste as soon as practicable the 2015 budget includes
funding for the preliminary design of the low activity waste
pretreatment system. We will also complete clean up of the bulk
of the more than 500 facilities along the Columbia River. At
Oak Ridge in Tennessee, we will complete the preliminary design
for outfall 200 mercury treatment facility, while continuing to
develop the technologies needed to ultimately characterize and
remediate mercury in the environment. And at the Savannah River
site in South Carolina, we will immobilize and dispose of over
a million gallons of liquid tank waste and bring the site's
high-level waste mission to approximately 50 percent
completion.
Before I close, I would like to update you on the situation
at WIPP. I'm sure you know, we have had two recent safety
events at the facility. The first occurred on February 5, when
flammable residues on the surface of a salt truck did catch
fire. The second occurred late in the night of February 14th.
It was a radioactive contamination event in which some
contamination became airborne underground. Although no one has
been harmed by either event, we take both very seriously and
are committed to identifying, acknowledging, and fixing any
underlying shortfalls in our policies or practices. In the
meantime, the contamination event does have the potential as
you noted to potentially affect other sites where they are
currently packaging transuranic waste for disposal at WIPP. We
are working to assess potential impacts and make contingency
plans to mitigate those impacts when necessary.
In closing, I am honored to be here today representing the
Office of Environmental Management. EM is committed to
achieving our mission and will continue to apply innovative
cleanup strategies to complete our work safely, on schedule,
within cost, thereby demonstrating a value to the American
taxpayers. We have made significant progress in the last
quarter century, and our 2015 budget request will allow us to
capitalize on our past investments and successes.
Thank you, and I will take any questions that you may have.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. And I appreciate you being here
today, and I appreciate the work you have done at the
department in EM. You have done some great things. You are
right; we have cleaned up a lot of sites. I jokingly, or half-
jokingly, told them when I was down at Rocky Flats that we did
not really clean up Rocky Flats, we just shipped it to Idaho.
But, I mean, that is what we do, and we are doing the work
there to get it to its----
Mr. Huizenga. At the time it made sense.
Mr. Simpson. That is right. And it still does. It is a
great job to see Rocky Flats now versus what it was some time
ago, and those are expensive and long-term projects to get
those done.
Let us talk a little bit about WIPP. Can you give us an
update on where we are on that? Any indication yet of what
happened? Any indication of how long it might be closed down,
and more specifically, for this Committee, any indication on
what it is going to cost us? Because I suspect there is going
to be an additional cost that is going to come to this
Committee that is not reflected in the current budget because
obviously this happened after the budget submission. What is
the outlook for that? And also in that question, what will the
impact be on state agreements that we have with a variety of
states?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, in terms of the status, you know, we
have been down in the mine twice. We went down the air intake
shaft and down the salt shaft, and we have established in a
sense a clean zone in the mine. If you can kind of imagine, the
contamination event happened over where the waste was being
emplaced, or at least we believe that is where it was likely to
happen. And the ventilation pulled the air through a specific
drift, up the exhaust shaft, through the HEPA ventilation
filters. So there are other areas where we had hoped would be
uncontaminated, and indeed, we have gotten down into those
areas and they are uncontaminated. There are other doors and
ventilation ducts and systems that could have vented that
contaminated air up the shaft. So there will be some part of it
that is probably contaminated, but so far we have been able to
enter places that are not contaminated. We are going in now,
probably in the next week or two, go down and proceed to the
waste face and try to actually understand what happened. Until
we really get there, we are not going to know for sure how long
it is going to take us to recover from the incident. So I do
not have a good answer for you right now, but in the next week
or two, we should actually be able to go down, understand what
happened. We are already drawing up contingency plans, such
that if we see that there was some partial roof collapse or
something happened to puncture one of the drums, we will be
able to understand what to do with that. We are working with
the Idaho National Laboratory, as a matter of fact, to look at
decontamination activities and possible techniques that we can
use to either put shotcrete on the walls to fix any
contamination that might be there or some other ways to clean
it up. So we are progressing in a safe and responsible manner
to basically understand what the problem is.
What that might do to overall regulatory commitments that
we have in the state of Idaho or the state of Tennessee and
other places, I do not know exactly again because we do not
know the cause. We do not know exactly how difficult it is
going to be to recover, but I do know that in Idaho, we have
been working with the contractor and with the federal managers
there. They are continuing to package transuranic waste right
now. They have several months' worth of storage capability
onsite. Should we find ourselves in a situation where they are
going to run short on space, we hope to be able to make the
case to the regulators to allow us some additional permitted
space to continue to store at Idaho. I have been working with
the leadership down there in Tennessee. They are continuing to
package contact-handled waste. It is likely to have some impact
on our ability to package the remote-handled waste, and that is
because the contact-handled waste, you know, we can package it
up and we can store it onsite. The remote handled waste,
generally, we like to package that up and send it to WIPP as
soon as possible. So we are looking at the possibility of
juggling the schedule there a little bit. We will have to work
with the regulator. But again, all of this will be clear in the
next week or two when we get down to the waste phase and
understand what the real situation is.
Mr. Simpson. So we do not know yet or have any idea yet
about what the potential cost is--bigger than a bread box,
smaller than a space shuttle, somewhere in there?
Mr. Huizenga. It is going to be bigger than a bread box.
Mr. Simpson. Will you have to submit anything--because, I
mean, we are in a stage here where we are going to probably be
marking up our bill in a month, month and a half, something
like that, six weeks or so from now. Do you think you will have
some estimates on what the cost is? Or will you have to submit
a reprogramming request to the Committee? If so, how will that
reprogramming request, if it is for however much, affect the
other programs at the other sites?
Mr. Huizenga. Because we expect to get down there in the
next couple weeks, I would think that we should be able to
start to formulate an estimate of what it will cost. It is
going to take some time, but within this time period and while
you are marking up, we should be able to get back to you.
Mr. Simpson. Well, I would encourage you, and I know you
are very good at this, so it probably does not need the
encouragement, but keep the Committee informed and the staff
informed when you get down there and find out what the
challenges are that we face and what we might have to do and
what the potential costs might be so that we can address it
together.
Mr. Huizenga. Sure.
Mr. Simpson. I appreciate that.
Mr. Huizenga. Absolutely.
Mr. Simpson. Marcy.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Huizenga, I wanted to ask you first if you could
explain in terms the American people can understand the nature
of the cleanup that has already been done. I need the big
frame. The nature of the cleanup that has already been done
since the program started, I think, in 1989, 107 sites down to
16 sites now. But I am interested in the volume of material in
key categories that has been transferred and properly stored or
disposed of and what remains to be done. There are some that
say that the worst of the cleanup remains ahead of us, not
behind us. And my second question really is after talking about
the transuranic material and other major categories of material
that are necessary to move and accommodate, I am interested in
a time horizon. At your current level of funding, how long
would it take us to, by your best guestimate, deal with the
remaining cleanup sites, the 16 sites that you have outlined.
Your testimony, essentially, and the backup material I have
goes by site but it really does not group it by material. You
do give the miles, the square miles figure, reducing--in your
testimony today I think you said--oh, and I have to go back
here--931 square miles down to 300 square miles, but there
could be a lot of material on those 300 square miles. And so I
am wondering if you could put it in more of a summary context
for those who are listening and for the record, please.
Mr. Huizenga. Okay. I will give it a whirl. It is 25 years'
worth of a lot of stuff. But, I mean, I can tell you that we
started, for instance, with the Rocky Flats material and other
materials that were at Idaho and Tennessee and other--Savannah
River. We started packaging up the plutonium and the uranium
early on to make sure that it could be stored safely.
Ms. Kaptur. So those were the two top categories first?
Mr. Huizenga. Those are the two top categories, and those,
that plutonium and uranium, is 100 percent safely stored now.
So it is packaged up in stainless steel containers and safely
stored. So we completed that.
Ms. Kaptur. And can you state for the record the volume? If
you do not have it, supply it.
Mr. Huizenga. Yeah. There are 5,089 containers, but I will
have to get for the record what volume that would actually be
in. Of the uranium, there are 107,000 kilograms of bulk
material.
So that was one important--from a safety standpoint, we
needed to take care of that early on, and that is taken care
of. Now, we are in the process of packaging up transuranic
waste. From a transuranic waste standpoint, from the contact,
there's contact-handled and remote-handled. From a contact-
handled standpoint, we are roughly 60-ish percent through
packaging up the legacy contact-handled transuranic waste.
Ms. Kaptur. Is that on several sites?
Mr. Huizenga. That is across the complex. Yeah. Some sites
are farther along than others. The Savannah River site, we hope
to complete the legacy material later on this fiscal year or in
Fiscal Year 2015, and the chairman's home state will be
packaging transuranic contact-handled waste up I think
somewhere in the 2018 timeframe with the legacy contact-handled
waste. And I will have to check, Congressman Fleischmann, on
the exact schedule for Tennessee. But we are in this, you know,
we are closing in on the contact-handled. The remote-handled is
a little bit further behind. The remote-handled, as a matter of
fact, we are probably only on the order of 10 percent complete.
So from that standpoint of the category, the transuranic waste
is 50 to 60 percent to 10 percent depending on the type of
waste. For the high-level waste, the liquid waste, for
instance, that we are working on at Hanford, the 56 million
gallons of high-level waste, we are working on a new phased
strategy to bring that facility online. I can talk a little bit
more about that. So we have not actually solidified any of
those 56 million gallons. At West Valley, we solidified all of
the high-level waste. And at Savannah River, we have solidified
almost 50 percent of the high-level waste.
Ms. Kaptur. Are those the only two places you have it?
Mr. Huizenga. There are four places where we have liquid
high-level waste. West Valley is done. Savannah River is
roughly half done. Idaho, we are going to finish the 900,000
gallons of liquid waste later on this year or in early fiscal
2015, and Hanford would be in a sense the long pole in the
tent, and we will be working on that for probably the next 40
or more years.
In that respect, from timing you asked to overall
schedules, it varies. In Tennessee, we are about done cleaning
up the gaseous diffusion plants. We will be done in the 2020
timeframe, I think, someplace in that ballpark. And in
Portsmouth, your home state, we are not as far along because we
got that facility back from USEC later than we got the
facilities in Tennessee. And in Paducah, in Kentucky, you know,
we are about to transfer the Paducah gaseous diffusion plant
back to the Department of Energy later on this year or early in
Fiscal Year 2015. So we really have been making some progress
on groundwater cleanup and soil contamination cleanup at
Paducah, but we have not really started our D&D activity. And
that is likely to take several years, maybe a decade or more to
actually complete those activities at Portsmouth and Paducah.
Ms. Kaptur. So plutonium, uranium, transuranic high-level
waste. Any other categories?
Mr. Huizenga. Low-level waste is another category. So we
dispose of low-level waste. Oftentimes, we dispose of that
onsite, and sometimes we ship that to our site in Nevada. And
we are on the order of 75 percent or so completed with a
disposition of our low level waste.
Ms. Kaptur. I think that it would be very helpful, and I am
sure you have the material, I just do not have it, if you could
supply that information to the record.
Mr. Huizenga. I certainly could.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay. And we will proceed. I will let Mr.
Fleischmann speak and then I have another question.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Huizenga,
thank you for being here with us today.
Let me say this to begin. Thank you. Dave, you took over at
a tough time. This is a very difficult job. You have been
exceedingly hands-on at Oak Ridge. Our community appreciates
this. I appreciate this. Mr. Whitney, the gentleman on the
ground there who works with you, is always very responsive. And
as you know, we have decades' worth of work to do at Oak Ridge,
and I am committed, I am passionate about getting environmental
cleanup of our legacy waste done. So I thank you.
You alluded to, Dave, in your opening remarks about the K25
plant. In December, we gathered to see what was, at one time,
the largest building in the world, the K25 plant, where
thousands of folks came and won World War II, won the Cold War,
and we saw that building come down. That was a historic
occasion, and it was very meaningful for us.
I have some questions following up. UCORP is well on its
way to removing the highly contaminated buildings so that the
site can be turned into productive use. I have been briefed by
the contractor--I am sorry, UCORP is the contractor--I am
briefed by them that the closure of the cleanup site is within
reach.
My first question though is why did the budget request cut
funding at a time when so much progress is being made, sir?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, in a sense we did make the progress on
K25 and that allowed us to produce the funding. You know, we
are going to turn our attention now to K31 and K27, but we have
also worked with the contractor and recognize that we can make
a smooth transition of the workers from K25 into K31 and
ultimately onto the bigger facility, K27, perhaps later on in
2015 or early in 2016. And so we are trying to actually work on
a long-term smooth opportunity to transition workers from one
facility to the other.
Mr. Fleischmann. Sir, does it not make sense though to fund
the D&D work at the prior year level and have a major site
completed? Will this not save money in the long run by reducing
the overhead costs? Clearly, if you short fund it and it takes
longer to get done, ultimately, the project is going to cost
more. I would like you to respond to that, please.
Mr. Huizenga. You are right. Absolutely, we could reduce
our life cycle costs if we had some additional funding, but we
are trying to--we have got regulatory commitments and
agreements across the complex, and with the resources that we
have, we are trying to make an equitable distribution to make
sure that we are making steady progress at all the sites.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. My distinguished colleague, the
ranking member, had asked about plutonium and uranium. I would
like to talk about a very serious problem at Oak Ridge--
mercury. Mercury is a very serious problem. By some estimates,
as a legacy waste, there may be as much as two million pounds
of unaccounted for mercury at Y12. And this is a major cleanup
mission. That obviously is one of the areas if we could get
additional funds for ETTP and get that cleaned up, we could
move into long-term mercury cleanup at Y12. Could you please
give the Committee some background on this project and explain
the timetable for this project, please?
Mr. Huizenga. For the work that we are going to do on
mercury?
Mr. Fleischmann. Yes, sir.
Mr. Huizenga. Sure. You know, we had an opportunity one of
the times when I visited the site to announce the development
of the 200 area outfall of the mercury treatment facility. In a
sense, what we are trying to do is before we start major
cleanup activities at the Y12 facility where the mercury
contamination exists, we want to make sure that if we disturb
the groundwater or the soil in that area, that we are able to
capture any mercury should it get into the environment. So this
outfall is in a sense a trap that will be put in place at a
specific collection point so that the water that would flow
down gradient would ultimately be trapped in here and treated.
The mercury would be captured in the treatment facility and
properly disposed of. So we are in a sense laying the
groundwork for the long-term cleanup mission that you indicate
is so important to you and to us.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, sir.
I need to talk about building 3019. Again, for the
Committee's benefit, we have legacy sites across the entire
campus at Oak Ridge. And this is particularly frustrating
because 3019 Building is at ORNL. It's been frustrating, Mr.
Huizenga, to have a clear path forward on Building 3019 at ORNL
and then see those plans disintegrate. Where does the
Department stand in negotiations with Nevada?
Mr. Huizenga. We are continuing our discussions with the
governor and his representatives. I think we are making steady
progress. We recently had a group of folks from Nevada go up to
a transportation tabletop simulated exercise in the State of
Colorado so we are working with them to help them understand
that we do know how to transport materials; we have been
transporting these materials safely for decades and, you know,
we would intend to transport this material in a similarly safe
fashion. So there are a number of things that they have asked
for to have them become more comfortable with our proposal and
we are working through one by one each one of these activities.
And we are going to have, you know, continued discussion with
them so that we can hopefully reach resolution and start
shipping, you know, later this year.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. So we are looking at later this year
as the time frame for beginning the shipments?
Mr. Huizenga. That is certainly our desire.
Mr. Fleischmann. Good. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I will
yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning,
sir.
Mr. Huizenga. Morning.
Mr. Fortenberry. A question for you that I have is not just
in regard to what we have defined as clean up admission for
your agency, but what about what we don't know? Can you give an
estimate of what might be out there that is potentially
harmful, environmentally impactful but is not yet identified?
Mr. Huizenga. We got 25 years focus on this and to be
honest with you I--of course I don't know what I don't know but
I do know that----
Mr. Fortenberry. But you know more than I do.
Mr. Huizenga. And in that regard we have done extensive
characterization at all of our sites so we know what is in the
groundwater and we know that we got pump and treat systems in
place at some facilities, many facilities to actually capture
and suck these contaminated waters up and treat them and
inject, you know, clean water back into the system. As I
mentioned to Ranking Member Kaptur that we have packaged up our
plutonium and our uranium; it is safely stored so we know that
it can be stored safely for, you know, we put it in 50 year
storage containers. We have a pretty good sense of how to
actually solidify the glass waste at our Savannah River Plant
and are making steady progress there. We just issued a test
plan last week and what we hope to do from scope and schedule
to solve the remaining technical problems on the Hanford
Vitrification Plant. So we are starting to bring some focus and
hopefully some closure to solving the mixing issues that have
been plaguing us up there for the last couple of years. So I
think we have the environment pretty well characterized, the
material pretty safely stored that we knew, you know, might
cause issues. And at this point the mercury issue that
Congressman Fleischmann was talking about, there still is
research and development that needs to be done to ultimately
understand how to better treat and deal with mercury. So
there's the technology development area there that we are going
to have to spend some time and effort on.
Mr. Fortenberry. So, by and large, in terms of the respect
from a potential problem across the country, they are
identified, there is a fairly clear understanding of the
inventory of hazardous material that would fall under your
purview and mitigation steps under way? Is that a fair
assumption?
Mr. Huizenga. Yes, sir. That's absolutely right. And one of
the things that Congressman Fleischmann was pointing out is
that, you know, there are several large facilities at the Y12
Plant in Tennessee that we haven't actually taken over yet. So
when we start taking those facilities apart we might learn new
things about the mercury and how much mercury there is and on
where it is. So there might be, you know, some issues that need
to be dealt with in that regard.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right. So no surprises lingering out
there?
Mr. Huizenga. There will be some surprises I am sure, sir.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. There are always surprises in this business.
Have we pretty much completed or how far do we have to go? The
issue is transferring facilities that need to be D&D'd to EM--
as in Idaho, the lab operations were taking care of some of
those functions and we have been trying to transfer those
facilities over to EM. So do we know across the country the
scope of what EM is going to be responsible for, or is that
still an expanding universe?
Mr. Huizenga. We have someplace north of 5,000 facilities,
you know, in our inventory and I forget exactly how many we are
done with but, you know, probably in order of 3,000 of them and
there are more. So the Y12 facilities--actually NNSA still is
responsible for those. There are as mentioned, there are
facilities in Idaho that the nuclear energy folks are
responsible for. I mean it is a little hard to say how many
more there are because for instance we were working just
recently with senior leadership with Assistant Secretary Lyons
to talk about the facilities in Idaho. Some he wants to keep,
some he wants to actually take back from EM----
Mr. Simpson. Right.
Mr. Huizenga [continuing]. And some he wants to give to us.
So there has been a give and take. So we know that there will
be some back and forth at some sites and some sites the NNSA
clearly is and will be in a position over the next few years to
try to transfer those facilities to EM.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. The final fiscal year 2014 budget
provided an additional $208 million above the budget request
for environmental cleanup activities. What has the extra
funding been used to accomplish? And several sites have
reported the DOE has been holding back fiscal year 2014 funds.
Are you holding back any of these funds and if so where and
why?
Mr. Huizenga. We are not intentionally holding back funds
that could actually be usefully spent----
Mr. Simpson. Are you unintentionally?
Mr. Huizenga. No. No, we are not doing that either. No, I
am just trying to be truthful in that regard. Some sites are
going to be able to--even in Idaho for instance where you gave
us I think an additional 20 million or so and that was
extremely appreciated, that we need to carryover a certain
amount of money into the '15 to be able to, you know, to keep
going at the start of the fiscal year. So we are planning on
carrying over about the same amount next year as we did the
last couple of years. So there will be some of those funds that
are kind of in a normal carry over mode, but we are not trying
to, you know, withhold any of the additional funding that you
appropriated to get work done in this particular year.
Mr. Simpson. Could you say what has been accomplished with
those additional funds?
Mr. Huizenga. I can if I can find it in this pile of paper
here. You mean the specific--across the----
Mr. Simpson. Across the complex.
Mr. Huizenga. Across the complex?
Mr. Simpson. Just generally.
Mr. Huizenga. Well, I know that at LANL for instance we are
using some of the funding to help us with getting the 3706
cubic meters off the mesa, there was additional money at
Richland and we are using that to help clean up along the
Columbia River. There was work at Savannah River site. We are
actually working on additional progress on the federal
facilities cleanup activities there and there is a Facilities
Agreement. At Portsmouth you know we are going to actually
continue to decommission and cut and cap one of the major
facilities. We are taking the compressors and the large
equipment out and packaging it up and sending some of that to
the State of Nevada for disposal. So we are using some of the
additional funds for that as well. I think those are the major
areas that account for the, you know, additional work that we
are being able to do as a result of the plus out.
Mr. Simpson. Let me talk to you for a few minutes about
Hanford. The Department issued a draft Hanford Tank Waste
Retrieval Treatment and Disposal Framework which describes a
path forward for meeting Hanford's tank waste mission. You
recently met with the State of Washington to discuss this
framework but the State said it would need considerably more
detail. The Department and the State of Washington have each
put forward new proposals to modify the 2010 Consent Decree
that governs the cleanup of the Hanford tank waste. What are
the main differences between the Department's proposal and the
State of Washington's proposal?
Mr. Huizenga. Well if you don't mind if I would start with
the main similarity which I think is extremely important.
Mr. Simpson. Okay.
Mr. Huizenga. We both believe that it makes sense to start
up the large facility in a phased manner and by that I mean the
original baseline that we had signed up to in 2010 in the
Consent Decree was to start the entire facility up at one time,
five major facilities starting up at one time. We now believe
it makes sense to phase the startup. So we will start up the
Low Activity Waste facility first because we don't really have
any technical issues associated with that facility. The more
complicated Pretreatment Facility and High Level Waste facility
would be started up later in the phased nature of the proposal.
So the State and DOE both agree it makes sense to start on the
Low Activity Waste first and then start up the Pretreatment and
High Level Waste facility. So in that regard there is a
similarity.
The State is focused on, you know, when we are going to
start up the Pretreatment Facility and we also want to know
when but we wanted to make a prediction and a commitment to
starting up that facility when we have solved the technical
problems. We think in the past we didn't clearly enough
understand the technical complexities of mixing this
complicated high level waste. And because we ran into some
issues with making sure we could mix that waste safely and
ensure that the facility was going to work over the 40 years
design lifetime of the plant we had to take a step back. And
now we are going to actually take a new approach, perhaps
standardize some of the vessels in this complicated facility,
some of the ones that haven't been installed already, and make
them smaller. And standardization we can actually test that
vessel to make sure that the mixing will take place effectively
in the vessel and that way we can put the complicated mixing
issues behind us once and for all. That is our intention right
now.
The State also agrees that that is, you know, important for
us to do that; to make sure that we understand the technical
issues and work through them in a methodical manner. So we are
working closely with the Governor and, you know, we are hoping
to reach some, you know, compromise perhaps between their view
of how this should be done and ours. But fundamentally we agree
on the strategy.
Mr. Simpson. One of the questions that has come up is the
fact that we have discovered new leaking tanks that are out
there. I understand that there is a debate about whether to
build new tanks; that the State may want us to put new tanks
in. The Department is not necessarily in favor of that, as I
understand, and there is concern by some members that if you do
that then it is going to cost a lot of money and it is going to
slow down actual cleanup process at Hanford. What is your view
on that?
Mr. Huizenga. Our view is that we should stay focused on
the mission at hand. That being said part of our proposal does
include building some new tanks; it's called the tank waste
characterization and staging facility. These tanks would be
useful to actually mix the waste before it is sent into the
Pretreatment Facility. So there is some additional tank
capability in our proposal as well and we think that the waste
that is currently stored in the double shell tanks can be
safely stored for the foreseeable future. We have an active
monitoring program in place so we, you know, we put cameras
down in the tanks in the annulus between the inner and the
outer liner. We are watching. We do have one tank that has
some, you know, limited seeping in this annulus but we are
keeping a close on that and we believe that the best approach
is to keep monitoring it and stay focused with our long term
approach of making glass.
Mr. Simpson. Assuming I live to the average lifespan of the
American male will I ever see any glass manufactured there?
Mr. Huizenga. I certainly hope so because I am not very far
behind you and I plan on seeing some glass.
Mr. Simpson. Appreciate it. Marcy.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to go back to
my first round of questioning, Mr. Huizenga. On that little
chart you have there I see blue and I see green. We don't have
that in our materials.
Mr. Huizenga. You should, and I can get this to you.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. I don't have it in mine.
Mr. Huizenga. I am sorry.
Ms. Kaptur. Maybe they just didn't put it in here, I don't
know. Or maybe I haven't found it.
Mr. Huizenga. No, I might not have given it. I'll make sure
you get a copy.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay. Explain what is on that chart.
Mr. Huizenga. Explain what it is?
Ms. Kaptur. Yes.
Mr. Huizenga. This lists these different categories of
material that you were talking about. It is the plutonium
oxide, plutonium and uranium.
Ms. Kaptur. By volume?
Mr. Huizenga. Yes, by volume. By containers or by
kilograms.
Ms. Kaptur. So that is really the target? This is where we
have----
Mr. Huizenga. This is my scorecard.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay.
Mr. Huizenga. I am going to give this to you.
Ms. Kaptur. And what is it telling us?
Mr. Huizenga. It is telling us as I indicated we are making
pretty steady progress in some areas. So in packaging up,
safely storing this material, the low level waste, the contact
handled waste. This is kind of, you know, more than half done.
But there is also more work to be done on the high level waste
at Hanford as we know. And you actually alluded to this year
and last year, yes we completed 91 sites and we have got 16 to
go but there is some tough stuff left to do at the 16 so that
is why there is still some work to be done here on the high
level waste side.
Ms. Kaptur. What happens with contaminated groundwater?
Mr. Huizenga. The contaminated groundwater is for the most
part being either pumped and treated like a big 200 West Pump
and Treat facility on the Hanford plateau where in a sense we
encircle the ground water plume and put extraction wells out to
suck up the contaminates and then to clean the water and re-
inject the water basically down into to drive stuff into the
extraction well. So we have a process that is in a sense
containing the ground water plumes. In Savannah River I know
they have found ways to actually do this with passive systems,
a way to not actually have to use the groundwater treatment all
the time. But they have put in some french drains and different
drainage systems to be able to actually shunt the water over
into collection pits or collection areas or treatment
facilities.
Ms. Kaptur. As you look forward, and interpreting from your
chart there, how much of the cleanup of these sites still
remains before us? As you look at the magnitude of this, you
must be one of the few persons in the world that would even
understand this. How much more do we have to do?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, in terms of years or dollars or
kilograms?
Ms. Kaptur. All.
Mr. Huizenga. Okay.
Ms. Kaptur. All of the above.
Mr. Huizenga. Well, at Hanford we are building and have yet
to start a facility that we are designing to run for 40 years.
And it will have to run for 40 years in order to get the job
done. In Idaho we are making steady progress on advanced mix
waste treatment facility. You know, they will complete their
work well before that.
Ms. Kaptur. But we are not concerned about uranium and
plutonium at Hanford.
Mr. Huizenga. Well, we have spent fuel, uranium, plutonium
stored safely in the canister storage building. There is a
uranium plume that we are going to treat with a pump and treat
system so----
Ms. Kaptur. So when you said in your earlier testimony that
the uranium and plutonium are pretty much put to bed, but not
at Hanford?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, the uranium that could be packaged is
packaged and safely stored. The plutonium is safely stored.
There is some uranium in the groundwater and that needs to be
dealt with. So there are some things of nuclear materials that
can be packaged up, but if some of these contaminants have
gotten into the soil----
Ms. Kaptur. Well, the greater clarity you could provide on
the materials that need to be cleaned up that would be very
valuable I think for us to understand more clearly and where
that needs to be cleaned up so we can make a judgment as to
whether it is true that over half of this has been cleaned up
or whether it hasn't.
Mr. Huizenga. Sure.
Ms. Kaptur. And it lacks a little clarity at this point. I
don't know, maybe others would disagree with me. But then it
also permits us to think about the future and budgeting for
what might be necessary. The figures look kind of rosy, the
square mile figures look really rosy. Then when you get down
into it you go from, you know, you have got 16 sites left.
Mr. Huizenga. Yeah, I don't want to misrepresent the fact
that those 16 sites are the easy ones. There are some
challenges.
Ms. Kaptur. Quite more involved.
Mr. Huizenga. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur. And that is what I am trying to understand, the
magnitude of what is left.
Mr. Huizenga. They are telling me something I already know
but. We have on the order we think, over $200 billion in to go
costs. If we look at each one of our sites and factor in how
much it will cost to actually to completely D&D, the Portsmouth
facility and that Paducah facility which we haven't even really
taken over yet, wrap things up in Tennessee, do our work in
Idaho, at Hanford, Savannah River, and in Tennessee, so these
are the big sites. Then there is probably over $200 billion of
work to be done.
Ms. Kaptur. Okay. Can you give us an update on what you are
doing and your progress on ensuring workers can raise safety
issues without fear of retribution? For example in the wake of
the termination of Donna Busche as a nuclear safety manager at
Hanford, the Department has ordered the inspector General to
look into these allegations. Do you know if the Department
plans to release the results of that investigation?
Mr. Huizenga. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I
can check. But I do know that a serious investigation that is
ongoing, you know--I hope that we can convince you and others
that the Department does not tolerate retaliation. We have had
this discussion with our contractors at the Hanford site at the
most senior levels, with the contractor community and they know
and they understand their contractual obligations and
commitments to us to provide a work environment where people
can raise issues without fear of retaliation.
Ms. Kaptur. And how will the Department actually make--if
in fact when the Inspector General completes the report and
there is a report what is the process inside of DOE to release
it or not to release it? Do you know what the process is?
Mr. Huizenga. I honestly don't know what the process would
be to deal with the findings. I don't know whether they would
be confidential in nature or not, but I can check on that and I
will definitely get back to you.
Ms. Kaptur. We would greatly appreciate that for the
record. I wanted to just turn again to Portsmouth. As I look at
the funding request though the administration has increased
funding it appears that the funding is expected to go down
actually at that site because DOE does not plan to generate as
much cleanup funding as last year from its Uranium Transfer
Agreements. Could you comment on the funding that you expect to
generate from uranium transfers at that site and how does that
compare to the amount generated in 2014?
Mr. Huizenga. Yeah, we hope to be able to barter a similar
amount of, somewhere over 2,000 kilograms. But you are right,
the price is now a function of the market and the prices for
uranium have indeed gone down. So we won't know exactly what
the prices are going to be. We will continue to monitor that
and, you know, to the extent that the prices go down we will
perhaps try to barter a little more. We have a limit on what we
are allowed to barter within the Secretarial determination
because we want to make sure that we are sensitive overall to
the market impacts. But we have the ability to make some
adjustments if needed.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. And could you explain at the
Portsmouth facility it appears there is a 33 percent cut in
security funding from $12.5 million to $8.5 million for this
next fiscal year and actually we have had a transition as you
know from security at USEC to the Department of Energy itself.
Do you know why there would be such a steep reduction in
funding for safety and security?
Mr. Huizenga. I do know we are working closely with the
contractor. The request for safeguards and security is similar
actually to our '14 request. So you are able to give us a
little bit more in the '14 appropriate than we actually had
initially requested. So our '15 request is similar to our '14
request and we are taking advantage of the additional funding
to beef up some of the security issues. But in the long run we
think we are going to be fine with our '15 request level. We
are actually looking at maybe adjusting some of the fence lines
and the guard posts if possible. And although we haven't made
final decisions on ways to actually make that less expensive if
possible but still secure.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you for that clarification. My last
question will be a homework assignment and that is if you would
kindly prepare an addendum to your testimony that could explain
to the American people in language they can understand what we
have accomplished in terms of cleanup and what lies ahead with
all the factors we discussed, the square miles, the actual
volume of which material. Mr. Fleischmann mentioned mercury. I
don't know if mercury is on your list but if you could kindly
give us a greater clarity. Not 100 pages of reply, 3 at the
most.
Mr. Huizenga. Okay. That is a challenge.
Ms. Kaptur. Then I think we would better be able to--you
mentioned $200 billion looking down the road over what period
of time. I think that big picture summary would be very
valuable to the community.
Mr. Huizenga. We have, in that regard, had some other
discussion with folks about this, we have binned the $200
billion to go costs into various bins so we do already have a
sense of about 60 percent of that money would be spent on
finishing the high level waste, making glass logs out of the
liquids, and the associated D&D work that would be done at
Portsmouth and Paducah and wrapping up the major
decommissioning work at Tennessee. So we have some granularity
on that already and so I will make sure that we include that
into the record.
Ms. Kaptur. And give yourself credit and all those
associated with you and all contractors for what has been
accomplished. I think has got to be made a little more clear as
well.
Mr. Huizenga. Excellent.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. Thank you very much. That ends my
questioning.
Mr. Nunnelee. The Chairman stepped out, so let me drive the
train. So I get to recognize myself. Mr. Huizenga, the
Department submitted a request for interest for use of DOE
facilities and stockpiles of depleted uranium to support new
emissions at Paducah. Last fall you announced you had selected
a reuse proposal submitted by GE Hitachi. So under what general
terms would GE Hitachi reinvest in Paducah and can you give me
an outline for how this arrangement is going to function?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, sir, we are in the process of
negotiating the contracting details with GLE right now. As you
noted we did enter into these discussions I think just shortly
before Thanksgiving of last year and we are now currently
discussing things with state and local government relative to
ultimately where the facility will be placed, what land will be
placed. Probably next to the actual DOE site and there are some
land use issues that we are working through in that regard
right now to make sure that the proper use of the--the land is
set aside for use in some manner and we want to make sure it is
well preserved or we swap some land that maybe if we take that
land we use some other land for preservation. So those
discussions are ongoing right now.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right. So based on all that, in what
timeframe could a laser enrichment facility become operational
in Paducah?
Mr. Huizenga. I will have to get back to you for the exact
date of when--when the facility will actually be up and
running? Is that what you are----
Mr. Nunnelee. Yeah.
Mr. Huizenga [continuing]. Trying to clarify? I don't have
that date in my head.
Mr. Nunnelee. If you could get us that.
Mr. Huizenga. Yes.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right. So if this doesn't go through
right away, will you begin the decontamination work or where
will that leave you?
Mr. Huizenga. At Paducah in general?
Mr. Nunnelee. Yes.
Mr. Huizenga. Well, we hope to do these things in parallel.
Mr. Nunnelee. Okay.
Mr. Huizenga. So let us be clear. We have got three things
going on, or ultimately we will have three things going on
parallel. We will start the surveillance and maintenance of the
facilities once we take them over which will ultimately lead to
the D&D of those major facilities. We will be pursuing this
work with GLE so that we can take some of the TALEs and re-
enrich them, and we will continue probably with the very low
assay TALEs that are not of interests to GLE. We will continue
to process those through the DUF6 conversion plant which is up
and running on site both there and at Portsmouth. So we will
have the three parallel activities going on. GLE will
ultimately need to license this facility with the NRC and I
don't suspect that there will be problems with that but that
will take some time and that will have to be factored into when
the facility will ultimately be up and running.
Mr. Nunnelee. Miss Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. My question is complete.
Mr. Nunnelee. Do we have anybody else? Let me check on the
Chair. Oh, there we go.
Mr. Simpson. We are back. Who is next? Marcy, do you have
anything else you would like to ask?
Mr. Huizenga. She gave me a homework assignment, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. I want to make him sweat somehow.
Mr. Huizenga. You do this every year, sir.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Back to WIPP. In 2014 the omnibus
provided additional funding above the request specifically to
address deferred maintenance at WIPP yet your budget
justification states you plan to spend only $10 million total
on maintenance in 2014, $2 million less than last year's plans
despite having those additional funds. The accident
investigation of the salt truck fire concluded that failure to
conduct adequate periodic maintenance on the truck was the root
cause of the fire. The Department has still not completed all
corrective actions it said it would in response to a letter
sent by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board back in
2012 identifying poor maintenance practices at WIPP. What are
your plans to address the maintenance problems in the site and
do you think there are needs for a greater emphasis on
improving maintenance at the site?
Mr. Huizenga. Yes, I do think that we need to improve
maintenance at the site. I mean you are correct, the accident
report for the fire investigation indicated that we need to
improve our practices. We have had discussions with the
contractor. They clearly understand and acknowledge this and
are in the process of already implementing changes to their
procedures. Overall as you know, a percentage of the WIPP
budget we have actually increased, from 2009 to 2013 we have
increased our relative spending by about 32 percent on
maintenance. So I think we are trending in the right direction
and you might be right that in light of what we are finding now
we may have to increase our spending somewhat in the remainder
of '14 and in '15.
Mr. Simpson. Press reports have stated that the Department
is continuing to negotiate the terms for the commissioning and
start up of the salt waste processing facility at the Savannah
River site that must be done before a new performance baseline
for the project can be established. Previous reviews of the
project have included warnings that DOE's failure to negotiate
the contract by now past deadlines would have serious impacts
on the project. Why have there been so many delays on
finalizing the contract and establishing new baselines? How
much have these extended negotiations cost the DOE in terms of
schedule slippage? You've been negotiating for several years--
years now. Do you have a timeline of when you expect to have an
agreement?
Mr. Huizenga. Well, we broke the negotiations into two
phases. So we renegotiated the construction part of the
contract which is the active phase that we are in right now.
And we wrapped those up with the ultimate construction complete
date of December 2016 and the actual construction itself is
going quite well at the moment and we hope to actually beat
that date. The contract negotiations that we are currently
involved in are for the next phase post construction in the
commission phase and in the initial start up and operation of
the facility. So we haven't actually lost anything on schedule
because we are taking our time to negotiate this next phase of
the contract.
Mr. Simpson. Okay.
Mr. Huizenga. And we are trying to make sure that we are
striking the right balance between having a contractor being
able to make a profit but taxpayers being able to not bear an
unnecessary burden of the ultimate cost.
Mr. Simpson. The original performance baseline projected
that construction would be completed in 2014 at a cost of $1.3
billion. That included the construction portion as well as the
start up and commissioning. In the budget request you report
that the Deputy Secretary approved a growth in contract cost of
$330 million. Do you anticipate further growth beyond the $330
million?
Mr. Huizenga. That is what we are in the thick of right
now, sir. I mean we are trying to actually figure out that was
for the construction aspects and you know that was in part due
to the 10 large vessels that we have procured and were
delivered late. So we had to recover from that. I can't give
you a sense of how this next phase is going to turn out because
we are really making the sausage right now.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah. You done, Marcy?
Ms. Kaptur. Yes.
Mr. Simpson. If there is nothing else then I thank you for
being here today. We have kind of taken it easy on you.
Mr. Huizenga. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. But you have a very important job and you have
done a very important job over the last two years and we thank
you for the work that you have done for the country and for the
EM portion of the Department of Energy. And I do think we are
moving forward. There are challenges and there will always be
challenges as we learn new things in this arena. But I look
forward to--that new Undersecretary has been nominated?
Mr. Huizenga. Okay. A new Undersecretary has been nominated
and a new Assistant Secretary has actually been nominated for
the EM job.
Mr. Simpson. And those nominations are?
Mr. Huizenga. Taken through appropriate time.
Mr. Simpson. In the body across the rotunda I guess.
Mr. Huizenga. Yeah.
Mr. Simpson. We actually get things done over here. I
shouldn't say that--but anyway I appreciate it and thank you
for being here today. I look forward to working with you as we
try to complete this budget process.
Mr. Huizenga. Yeah.
Mr. Simpson. And make sure you keep us informed of what is
going on at WIPP and what the potential impacts on our budget
are going to be.
Mr. Huizenga. It has been an honor. I have worked with you,
Mr. Chairman, and, you know, Representative Kaptur it's almost
three years, it is not two years, it is almost three years now.
Mr. Simpson. Yeah, that is true.
Mr. Huizenga. So we have got a lot done with your support
and there is more to do and we certainly appreciate your
continued focus on the EM program. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. We are adjourned.
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Tuesday, March 25, 2014.
APPLIED ENERGY FUNDING FY 2015 BUDGET
WITNESSES
DAVID DANIELSON, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE
ENERGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
PETE LYONS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, NUCLEAR ENERGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY, FOSSIL ENERGY, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
PATRICIA HOFFMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, ELECTRICITY DELIVERY AND ENERGY
RELIABILITY
Mr. Simpson. Welcome this morning to the hearing. The
hearing will come to order. Let me just state that there is
about five or six other hearings going on at the same time for
Appropriations Committee members, so I suspect that you will
see people running in and running out and back and forth during
the hearing.
But I would like to welcome our witnesses, Dr. David
Danielson, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy; Dr. Pete Lyons, Assistant Secretary for
Nuclear Energy; Pat Hoffman, Assistant Secretary for
Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability; and Christopher
Smith, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy.
But before I begin, and before we get started, I would like
to take a moment to say how much I look forward to working with
Ranking Member Kaptur and all the other members of this
subcommittee. I have been a member of this subcommittee for
about 10 years, and I have great appreciation for the
importance of the issues under its jurisdiction. This is the
first hearing that I have actually chaired as chairman of this
subcommittee, so it is a new role for me. And I look forward
to, as I said, working with our ranking member and for her
valuable input on this Department.
Your programs account for more than $3.8 billion of the
Department's budget request for fiscal year 2015. I must note
that while the request is more balanced than last year, the two
accounts, Nuclear and Fossil, which Congress increased last
year, received reductions. To the extent that the President is
serious about an ``all-of-the-above'' energy strategy, I would
hope that this is the last year we see this imbalance in the
request. Not surprisingly, I know the work funded by Nuclear
Energy the best, but I also know the importance that these
programs hold, not just for the American industrial
competitiveness but also for the comfort, safety, and well-
being of all of our constituents.
As Assistant Secretaries, you have both managerial and
leadership roles to the people and programs under your
responsibilities. I am sure you will agree that these can be
distinct from each other, but both require a strong vision of
your mandate and operation. Unfortunately, simply reading your
budget request does not give me much insight into the vision
each of you has for your programs. This is a question which I
will ask Secretary Moniz to cover for the Department overall,
but I expect that you will be able to provide us with your
answers today.
Given the number of opening statements which we have before
we get into questions, I will keep this short, and I will ask
that each of you do the same. Please ensure that the hearing
record, questions for the record that include supporting
information requested by the subcommittee are delivered in
final form to us no later than 4 weeks from the time you
receive them. Members who have additional questions for the
record will have until close of business tomorrow to provide
them for the subcommittee office.
And I will say that this is kind of an accelerated hearing
schedule that we are having throughout all of the appropriation
bills, because we are going to actually try something new this
year in both the House and Senate, and that is to do our job
and do it on time, and try to get appropriations done so that
you know what your budget is going to be when the first of the
fiscal year rolls around. So we are having accelerated hearings
in all of the subcommittees, which brings a lot of conflicts
going on for members as we try to get this done.
But I think the hearing schedule should be complete by the
middle of April and we will be done with that and then we will
start marking up appropriation bills and try get them to the
floor. And, of course, a lot of it depends on the floor time
that is available in the House and the Senate.
So with that, I will turn to my ranking member, Ms. Kaptur,
for her comments.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I must say that it
is a pleasure to work with a regular-order member who wants to
get the job of this subcommittee, full committee, and the
Congress done on schedule. And perhaps even early.
It is a distinct honor to welcome Dr. Danielson. It is good
to see you again. Thank you for your hard work.
And, Dr. Lyons, thank you so very much for being here
today.
And Secretaries Smith and Hoffman, thank you all for coming
today and updating our subcommittee on your programs.
I have long cited America's reliance on foreign energy as a
grave economic and primary national security concern. Over the
last decade, the people of our Nation have spent $2.3 trillion
on importing and consuming foreign oil, predominantly,
diverting our wealth and job creators to some of the worst
global players at the expense of our own citizens and nation.
The recent events in Ukraine provide an abject lesson, lest we
forget our own country's challenges on the strategic importance
of reliable energy in defending the borders of sovereign
nations. The dependence of Ukraine and much of Europe on
Russian energy imports have complicated the international
response to Russia's illegal invasion of Crimea.
With this in mind, Secretary Smith, I hope that you can
help us understand the circumstances surrounding the
availability of our country's resources and the implications of
exporting these assets. And we will have more in the question
period on that.
And further, somewhat parochially, I would like to explore
what you can tell us about the coastal infrastructure for
export, including in the Great Lakes region; that coastline,
the longest in our country, actually.
I represent a part of the Nation that has worked very hard
to develop all sources of energy, from the photovoltaic silver
manufacturing in the Toledo region, including launching the
first solar company that is doing quite well right now; oil
refining at Oregon Nuclear Energy in Oak Harbor; and offshore
wind, hopefully, in Lake Erie, advanced batteries in Cleveland.
And our State is now experiencing a boom of natural gas
exploration in eastern Ohio. But by and large, our region
competes in the harshest of free markets. It is a merchant
economy with no historic record of Federal subsidy for either
energy or power. We lack the directed manages and engagement of
a national lab driving regional development and innovation or a
power authority providing subsidized power to our homes and
businesses.
For my district and State, energy supplies a significant
financial strain on the citizens and businesses striving to get
through each day. So I am particularly interested in policies,
expert innovation, investment, and drive down costs and support
regional energy equity.
I suspect today you will address how each of your programs
is meeting Nation's challenges related to our energy sector in
an era of budget austerity. I am focused on understanding the
technological challenges that face each of these sectors so
that collectively, we can make informed and wise decisions to
shepherd our resources towards those areas with the largest
return.
Dr. Danielson, finally--and I just left a meeting of the
Steel Caucus. The Advanced Manufacturing Office came up during
the question period. You are at the forefront of reinvigorating
our country's manufacturing capability, an issue of intense
national importance. As our Nation has lost about a third of
its manufacturing jobs and the middle class shrinking because
of it, I am very concerned about indications that America is
losing her competitive advantage in many emerging energy
technologies. And interested to hear about opportunities to not
only remain competitive, but restore our position as the global
leader in new energy technology.
So we look forward to hearing how we can protect our
investments in research and development, intellectual property
poaching to protect our investments in research and development
for intellectual property poaching and ensure that our efforts
further domestic manufacturing rather than commercialization
overseas.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the time and look forward to
the testimony.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. And before we turn to you for your
testimony, let me make an announcement. We have had an addition
to our Energy and Water staff born last week. Rob is a new
father of Afton Riggs, and we are very proud to have a new
Energy and Water Appropriations staff member here. And we
actually had a flag flown over the Capitol in his honor so that
when he gets to be 20, 25 years old you can say, yeah, the old
man did that. So congratulations.
Mr. Blair. Thank you very much.
Mr. Simpson. Dr. Lyons, we will start with you first.
Mr. Lyons. Thank you. Chairman Simpson, Ranking Member
Kaptur, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
President's fiscal year 2015 budget request for the Office of
Nuclear Energy at the Department of Energy. This past year has
been an historic one for nuclear energy. Construction of the
first new nuclear builds in this country in more than 30 years
continued with completed base map foundations for two new
reactor units at V.C. Summer in South Carolina and two new
plants at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.
Last month, the Secretary announced that two of the owners
of Plant Vogtle would receive a $6.5 billion loan guarantee.
New nuclear builds, in addition to the currently operating
nuclear power fleet, play an important role in President
Obama's Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
as well as achieving American energy independence.
While we are celebrating new nuclear construction in South
Carolina and Georgia, we must also look ahead to the future of
nuclear reactor technology. In 2013, the Office of Nuclear
Energy announced a second funding opportunity announcement, or
FOA, to execute cost-shared, first-of-a-kind engineering and
design development work to help accelerate the timelines for
commercialization of small modular reactors.
In December, we selected NuScale power under this FOA for a
licensing technical support award. For this FOA, we solicited
innovations that can improve safety, operation, and economics
through lower core damage frequencies, longer post-accident
coping periods, enhanced resistance to hazards presented by
natural phenomena, and potentially reduced emergency
preparedness zones, or workforce requirements.
These new small modular reactors, as well as the
Westinghouse AP 1000 reactor, are designed with passive safety
features to minimize any requirement for prompt operator
action, and prevent auxiliary system failures from contributing
to future accidents. Passive safety further enhances the safety
of nuclear power plants.
Another essential research development on the horizon in
fiscal year 2015 is the planned restart of the Transient Test
Reactor, or TREAT at the Idaho National Laboratory. Transient
testing will enable our programs to understand fuel performance
as well as provide a capability to screen advanced fuel
concepts, including accident-tolerant fuels, which allows for
early identification of the limits of fuel performance.
Finally, although this year has brought many exciting
developments in new nuclear power construction and
technologies, it has, unfortunately, also been a year of
unprecedented nuclear power plant closures. The shutdown of
these power plants is a significant loss of low carbon
electricity. Beyond emission, these closed nuclear power plants
are a considerable loss of base load electricity supply and a
loss of energy diversity. America's nuclear power fleet is a
national asset on many fronts, and our programs continue to
ensure nuclear power remains a key player in America's clean
energy future.
In summary, the President's fiscal year 2015 budget
requests 863 million for the Office of Nuclear Energy, a
decrease of 2.8 percent from the fiscal year 2014 enacted
budget and an increase of 17 percent above the fiscal year 2015
request.
I look forward to responding to your questions.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
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Mr. Simpson. Dr. Danielson.
Mr. Danielson. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Kaptur, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify today. The Office of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy, known as EERE, seeks to ensure American
leadership in the transition to global clean energy economy.
EERE's goals are to dramatically reduce U.S. Reliance on oil,
reduce energy costs for American families and businesses,
create American jobs, and reduce pollution. At EERE, we focus
on three distinct energy sectors: Sustainable transportation,
renewable power, and energy efficiency. We support research
development and demonstration activities with the explicit goal
of making clean energy technologies directly competitive
without subsidies with the energy technologies in broad use
today.
Our Nation stands at a critical point in time with regard
to the opportunity in clean energy. Americans continue to spend
almost $1 billion a day overseas for foreign oil, and every
year we are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in energy
costs through inefficient buildings and factories.
In addition, while $254 billion was invested globally in
clean energy in 2013, with trillions more to be invested in the
years ahead, the energy industry has systematically
underinvested in innovation, investing just 0.4 percent of its
sales in R&D.
For these reasons, there continues to be an important and
appropriate role for stable, targeted government investment in
innovation in the clean energy sector. After decades of EERE
support for American clean energy innovation, we are now in the
unique position where a wide array of technologies are truly
within 5 to 10 years of being cost competitive without
subsidies. This presents us not only with the opportunity to
address America's strategic energy challenges, but also with
one of the most significant economic development opportunities
of the 21st century.
We can either make the necessary and appropriate
investments to ensure that the clean energy technologies of
today and tomorrow are invented and manufactured here in
America, or we can surrender global leadership in important new
technologies from nations like China, India, South Korea, and
Japan.
In fiscal year 2015, EERE is requesting a budget of $2.3
billion from Congress. I would like to briefly highlight recent
successes and key proposed activities for fiscal year 2015 from
across our portfolio. We will start with our sustainable
transportation portfolio. In fiscal year 2015, EERE will seek
to build upon an already strong track record in this area. For
example, from 1976 to 2008, more than $900 million in EERE
supported combustion engine research yielded economic benefits
totaling more than $70 billion, a more than 70-to-1 return on
investment. And just last year, EERE achieved a high-volume
model cost for advanced batteries of $325 per kilowatt hour, a
more than 60 percent reduction since 2008.
EERE's fiscal year 2015 supports R&D to advance more
efficient combustion engines and increase the use of natural
gas and drop in biofuels, and will continue to support R&D to
achieve the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge's goal of driving
down advanced battery costs to $125 per kilowatt hour by 2022.
We will also continue our focus on driving innovation in
fuel cell systems to reduce their costs to $40 per kilowatt by
2020. And we will continue to develop innovative processes to
convert cellulosic and algal-based feedstocks to bio-based
fuels to demonstrate the technology required to achieve a cost
of $3 per gallon by 2017 to 2022.
In our renewable power portfolio, EERE's fiscal year 2015
request will build on our SunShot initiatives 60 percent
progress today towards its goal of making solar energy directly
cost competitive by 2020. We propose to launch the HydroNEXT
initiative to double U.S. Hydropower by 2030, and we will
continue to support offshore wind advanced technologies
demonstration projects and the Frontier Observatory for
research in geothermal energy, an important new site for the
comprehensive and synergistic development of cutting-edge new
EGS technologies.
Finally, in our energy efficiency portfolio, EERE's fiscal
year 2015 request emphasizes cutting edge R&D in next-
generation building technologies, like LEDs and high efficiency
cooling technologies has increased emphasis on appliance
standards and national building energy codes and increased
support for next-generation manufacturing R&D to lower energy
costs for American manufacturers.
We will support manufacturing R&D facilities to provide
small- and medium-sized American manufacturers access to
cutting-edge emerging manufacturing technologies that will help
them compete globally with continued support for existing
facilities, like the manufacturing demonstration facility at
Oak Ridge National Lab and our Manufacturing Innovation
Institute on additive manufacturing in Youngstown, Ohio, in
addition to supporting the launch of at least one new
manufacturing innovation institute in fiscal year 2015.
I want to close my prepared remarks today by emphasizing
EERE's continued commitment to be a good steward of taxpayer
investments. And fiscal year 2014 EERE has taken strong steps
to protect taxpayer-funded innovation from being manufactured
overseas, requiring negotiated manufacturing commitments in all
new funding agreements.
In addition, EERE remains committed to active project
management. Over the past 2 years, EERE has uniformly
implemented enhanced active project management practices across
the board, including exclusive use of cooperative agreements,
not grants, and uniform implementation of rigorous annual go/no
go project milestones.
In my budget hearing before this subcommittee last year, I
noted that from 2005 to March 2013, EERE discontinued more than
50 projects that were not achieving key technical milestones,
allowing it to save or redirect more than $113 million. And
EERE's new approach appears to be working. Over the past year,
EERE has initiated a process of discontinuing more than 17
projects, representing almost $25 million in savings, which is
more than double EERE's average annual rate of early project
terminations over the last decade.
In closing, I would look forward to continuing to work with
this committee to maximize the impact of every taxpayer dollar
spent at EERE and to ensure that it is the United States that
wins the global race for the clean energy manufacturing
industries and jobs of the future.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
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Mr. Simpson. Ms. Hoffman.
Ms. Hoffman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the
committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today to discuss the President's fiscal year 2015 budget for
the Department's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy
Reliability. OE's mission is to lead national efforts to
modernize the electric grid and enhance the security and
reliability of our Nation's energy infrastructure as well as
facilitate recovery from disruptions to the energy supply.
A modern grid is vital to the Nation's economy and
security. It provides a foundation for critical services that
Americans rely on every day. This is especially true now.
America's energy landscape is being redefined. Power outages
resulting from extreme weather events, such as Superstorm
Sandy, are disrupting lives and costing billions of dollars. A
resilient energy infrastructure that can recover quickly from a
severe weather event is critical. While climate change is a
significant risk to the resiliency of the energy system, there
are other risks as well. Manmade threats, such as the physical
attack on the Metcalf electric substation in California, are
evolving.
Cybersecurity for the energy sector is now one of the
Nation's most serious grid modernization and infrastructure
protection issue. The infrastructure itself is aging.
Technology is also changing rapidly, as are customers'
expectations and the demands for energy. We are at a pivotal
point. The Nation's grid must evolve and adapt to these changes
and to those we can't yet see.
The fiscal year 2015 budget request for OE is $180 million
and affirms the Administration's commitment to modernizing the
Nation's electricity system. OE takes a broad, multi-
dimensional approach that spans the breadth of issues necessary
to ensure a reliable, secure, and resilient system one that is
flexible enough to accommodate all types of generation--
consistent with the Administration's ``all-of-the-above''
strategy. From operational support during energy emergencies to
technical assistance with policy and regulatory issues, to
deployment of advanced solutions in the near term as well as
advanced technologies in the long-term, OE's activity focuses
on complex issues and opportunities in a rapidly changing
energy landscape. Given the challenges that we face, the
request reflects an urgent need for building in resiliency to
strengthen our ability to help secure the U.S. energy
infrastructure against all types of hazards and respond and
reduce the impact of disruptive events.
The request of $22.6 million for the Infrastructure
Security and Energy Restoration Program includes funds for
enhanced emergency response and restoration capabilities. As
part of our all-
hazards approach to the protection of critical infrastructure,
the request also includes 42 million in support of our efforts
to address cybersecurity threats. We are accelerating
innovative research and development for the long term while
addressing the immediate need for information sharing with the
energy sector and mitigating cybersecurity events as well as
advanced capabilities.
To better understand the potential impacts to the energy
infrastructure in the near term and long term, we are working
on improvements that will advance resiliency and security. With
the request of $36 million for the Clean Energy Transmission
and Reliability Program these investments will allow us to
build an energy system analytical capability that will include
criticality and risk analysis, interdependency, and support for
emergency events.
We are also investing in research in modeling and
computational mathematical advancements that will turn the
real-time synchrophasor data into actionable information which
will allow grid operators not only to understand what is
currently happening, but also what could happen.
The request of $24 million for our Smart Grid program
expands our investments in the transformation of the grid at
the distribution level through the development of innovative
technology and concepts.
Energy storage is also critical to the reliability and
resilience of the system, enabling a greater adoption of
renewable energy resources and more effective utilization of
the existing system. The request of $19 million for energy
storage focuses on and addresses challenges related to cost
reduction, system engineering, and performance improvement, as
well as increased emphasis on safety and reliability of energy
storage.
In conclusion, we are living in a time that demands a broad
perspective and that considers the urgent needs of today and
anticipates the future. The fiscal year 2015 budget request
invests in activities that will allow us to address some of the
ongoing challenges of modernizing the Nation's electric grid
and continues moving us towards a more resilient and secure
energy future.
This is my statement. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
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Mr. Simpson. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Simpson,
Ranking Member Kaptur, and members of the subcommittee, I
appreciate this opportunity to discuss the President's fiscal
year 2015 budget request for the Office of Fossil Energy
programs. The Office of Fossil Energy's primary mission is to
ensure that we are able to use our fossil energy resources in
the most efficient and sustainable ways possible. Technologies
evolvement is critical to this mission, and the Office of
Fossil Energy Research and Development is focused on
technologies that promote a reliable and environmentally sound
use of fossil fuels, particularly coal and unconventional
natural gas.
Our office also manages the Nation's Strategic Petroleum
Reserve, the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve, and the Naval
Petroleum Reserves.
President Obama's fiscal year 2015 budget seeks a total of
$711 million for the Office of Fossil Energy. So beginning with
the Fossil Energy Research and Development Program, I would
like to provide a very brief highlight of the President's
request.
This year's budget includes $475 million for the Fossil
Energy Research and Development Program, $277 million of that
funding is focused primarily on advancing carbon capture and
storage, or CCS. This research and development is targeted at
carbon capture technology development, CO2 storage
and utilization options, as well as CO2 monitoring,
verification, and accounting, advanced power systems that
support CCS, and cross-cutting research.
Our CCS research is centered primarily on coal-fired power
plants and industrial facilities. But we are also dedicating
resources to capturing carbon pollution from natural gas power
plants.
This year's request includes $25 million for a new natural
gas carbon capture and storage demonstration program. This
program will build on our ongoing CCS demonstration program.
We also conduct research and development on the prudent
development of domestic unconventional oil and gas resources.
With the budget request of $35 million, the natural gas
technologies research and development program will focus on
developing technologies to enable the safe and responsible
development of our unconventional domestic natural gas
resources. This request includes $15.3 million to contribute to
continue our collaborative research and development with the
Environmental Protection Agency and with the U.S. Geological
Survey to minimize the potential impact of shale gas
development; $4.7 million to fund a new program focused on
technologies to detect and mitigate methane emissions from
natural gas systems; and $15 million for methane hydrates
research.
Turning to our Office of Petroleum Reserves, this year's
budget includes $205 million for the Strategic Petroleum
Reserves to fund a major maintenance program to reduce the
backlog of deferred maintenance projects as well as ongoing
projects to ensure the readiness of the Strategic Petroleum
Reserve.
It also includes $1.6 million for the Northeast Home
Heating Oil Reserve, which includes funding for continued
storage of the 1 million barrels of ultra low sulphur diesel
that is stored in the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve.
The President is also requesting nearly $20 million for the
Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves to carry out
environmental remediation and disposition activities at NPR 1
in California, and the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center
in Wyoming.
Finally, the budget includes $15.6 million for the final
payment to the Elk Hills School Lands Fund, which was a result
of the settlement with the State of California with respect to
its longstanding claim that title to two sections of land
within NPR 1.
The Office of Fossil Energy is committed to developing the
science and technology that will allow the Nation to use its
abundant fossil energy resources in a way that balances our
energy needs with our environmental responsibility. The fiscal
year 2015 budget request will help maintain DOE's leadership
role in addressing issues of energy and environmental security.
We believe this budget will provide resources that we need to
achieve those goals.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to answer any
questions that you have at this time.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Thank all of you. You were very
efficient. I appreciate that.
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Mr. Simpson. Let me first turn to Dr. Lyons. I suspect you
might have suspected this question was coming. I was surprised
to hear the rumors that Babcock and Wilcox might be reassessing
its participation in the SMR licensing technical support
program. Can you provide us with an update on how the
Department is progressing with this program? And has the
Department conducted a business-case analysis for the SMR
reactors in the United States?
Mr. Lyons. Thank you, Mr. Simpson.
First, the Department remains committed and enthusiastic
about the future of the small modular reactors. We see them as
an important contribution to American competitiveness, American
jobs, and American clean energy. We, too, have read the
announcements that B&W has made. But we have yet to hear a
definitive proposal from B&W mPower. So I do not know what
their plans are at this time. However, we have reminded both
B&W, with whom we have the cooperative agreement, and mPower,
as well as the negotiations that are in progress with NuScale,
that the intent of this program remains U.S. manufacture, U.S.
intellectual property, and U.S. competitiveness. And we expect,
if there is any proposals forthcoming, they would have to
comply with those criteria in order for us to accept any
proposal. But we don't know what they are going to propose at
this time.
As far as business case, yes, we completed a review done by
the University of Chicago on the business case for SMRs. There
have been a number of other papers written on SMRs that were in
somewhat less detail. That University of Chicago report is
being updated and will be available later this summer.
Our enthusiasm in the SMRs is an important contributor to a
new generation of nuclear power remains as it was.
Mr. Simpson. Following up on one of the things you
mentioned, as you know, one of the challenges we have with
large nuclear reactors is that we don't build a lot of the
materials here in the United States like the reactor vessels
and so forth. One of the hopes of SMRs is that we would create
a supply chain of manufacturing within the United States. Is
there any evidence that any of that is starting to occur yet?
Mr. Lyons. Both mPower and NuScale have been working with a
number of U.S. companies and are proceeding to develop that
supply chain. And from a technical standpoint, I am not aware
of any issues in the mPower, B&W work.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. You mentioned during your testimony that
we have shut down nuclear power plants. How many have we shut
down?
Mr. Lyons. Four have shut down this year, with an
announcement that one more, Vermont Nuclear, will shut down
next year.
Mr. Simpson. Have they been shut down because of age and so
forth? Or is the price of natural gas having something to do
with that and making them less competitive?
Mr. Lyons. Each of the plants would have a somewhat
different story. But the economics of each plant has led to the
shutdown. Now, in some cases, there were also major equipment
issues at some of the plants that, of course, could have been
fixed if the economics had been appropriate.
Certainly, natural gas prices are part of the issue. But so
is a flat demand for electricity and probably other factors
such as renewable mandates that also enter in. It depends very
much on the market.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Lyons, I wanted to
ask you, on those shutdowns of nuclear power plants, are they
in any particular region of the country or were they in all
regions?
Mr. Lyons. They are widely spread around the country, but
they are all in deregulated environments. I could list them if
you want.
Ms. Kaptur. Which States?
Mr. Lyons. California, Florida, Wisconsin, and Vermont will
shut down next year.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. I am very concerned about how
nuclear will fare in light of the current and projected natural
gas prices in regions like my own, which is not in a regulated
environment.
The possibility of thousands of lost jobs hang in the
balance as well as the capacity. And I am wondering how nuclear
will fare in light of the current and projected natural gas
prices. And what you might be able to tell us about the outlook
being different for regulated plants receiving cost of service
rates than for unregulated merchants plants compensated market-
based rates. How do we, particularly from a part of the country
where we have no energy umbrella, how is the Department of
Energy looking at this situation and helping these companies to
adjust to this new reality? Or what should we be doing to help
them to adjust?
Mr. Lyons. First let me note that the locations of new
construction in the United States are in regulated
environments, where public utility commissions can evaluate a
range of factors, including the importance of fuel diversity
and look at a long-range future for their State. In the
deregulated, or market environments, that is certainly much
more challenging.
We certainly have been exploring this from a departmental
perspective. It is extremely hard to find a single solution
from a Federal level that would address the diverse market
factors across the country, although we continue to seek that.
There are, in a number of cases, actions that States have
taken to work with utilities within their States. And those
appear to be quite effective in a number of cases and there has
been publicity about several ongoing negotiations between
States and nuclear power plants within those States perhaps
looking at long-term power purchase agreements.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you for that clarification. This remains
a deep concern for those of us that represent nuclear power
plants in States like Ohio. I just want to place that on the
record.
I also wanted to ask you, in the 2014 omnibus bill, there
was direction to the Department to evaluate the State of
nuclear tradecraft and prepare a report by July of 2014. I
don't know what the status of that report is, and that is the
reason for my question.
And, attendant to that, I just wanted to invite you out, or
any of your associates, to the region that I represent to look
at the various trade schools that our building trades have
created for plumbers and pipe fitters, boilermakers, and
electrical workers that work in nuclear power plants. I was
talking to Senator Feinstein. She doesn't have anything like
that in her region, which was quite a surprise to me.
I am interested in the Department becoming aware of the
incredible training in capacity building that is done in these
trade schools. And I am not sure that the Department is. I just
wanted to put that on your horizon, as you travel around the
country. And I would like to draw your attention to them.
Mr. Lyons. Thank you for that comment and question.
We are proceeding to work on the requested report. We are
involving both nationalized and industry through NEI and EPRI
in developing a comprehensive report. And we anticipate having
that report for you as requested in July.
With respect to some of the trade school comments, I have
not visited trade schools in Ohio, I don't believe. I have
participated in a number of forums at the Ohio State University
at which a number of those schools have also been represented.
And I am somewhat aware, but I would like to learn more about
the excellent work that is being done as you said, in preparing
trades for these important skills.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much. I look forward to that
opportunity.
Mr. Chairman, I will save my questions for the next round.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And welcome,
everybody. I want to thank this entire panel. Ms. Hoffman, good
to see you.
I want to particularly thank Dr. Lyons for spending a
tremendous amount of time with me over the past couple years,
he has brought me up to speed.
Dr. Danielson, I want to thank you as well. And I want the
committee to know, Dr. Danielson has not only been to Oak Ridge
to see our carbon fiber research, but just last month, he came
to Chattanooga and then went to Oak Ridge. And in Chattanooga,
I want to thank you, sir, for speaking to the Tennessee
Advanced Energy Business Council, and then also going back to
ORNL to see the lab's manufacturing demonstration facility. So
really appreciate your-all's work with us.
Secretary Danielson, can you please give the subcommittee
your thoughts on the impact that facilities like the Oak Ridge
MDF will have on U.S. manufacturing leadership? And then as a
follow-up to that, what are your plans, sir, to prioritize
these unique user facilities and provide base funding for
continued operation.
Mr. Danielson. Thank you, Congressman. You know, one thing
I will point out is that I think we should all be optimistic
that the winds are blowing in the direction in the United
States for manufacturing competitiveness perspective. Talking
to the private sector, you look at issues like rising wages
overseas, especially in China, issues around IP protection in
China and other countries, or rising inflation rates, and also
an appreciation, a new found appreciation with businesses in
the U.S. that you can't--you can't just have R&D here and do
manufacturing elsewhere and continue to be a leader.
So we are seeing positive indications. And part of our
strategy for kind of catalyzing more U.S. Manufacturing
competitiveness is developing R&D facilities that allow a wide
range of small and medium enterprises to tap in to cutting-edge
manufacturing capabilities related to energy that they wouldn't
be able to on their own.
And so the carbon fiber technology facility at Oak Ridge
National Lab is a great example of that. And we have seen
dozens of companies form a consortia around that facility, and
we are seeing companies sprout up around that. So we are seeing
some positive momentum, and we want to continue that with our
work with Oak Ridge.
And I will say our work with NREL, our national laboratory,
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, for the first time we
have designated a formal user facility, the Energy Systems
Integration Facility, where we are providing base funding for
that facility to help make it more accessible and affordable
for companies and researchers. And that is something we are
going to be looking very seriously at over the next year. It is
considered--strong consideration of applying that across the
board to our user facilities.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. As a follow-up to that, you made a
statement in Chattanooga, which I really liked, and I am
quoting, ``We are in a fierce race with China, so we have to
have all hands on deck.''
How does the U.S. stack up against the rest of the world,
Mr. Secretary, in manufacturing innovation? And what measures
are other governments taking to help their industrial sectors
compete against us, sir?
Mr. Danielson. Thanks for that question. It is an important
one. We have definitely seen strong support in other nations,
whether it be, you know, long-term tax abatements or, you know,
multiyear plans in China to then motivate--in my visit to China
recently, I learned that, you know, it is not direct funding
from the centralized government, but it is actually a multi-
year plan they put out, a 5-year plan that then inspires local
mayors and governors to invest to achieve those goals so that
they are looked on favorably.
So there is a lot of strong policy support in other nations
for advanced manufacturing. But I think we are seeing, with the
standup of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation
and a user facility like manufacturing demonstration facility
in Oak Ridge National Lab, we are seeing those as magnets for
manufacturing innovation and manufacturing jobs. And I think we
are seeing positive indications that companies are locating
here and choosing to locate here. A company called Silevo, a
high-end, high-efficient solar company, recently chose to put a
200-megawatt facility in upstate New York. And advanced LED
company called Soraa recently made a commitment to put a
facility, a large facility for advanced LEDS in the United
States. And we just saw a big announcement from Tesla Motors
that they are planning on building a multi-billion dollar
battery factory somewhere in the southwest United States.
So I think we are seeing a lot of positive indications, but
we are in a fierce race, and I think we have to keep at it in
partnership with this committee.
Mr. Fleischmann. Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have? Am
I close?
Mr. Simpson. Getting there. Go ahead.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. Thank you.
One more followup, Dr. Danielson. Other than the
intellectual property protection that you have alluded to, how
could the U.S. tackle the challenge of supporting research, at
least the domestic manufacturing, and how do we keep American
jobs here, sir?
Mr. Danielson. Thank you. That is a great question, and it
has been on the forefront of my mind since I began my job 2
years ago, in large part, inspired by the report language in
the seriousness with which this committee takes manufacturing
competitiveness.
One year ago, in Oak Ridge National Lab, we launched Clean
Energy Manufacturing Initiative, that is seeking to kind of
strategically integrate, prioritize, coordinate efforts at EERE
around manufacturing competitiveness. We have more than $554
million in specific manufacturing-focused R&D in this budget.
And also, we have launched a comprehensive approach to clean
energy manufacturing competitiveness analysis. And so we have
been going through our portfolio and identifying the intrinsic
cost structure of manufacturing various products and various
parts of value chains in clean energy in the United States
trying to identify the areas where we have strong opportunity
to gain market share areas where, perhaps because of the
importance of low-cost labor, we won't likely compete. So we
have identified a number of opportunities.
Just to give you one example of an action we have taken is
we learned in solar that Chinese modules and other modules were
exhibiting lower quality than American-made high-quality goods.
So they were degrading faster in the field. So we have worked
with our National Renewable Energy Laboratory to create a new
certification standard, which we call Qualification Plus, which
is raising the game for being able to do a set of standard
tests that allow investors to actually understand the
difference between a high-
quality module and a low-quality module. So that a high-quality
module made by, for example, an American manufacturer would
fetch a higher price instead of having to compete with a low-
quality, Chinese module price.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Fattah.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you very much.
I authored a lot of that report language and have been very
focused on this issue about connecting off of American
discoveries of American jobs. I think it is important that as
we finance research that we connect it to jobs. So I am very
pleased to hear about where you are headed and what you are
doing already with the cooperative agreements that require
domestic manufacturing. And we have also done that, Mr.
Chairman, in the CJS bill, to require the same type of
connection between scientific investment and domestic
manufacturing.
But I wanted to talk to you about the energy efficiency
building industry, where you see that at globally? And I ask
you this relative to the future of the energy efficiency
building hub in Philadelphia. As I understand it, we are not
where our international competitors are in this global market
about making builders more energy efficient. The DOE wanted to
make a significant move in this direction. And I want to know
how you see this going forward, given where we are?
Mr. Danielson. Thank you, Congressman. Thank you for your
leadership and support for clean energy over the years. Greatly
appreciate that.
You know, in the building sector, you know, if you look at
efficiency, our big national goal is to double our energy
productivity of this country by 2030. And so a big part of that
is going to be achieving, ideally, 50 percent more efficient
buildings to make that goal occur. Interestingly, we have the
technologies today. We have seen LEDs and other technologies
dramatically come down in costs. Where an LED light bulb is
being sold for about $10 at Wal-Mart today, when it gets into
that $3 to $5 range, is when it really takes off like a rocket
ship.
But we have the technologies to achieve about 20 percent
efficiency improvement in our buildings today. A lot of
challenges are developing integrated packages and solutions
that can be readily and easily adopted by the industry.
And, as you know, we have refocused the effort with Penn
State into the Penn State energy efficient--sorry--Penn State
Consortium for Building Energy Efficiency, where we focused it
down to what we consider to be a very high opportunity area
that is not covered, while one of the more difficult areas to
access is small and medium commercial building. Because there
is a lot of diversity in those buildings. So we are working
with that Penn State consortium. We have a bold goal of 50
percent. Develop a wide range of implementable solutions that
can reduce the energy use and drive 50 percent in small and
medium commercial buildings.
This is an area where we have historically, I think, been
underinvesting. And also, I would say that the effort at Penn
State is going to be the most significant national effort in
this area, and we are excited to continue forward with that
work.
Mr. Fattah. Where does the U.S. stand relative to the
industry internationally? Are we ahead? Are we behind? Where
are we?
Mr. Danielson. Could I ask you a clarifying question?
Mr. Fattah. The industry, the money being made on
developing more energy efficient buildings.
Mr. Danielson. You know, the building industry--you know,
the building industry--building stock in Europe is more
efficient than our building stock. We have a great opportunity
to move forward. My office develops a national model building
code standards, which really is trying to show what can be done
cost effectively and ensure that that gets adopted by the
States. And this budget puts forward increased investments in
working with our State partners to develop ways to enforce
building codes more effectively, which has been a challenge in
the United States and has resulted in less deployment of
building efficiency than we think is possible.
Mr. Fattah. Let me thank you for what you have done. I have
met with the chairman on this. You know, I have every intention
of trying to encourage the Department to fully embrace as a hub
this focus on energy-efficient buildings. So we will continue
to work with you as we go forward. And I have been quite
engaged in the work of this subcommittee for a very long time
and on a whole range of issues important to the Department,
including the labs and the manufacturing work. This is very
important to me. And I intend to revisit it as we go through
the markup process.
Ms. Kaptur. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. Fattah. I would be glad to yield.
Ms. Kaptur. I just wanted to put on the record that I was
out at Argonne this past week. And what was interesting about
that was that I was handed a report about energy efficiency and
redevelopment in America's urban communities. And though
Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland, along with Congressman
Fattah have been leaders on many fronts for American cities, I
was actually surprised the Department of Energy had produced
that report. But when I was out at Livermore, of course, they
didn't give me that report. Because the report came out of
Argonne.
So the point I want to make here is, I think, Congressman
Fattah, through your leadership, things are beginning to bubble
up inside the Department of Energy, but they do seem to need a
focus. And in engaging the built environment, and particularly
where it is older and needs to be upgraded. But I see the
Department trying to get there. And I support you in your
efforts. And I just wanted to put that on the record, because I
think there could be more focus at the national office to help
these individual labs work together.
Mr. Fattah. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Mr. Nunnelee.
Mr. Nunnelee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith, we all watched over the last few years an
enormous economic activity associated with the recovery of
natural gas and the promise that our country can build a
liquefaction infrastructure to sell part of our excess gas to
our friends and allies around the world. This has a broad
economic impact in the United States. We have been reminded by
global events over the last few months, if not the last few
weeks, of the importance of trade with this product with our
partners in Europe and elsewhere.
So as I look at the budget for fossil energy, I note there
is a $68 million decrease in the President's budget for fossil
energy. If I am reading this budget correctly, the
administration has asked for $2 million in fiscal year 2015 for
import/export authorization which is a small decrease over the
2014 level.
This funding is just to handle the export licenses, not any
of the safety or technical construction aspects, which are
overseen in a much more comprehensive process at the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission.
Now, I was pleased to see the Department yesterday make
progress toward the backlog when you issued the permit. But I
also understand we have 20 pending applications right now from
the Department. There are eight that have been at Department of
Energy for more than 555 days. So, is this budget request
sufficient to process the significant backlog for permit
applications for the Department?
Mr. Smith. Well, thank you very much, Congressman, for that
question. First of all, I think you raise a good and very
important point in that over recent years, we have certainly
gone from a period of relative scarcity to a period of relative
abundance in terms of natural gas that is available for
domestic economy to create jobs in the United States. We see
that in unambiguously positive. That also creates an
opportunity to potentially take natural gas and export it from
the United States externally, which also potentially brings
some benefits in terms of job creation, balance of trade, and
some other areas.
We have a process within the Department of Energy of
looking at balancing that important public interest
determination that goes behind each of these export
applications. Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act dictates the
public interest requirements for exporting natural gas to free-
trade agreement countries. So we have established a process
that we want to be open, we want it to be transparent. We have
to take into account the varying views of stakeholders that are
important for our economy. And we want to proceed on this on a
case-by-case basis in a meticulous way that is going to
withstand the scrutiny that it is certain to face.
You point out that we just released an order yesterday for
a Jordan Cove that was the seventh order that we processed
within the last couple years. We are moving through a queue
that we have published. So it is our intent to move forward
with that process in a way that is expeditious, but which also
recognizes the complex and important public-interest
determination that we have to make for each of these
applicants.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right. Thank you.
Ms. Hoffman, Dr. Lyons, there have been a large number of
baseload nuclear plants that have recently announced closures.
Are you concerned about this trend? And will this impact our
Nation's grid reliability?
Mr. Lyons. Well, to start the response, certainly we are
concerned from the perspective of it is reducing the Nation's
clean energy resources, making any future plans for our
particular goals in clean energy that much more difficult.
I should probably let Pat Hoffman talk about the grid's
reliability.
Ms. Hoffman. From the reliability perspective, the Nation
needs a diversity of energy resources. We need baseload energy,
intermediate energy, and energy to provide peaking resources.
First, with the shutdown of the nuclear power plant, a large
megawatt capacity is going off on the grid. This means
compensatory resources have to be built to fill in for that
capacity that is missing. So it is getting that capacity built
and putting in the necessary infrastructure that is a concern.
The timing of the shut down of the capacity as well as some of
the other adjustments that have occurred in the energy mix can
make things challenging. We have to watch very closely to
understand potential reliability implications and system
requirements.
Mr. Nunnelee. Have I got time for another one, Mr. Chair?
Mr. Simpson. Go ahead.
Mr. Nunnelee. Let me just also briefly ask, recently, the
Electric Power Research Institute released a study that
addressed the issue of being ``off the grid.'' And in that
study, they talked about the startup energy that is required,
which can be as great as five times that of normal operation.
So while the administration is looking at making
recommendations, have you factored into this startup
requirements in terms of the baseload?
Ms. Hoffman. So with respect to black start capabilities,
reliability coordinators must include the resources needed for
startup requirements. However, incentivizing generators to have
that black start capability is challenging because in
competitive markets people want to provide power resources and
have limited ability in getting compensation for black start
capabilities. We are looking at that, but it is a concern that
will be growing in the future, of having that resource that is
available for black start.
Mr. Nunnelee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
And now for a new member of our subcommittee. Welcome. We
are glad to have you on this subcommittee. Look forward to
working with you, Mr. Graves from Georgia.
Mr. Graves. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Happy to be a part of
the subcommittee. And thank you, panel, for being here. First,
Dr. Lyons, let me thank you for your positive words as they
relate to Plant Vogtle in Georgia. Not only is the plant
important to our State, but it and the precedent it sets are
certainly important to our Nation. Want to give you due credit.
Thank you for all your work towards its progress.
And, Dr. Danielson, just a quick question as it relates to
large-capacity water heaters and the efficiency standards that
were adopted in 2010. There is a little bit of concern with
some electric cooperatives about the standards and some
unintended consequences that you are trying to address through
some proposed rulemakings that are coming up in the near
future.
Can you share with us a little bit about what your plans
are and what can be expected as far as those rules go to
eliminate some of the unintended consequences that are looming?
Mr. Danielson. Thanks for that question. It is an important
example of including not only static efficiency in our
considerations, but also grid dynamic operations. So we have
had a lot of discussions with the rural folks that they are
using water heaters as a way essentially to thermally store
energy to balance out their grid. And so, you know, we are in
ongoing discussions with them. And we are taking their concerns
very seriously. But I would like to take that question for the
record and follow up with you in greater detail.
Mr. Graves. Okay. So from the subcommittee's perspective,
is it safe to say that you are taking their input and working
with them to try to find a positive solution?
Mr. Danielson. Absolutely. We are in conversations with
them. We are not being inflexible, and we are going to take all
of their considerations into account.
Mr. Graves. Thank you for that. And do you have any idea
what your timeline is for any rulemaking? Is there a goal?
Mr. Danielson. I am not certain on that. So I would like to
take that question for the record. Follow up with you and your
office directly.
Mr. Graves. Thank you.
That is all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Hoffman, this year's budget request contains an
increase for infrastructure security, $15 million to be exact,
to establish an operational energy and resilience program. This
proposal, similar to last year's, would consist of a strategic
operations center at the Department's headquarters and 17 staff
to coordinate emergency responses during extreme events that
affect the electricity grid.
Could you discuss what capabilities this would provide you
that your office does not currently possess? And also along
those same lines, your request also includes a staffing
proposal, seven people at headquarters, 10 people embedded in
each of FEMA's 10 regional offices. The committee has
questioned this in the past. From what I understand, this is
the minimum staffing needed and could likely grow in future
years.
To put this in some perspective, your current budget
supports only 80 employees overall for the entire office. We
had similar questions last year about the need to embed staff
in FEMA regions. Can you explain what has changed with your
proposal since last year? And if your proposal is brought to
its logical conclusion, what is your vision of the OER program?
What does it look like when fully staffed to your satisfaction?
How many people will be in the field? And how many people will
be needed to staff the strategic operation center 24/7?
Ms. Hoffman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. I know that was a lot of questions.
Ms. Hoffman. A lot of questions. I think I caught most of
them. I'm writing it down.
First of all, let me say that the Department of Energy
responds to a significant amount of energy events that occur on
an annual basis. Most of the events that occurred have an
energy component to it, whether it be a weather event, an ice
storm, or like a fire event that occurred in California.
What we have done is over the years, since 2006, have
produced over 181 situational awareness reports. The goal in
what we do is to provide information to industry and to other
Federal agencies on the status of the energy infrastructure to
aid in the restoration timeline, and to build confidence out
there during an emergency.
One thing is you want to make sure that the population,
that the State and Federal agencies, that the industry is aware
of what is going on and what needs to be done.
In addition to that, we have developed visualization tools
that have provided support for the interagency process, looking
at the status of power availability across the energy
infrastructure, with over 350 users across the Federal
agencies.
What we need to do is continue to support that
visualization capability, but make it more real-time. Make it
so that decisions can be more effective. Some of the
capabilities that we are trying to build is more real-time
information in areas that we didn't have the information during
Hurricane Sandy. There were a lot of questions asked of the
Department of which gasoline stations had power, had fuel. We
weren't able to provide response in a timely fashion. And that
is unacceptable from our perspective. Therefore we need to
engage in the resources that are necessary to build some of
those capabilities and have that information available to the
States, to the Federal government, for the decisions that need
to be made.
With respect to the additional staffing, it is important to
have people in the field to understand what is happening on the
ground. It is very hard, sitting in Washington, D.C., to
actually be able to understand what is happening in the field,
where some of the difficulties are in the restoration process.
What we need is to have that link to the States and to the
State emergency operations centers to be able to provide
information directly to them for some of their decisions that
they need to make in addition to the Washington, D.C. questions
and the environment that occurs in the D.C. area.
So having people in the field is absolutely critical for us
to get that on-the-ground information. But it also streamlines
communication flow. We know when we had Hurricane Sandy, we had
direct communications with CEOs in the Washington, D.C., area,
but what we also needed was communications to the people in the
field that were doing the work and prioritizing efforts. So
this will allow us to have streamlined communication.
With respect to the priorities of the Department and the
number of people, what we hope to do is build a capability and
expand the mission within the Department of Energy, so
utilizing the Department's staff as well as a couple of
additional staff to fulfill that effort. We are looking at all
kinds of options for supporting this mission, including the
field offices, including supporting FEMA. And so I would like
to talk to you in more detail or later to discuss some of the
options we are considering in this need.
Mr. Simpson. One of the things that this committee is
always looking at is not only, when we approve something, what
it means in the current fiscal year but what it means in future
fiscal years. Do you anticipate that aspect of this would be
growing and a higher request, more personnel, in the future?
Ms. Hoffman. So depending on the path that we take, with
the initial investment of staffing, we want to place at least
one person, at each of the FEMA regions, whether it is at the
DOE field office or at the FEMA site. Future needs will be
dependent on how we look at utilization of the National
Laboratories, and our DOE field offices in adding to our
mission set, so we are looking at both options.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Now the question for you, and this one
has a little bit of a pretext for it so you will have to listen
to this. But it is important to the question.
Earlier this month, several news outlets picked up on a
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, study that the
entire U.S. electrical grid could be brought down by taking out
just nine critical electric transmission substations out of the
country's nearly 55,000. The FERC study has a powerful analysis
that identified 30 critical substations under a stressed
electrical grid, such as on a hot summer day. FERC found that
taking out particular substations could lead to a national
blackout in one scenario involving highly-coordinated small-
scale attacks. FERC concluded that the entire U.S. grid could
be brought down for at least 18 months by destroying nine
interconnected substations, due in large part because so few
U.S. factories build transformers.
Reports like these underscore the critical risk associated
with the interreliability of our current centralized power
infrastructure and the need to integrate the electrical grid.
Can you discuss the Department's efforts to integrate its grid
and to protect us against these types of physical attacks? Does
the U.S. have an interagency process that adequately mitigates
the risk to our current electrical grid, and what role does the
Department of Energy play with the Department of Homeland
Security utilities and the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission?
Ms. Hoffman. Thank you. Many questions there. With respect
to the FERC report and the substation issues, it is important
to understand that the grid can't be 100 percent secure. So
what we have to do is look at all----
Mr. Simpson. It is a little scary when you are talking
about nine, you know.
Ms. Hoffman. It is scary when you talk about nine
substations, but the thing that I would like to point out is,
the FERC study was a static study, and it was one scenario. The
grid is very dynamic in nature, and it has protections built
into the operation of the grid, the reliability councils. It is
a very dynamic environment. So as we look at the infrastructure
security, we shouldn't think about just one scenario. It is the
operation of the grid as a whole. Going forward, we are looking
at ways to protect the infrastructure. We are working with the
interagency community and doing substation briefings across the
United States with the Department of Homeland Security, the
FBI, and FERC, and educating grid owners and operators of what
happened at the Metcalf Substation, but also on the issues with
substations.
In the past, we have been mostly worried about copper
theft. In 2013, the dynamics in the United States changed with
more of a focus on utilizing substations to send messages of
people being frustrated, whether it be for different reasons,
but for frustration. What we need to do is make sure that we
are proactive. One of the things is hardening the system,
looking at how can we just harden the system with walls, with
protective measures that build security in the substations
directly.
The second thing is, we know that some parts of the system
may go down, so how can we quickly restore the system? Your
reference to the transformers is absolutely critical.
Transformers are the key component of this system. We need to
have additional manufacturing capability in the United States.
We need to develop advanced transformers. We need to look at
technologies that can help with the transformer issues.
I will say, though, the difference between now and 5 years
ago is we did not have any manufacturing capacity in the United
States. So at least we do have some manufacturers that have
come to the United States. The last component of what I would
think our strategy should be is looking at new technologies.
How can we make substations less critical? How can we look at
additional protection schemes, power flow control in the
system, and other advanced technologies that will help mitigate
some of the criticality of some of those substations.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad you asked
some of the questions of Secretary Hoffman. I was going to ask
some of the same ones, so I will move on to Secretaries
Danielson and Smith.
And before I do that, I would like to place on the record a
story that was in an Air Force magazine back 2 years ago about
Ohio's F-16s go green by using alternative fuels and a blend of
camelina, and it was our unit, F-16 unit in the Ninth District
of Ohio, that did this test flight with the Air Force research
labs watching over their shoulder. And I do this to inform our
witnesses that this actually occurred. The Air Force spends $8
billion a year on fuel. They are the largest consumer in the
Department of Defense of fuel. And they actually lag behind the
Marine Corps and other branches in trying to become more fuel-
efficient. So we are really happy with this progress by Air
Force, and I just wanted to bring it to the attention of the
subcommittee, and of our guests today.
So I ask unanimous consent that it be placed into the
record.
Mr. Simpson. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
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Ms. Kaptur. And my question really goes to what is
happening in different places in our country with adjustments
in the private sector commercial energy industry? So, for
example, for a coal-fired utility, Secretary Smith I don't
really have a map of where all coal-fired utilities are that
are being rotated off the grid and shut down. That would be a
very interesting map to look at. And when I talked with Dr.
Lyons about what is going on with the competition from natural
gas to our nuclear facility, it would be interesting to see
where, in an unregulated environment, those nuclear power
plants are located. That would give you a sense of where there
is fragility in the local economy related to energy. And in the
bill that--the budget that you have come forward with, that the
energy efficiency and renewable energy division of energy, you
talk about certain programs like $14 million included for a
competitive clean energy economic development and partnership
program to assist regions in creating economic development
roadmaps in sustainable shale gas growth zones, for example. I
am interested in the Department of Energy stepping back from
any particular program and taking a look at the impact of these
major shifts in power production facilities, and even though
shale gas may be coming on, it is not necessarily true that the
economic impact of that, full economic impact of that, will
accrue to the locality. A lot of that is being--the product is
being shipped out or workers are being brought in from out of
State.
So one of my concerns is how do we weather through in
communities across this country that are seeing declining
employment because of adjustments in energy? How do we help
these communities and workers adjust? We are seeing this in
coal country. We are seeing it, I mentioned the coal-fired
utility shutdowns, we are seeing it in nuclear. Does the
Department work across the Federal Government to try to help
these communities adjust to that change? As you consider
programs like your clean energy program partnership, do you
think about how to work in those regions that are being
hollowed out because--that it isn't your job directly, you
think it will be somebody else's job, except it is happening so
fast.
In Ohio, we face the bankruptcy of USEC. I don't know what
is going to happen to all of those workers, but they are the
highest unemployment counties in Ohio. These are adjustments
because of what is happening in energy, and I am very concerned
about what is happening in those communities and the people
that live there. So could you provide some explanation of how
you look at this or how you could look at this scenario
connecting the programs over which you have jurisdiction?
Mr. Danielson. That is a really important question, and I--
we have activities in this area, but I know we can do more and
we can do better. To speak to the first question or comment you
had around the shifting landscape, you know, one important
activity at the DOE-wide level through the newly stood up EPSA
office, Energy Policy and Strategic Analysis, which is the DOE-
wide body focused on really developing comprehensive analyses
related to energy, they are the executive secretariat for whole
of government-wide quadrennial energy review, which is why I
think, in 2015, will deliver its first results on really
looking at energy infrastructure issues as it relates to the
changing landscapes and what our future energy infrastructure
issues are and ways that those can be mitigated. So there is a
comprehensive whole-of-government approach underway through the
quadrennial energy review right now.
You mentioned the clean energy economic development
partnerships in our budget is an attempt to address exactly
what you are talking about. We are looking at shale gas
communities, you know, providing technical assistance to them
through our extensive State energy network in EERE to enable
them to do planning both for near-term infrastructure in the
economic development issues that they are facing and also long-
term issues to help them avoid the boom-bust cycle that you
mentioned. And this is an area where it will be a DOE-wide
effort, but leveraged through our State energy network, working
closely with Secretary Smith and others to address that, and
then that is $10 million in this budget request and there is $4
million to work with State and locals around economic
development planning, around energy efficiency and renewable
energy. And in recent years, we have used our State Energy
Program Competitive Awards to fund regions to develop long-term
economic development strategies that relate to the energy
sector around energy efficiency and renewable energy
technologies as well.
Ms. Kaptur. What was the $10 million for, Dr. Danielson?
Mr. Danielson. $10 million for sustainable shale gas
partnerships with communities, and then $4 million for
engagement with local and regional leaders on their issues
around economic development and energy efficiency and renewable
energy.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you very much.
Secretary Smith.
Mr. Smith. So I will perhaps just emphasize a couple of the
points that Dr. Danielson made. Your question is a very broad
one and an important one, and, you know, one of the things I
would highlight is when we talk about an all-of-the-above
strategy. We truly are trying to ensure that all of the
components of energy security and diversity to energy suppliers
are being focused upon. So you have got the four leaders of the
applied departments here at the table in front of you, and we
actually spent a lot of time together not only working on our
individual programs, but also Secretary Moniz is broadening a
new focus on crosscutting initiatives, which really brings
together these four applied programs. So much of what I talk
about in terms of safe and sustainable and reliable use of
natural gas, ensuring that we are prudently developing our
resources of trying to reduce the price volatility through good
science to quantify the risks and concerns of unconventional
gas and oil production, it directly affects issues of grid
stability, directly affects competitiveness in the nuclear
industry, directly impacts competitiveness of the issues that
are of importance in Dr. Danielson's portfolio.
So we do truly have to work together. We want to make sure
that all of these energy sources are available, and they are
being put forward, and that is our focus. And we do that not
only through our individual programs but also by working
together appropriately.
Ms. Kaptur. I am glad to hear about the crosscutting
initiatives because I think the communities across our country
that have bottomed out because of transition, somebody needs to
pay attention.
Yes, Secretary Hoffman.
Ms. Hoffman. If I can just add to the conversation, I think
it is very important that we work with the States on energy
planning, and I think it is necessary as the States look at
their future generation mix and understand the diversity of
generation, it is important for energy assurance requirements
for the State and the services they provide. As we move
forward, what we are doing is working with the transmission
operators and the reliability councils to make sure that we
look at the reliability of the electricity system and the
diversity of the resources. Part of that is the development of
State energy assurance plans, and enhancing the resilience and
the reliability through that energy planning activity.
Ms. Kaptur. How is Ohio doing?
Ms. Hoffman. Ohio is doing fine.
Ms. Kaptur. I have another question, Mr. Chairman, but I
can save it for the next round.
Mr. Simpson. Go ahead.
Ms. Kaptur. I wanted to ask Secretary Smith, could you give
us a logical framework to understand what is happening with LNG
and the possibilities of the legal requirements to only use it
domestically versus the potential ultimately for export? I had
an amazing conversation recently with someone, and I said to
them the shortest distance between Northern Europe and the
United States for the shipment of product is shipments through
the Great Lakes, and they were very, very surprised. And to
ports like Bremerhaven in Germany, a nation that has had a
little bit of difficulty with us recently in standing strong
with us--they finally are--in terms of standing up to what
Russia has done in Central Europe.
And when you face an international crisis like that, is
there anything in the authorizing legislation that would permit
us to export, to take some of the pressure off of Europe, and
how long would it take us to stage shipments? How would we
evaluate? If we did, how would it harm the domestic industry?
What is the framework in which Members can understand their
latitude in voting one way or another on that?
Mr. Smith. Well, thank you very much Ranking Member Kaptur
for that question, and again, a lot of really big important
themes there. So what I will try to do is give a broad
framework of the regulatory, statutory responsibility of the
Department compared to other agencies, a little bit about how
we think about these important public interest determinations
and then I will try to touch on current, you know, issues at
home and abroad.
So section 3 of the Natural Gas Act dictates that the
Department of Energy has to do a public interest determination
for all natural gas that is exported to non-Free Trade
Agreement countries. Essentially, that law creates, above
presumption, that exports are in the public interest, which
means for each individual applicant, we need to look at the
application. If we determine that approving a given application
would be deleterious to the U.S. interest and we are compelled
to deny it; otherwise we are compelled to move forward.
For Free Trade Agreement countries, there is an assumption
in the law, since those are defined as being in the public
interest, so those are approved without delay or modification
by the Department. Of note, essentially all of the major LNG
importers throughout the world are non-FTA, non-Free Trade
Agreement countries, with the notable exception of South Korea.
So, essentially, for all of the main importers of natural
gas, we have to go through this free trade, we have to go
through this public interest determination.
What the Department of Energy does is, we provide the
authorization to export the molecule. What the FERC does, is
they provide the authorization to actually build the terminals.
So they are responsible for the footprint of the site. So can
the site be built in a way that is staged and environmentally
sustainable? So ours is the issue of whether or not gas should
be exported. So, essentially, we are going through a--we have
got a queue of applicants that are before us, you know, I will
say just, you know, as caveat to that, or a prelude, just the
fact that we are talking about LNG exports, you know, some of
which will be coming from shale gas resources, really
emphasizes the remarkable shift that we have had in our country
in terms of going from scarcity to potential abundance. So we
see that as being a truly important evolving marketplace. But
in looking at each of the applicants, we are required to look
at a number of public interest factors. We look at job
creation. We look at environmental issues. We look at
international issues. We look at balances of trade. We look at
impact of prices on domestic consumers, be it American
businesses, American families. We have to look at all of these
things as part of our public interest determination. These are
long-term, long-range considerations. These are decadal
investments. They cost billions of dollars to build. They will
be in place for tens of years. And so it is our process to make
sure that we are looking at each of these on a case-by-case
basis, that we are getting the analysis right. Each of these
orders undergo an intense scrutiny in terms of looking at the
rationale that we use to arrive at our decision. So it is our
interest to make sure that we are taking the appropriate care
for each of these analyses and that we are getting the decision
right, such that we are putting out a decision that will
withstand scrutiny and should we approve any given applicant,
and thus far we have approved seven, that that applicant can
then with confidence go and spend the billions dollars that
they would need to spend in building a terminal because they
are seeing an analysis that is done by the Department of Energy
that is going to withstand this scrutiny that it is sure to
receive.
Ms. Kaptur. What would be the geographic distribution of
those terminals?
Mr. Smith. The terminals primarily are located in the Gulf
of Mexico. There are some on the East Coast and some on the
West Coast, but certainly, the Gulf of Mexico has been the
primary location. The terminal that we approved yesterday was
the first terminal that we approved on the West Coast, and that
is in Oregon, that is Jordan Cove terminal so that is the first
West Coast terminal.
Ms. Kaptur. Where is that?
Mr. Smith. Jordan Cove? In Oregon.
Ms. Kaptur. In Oregon. All right, do you have any
applications from the Great Lakes region?
Mr. Smith. We do not. At the current time, we don't have
any applications from the Great Lakes region.
Mr. Simpson. Would the gentlelady yield for just a minute?
Ms. Kaptur. Yes.
Mr. Simpson. If you want to build an exporting terminal,
who all do you have to go through?
Ms. Kaptur. Yeah.
Mr. Simpson. How many permits do you have to get? How many
agencies have to sign off on it? And I understand that Congress
has recently authorized legislation--the Transportation
Department is also involved in this, and have you or the
Department of Energy had any coordination with the Department
of Transportation on this? How complicated are we making this?
Mr. Smith. So for the, again, this is the Department
filling our role under current statute, so following the spirit
and the letter of the law. There are two primary agencies that
are involved, again, the Department of Energy that has the
public interest determination about should the molecule be
exported from the United States, and the FERC, which has----
Mr. Simpson. And you make that determination based on,
levels of natural gas, and whether we have extra, so then we
might as well export to a country that we like?
Mr. Smith. So two things there: First of all, we look at a
broad number of public interest criteria, everything from job
creation to impact on prices to environmental issues to balance
of trade, so international effect, so there are a lot of things
we look at.
Mr. Simpson. Okay.
Mr. Smith. Secondly, once an applicant has the right to
export LNG, the applicant, the private sector, essentially, the
company that builds the terminal has the control over the
throughput of that terminal. That private-sector company makes
a decision about where the LNG would go. So the government does
not determine the destination of natural gas that is exported
from the United States. That determination is made by the
private sector.
Mr. Simpson. Okay.
Ms. Kaptur. I wanted to just take 30 seconds to ask here,
has the Department gamed the impact that exports to Europe to
displace Russian gas would have inside our economy?
Mr. Smith. Thank you for the question, Ranking Member
Kaptur. A couple of points there: First of all, for all LNG
exports, we do take a close look at impacts on the American
businesses and the American families, on the price impacts that
might be caused by that increased demand. That is one of the
important things that we modelled, we look at and consider it
in all of our applications, regardless of where the natural gas
might be headed. And again, once an applicant is given the
authorization to export LNG, that applicant then determines
where that LNG goes. That is not determined by the Federal
Government.
Secondly, you know, again, these are decadal challenges.
They are multibillion dollar investments that will be in place
for tens of years, you know, for decades. And so certainly, as
you have prices internationally that require immediate
response, you know, there are a variety of things you can do on
that front, but when we are looking at our public interest
determination, first of all, the gas that would be arriving
anywhere from the world would be happening in 2016, 2017, for
new applications that we would be approving having this current
time frame.
So, overall, I think the important thing that I would like
to emphasize is that for any applicant, for any molecules that
leave the U.S., we do a broad public interest determination
that looks at price impacts, regardless of where the private
sector might decide to take that gas.
Ms. Kaptur. What does it take in terms of money to build
one of these staging terminals, and are any of them fully
operational now?
Mr. Smith. So there is one fully operational terminal in
Kenai, in Australia--I am sorry, in Alaska. That is a terminal
that has been in place for a long time. That is taking Alaskan
gas, which is not connected to the lower 48, so that is sort of
a different sort of market determinant for that gas because
that gas does not have access to markets in the lower 48. There
are terminals that are in the course of being built, but this
is a new phenomenon, so literally, the terminal that is being
built right now in the Gulf of Mexico, and in Louisiana, was
previously an LNG import terminal and that was a terminal that
was built with the idea of bringing in natural gas from other
countries to serve the U.S. economy. Such has been the impact
of the rise of shale gas here, that there are no LNG imports
coming through that terminal, and now it is being repurposed
for an export terminal and that is a multibillion dollar
investment that is being made right now.
Ms. Kaptur. Is that all private sector?
Mr. Smith. That is all being done by the private sector. We
do not make any investments. We simply do the public
determinations to allow the companies to export the molecules.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Mr. Nunnelee.
Mr. Nunnelee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to continue the line of questioning brought up by
Ms. Kaptur, dealing with economic development partnerships in
these shale gas growth zones. I had a mentor in business who
taught me early that if you fail to plan, you are planning to
fail. And so I commend you for being forward looking and
helping us make plans here.
I just have three questions for Mr. Smith and Dr.
Danielson. Number one, what specific actions are you going to
be taking to assist in these economic development partnerships?
Number two, how will the communities be selected? And number
three, how will outside stakeholders be able to participate in
generating these roadmaps?
Mr. Danielson. Chris, I think I should take that one. So,
in the near term, the kind of challenges that we are seeing
some of these communities face relate to water treatment
infrastructure, road infrastructure, and the impact that that
is having on the communities. So that is one area. In the
longer term, you know, I think it is about what are the other
economic development opportunities for these communities to
begin to plan for as the shale peaks and then ultimately trails
off. So those are the kind of areas we will be looking at.
These will be competitive awards. You know, if
appropriated, this program will have a series of stakeholder
workshops to inform the criteria by which we would award these
awards under this new program.
Mr. Smith. And I will build on that. One of the challenges
here is that, you know, first of all, when you look at the
opportunities that come out of the development of shale gas,
there are still some things that we have to focus on to make
sure that the practice is demonstrated to be appropriate and
that it is accepted in communities throughout the United
States. And that is important work that we have to do. It is
probably the most important thing that we can do to ensure that
the resource continues to be abundant and that those molecules
can get to consumers where they are useful.
What we see is that as practices move from places--so I
grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, right in the middle of the
Barnett Shale, which was not around when I was there. But in
places where you have a history of oil and gas production, some
of these practices are more easily assimilated into local
communities. As you have opportunities to move that resource
development into areas that are frontier areas, you know,
perhaps some places like Ohio or Pennsylvania or elsewhere, you
can have challenges in terms of demonstrating to those local
communities that the concerns that they have are being taken
seriously, that they are being appropriately mitigated through
effective regulations and that concerns that communities have
are being addressed by the producers and by the local
regulators. That is important work that we have to do.
There are things that we have learned as shale gas is moved
from one region to the other, that I think we can have a role
in helping new communities, new local leaders, new mayors, new
municipal leaders who are having to deal with the opportunities
to pick up some of the learnings that we have seen in other
parts of the country. So we will being looking at, you know,
areas in which you have got new development, places in which we
think that sharing best practices might be useful. This can be
an important collaboration between government and private
sector, between the Federal Government and local governments.
And you know, we will be working together with the existing
infrastructure that we have within EERE, and the knowledge and
expertise that we have through the Office of Fossil Energy and
the National Energy Technology Laboratory, to make sure that we
are selecting areas where it is effective and that we are
reaching out to communities and we have got a real two-way
conversation.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right, thank you. Do I have time for one
more, or am I out of time?
Mr. Simpson. Go ahead.
Mr. Nunnelee. Dr. Lyons, I have several questions relating
to the Advanced Research Concepts Program, but in the interest
of time, I will submit most of them for the record. But I do
have one question. In your budget, you are changing the account
title from Advanced Reactor Concepts to Advanced Reactor
Technologies, and then they combine two older accounts. I
understand this is going to give you some more flexibility. I
just want the assurances that this is not going to allow you to
shift money from Advanced Reactor Research to light water small
modular reactor research without a reprogramming request.
Mr. Lyons. Thank you for the question, Mr. Nunnelee. We are
interested in combining those two issues, because--or those two
areas from the standpoint that as we look at advanced reactors,
different coolants, for example, it is frequently a challenge
to decide whether the concept, if it is fully fleshed out and
eventually developed, will be appropriate to a small modular
reactor or a larger reactor. And we had a somewhat artificial
breakdown in the previous structure. Our intent is to focus
that research primarily on non-light-water coolants, but
included within that the general area of reactor concepts is
the light water reactor sustainability program. That is a
separate line. That continues. And the advanced reactors will
be focusing on non-light-water coolants.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right, thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Fleischmann.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Lyons, good to see you again.
Mr. Lyons. Yes.
Mr. Fleischmann. The chairman and I have discussed the
importance, Dr. Lyons, of investing in our nuclear facility
infrastructure, and maintenance within the DOE complex. Could
you please tell the committee--and I have a four-part
question--what you see as the main needs for the nuclear energy
infrastructure at Oak Ridge? And if those needs are being
funded by this year's request, would you commit to working with
me and Chairman Simpson on a path forward? And then lastly,
what is your strategy for sustaining the nuclear infrastructure
required to support the R&D agenda outlined by your
organization, sir?
Mr. Lyons. That is a complicated question, Mr. Fleischmann,
and one that probably does deserve a fair bit of discussion
offline. Certainly, I would look forward to the opportunity to
work with you and Chairman Simpson on the issues that you
raise.
One of the areas of at least challenge in the question that
you raised is that, as you are probably well aware, the space
power activities have transitioned out of this budget into the
NASA budget. In the past, when those activities were funded
within the energy and water budget, that did include some of
the radiological infrastructure, including at Oak Ridge. With
the transition to NASA, it is going to require more
coordination both probably between the Department of Energy and
NASA as well as perhaps between your Appropriations Committees.
But it is an excellent question, a complicated question, and
one that I would be happy to continue to work on with both of
you.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay, thank you, sir.
Dr. Lyons, by all reviews I have seen, the nuclear energy
hub, CASL, at Oak Ridge has been doing quite well, and the
project could be extended for an additional 5 years, sir. Are
you pleased with the hub, and what are the next steps for
renewing this hub? And as a follow up to that, would you also
discuss the possibility of expanding high performance computing
to support any of these programs?
Mr. Lyons. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2015, Mr.
Fleischmann, does include funding to continue the CASL hub for
an additional 5 years. Now, we anticipate that later in fiscal
year 2014, this fiscal year, we will complete a careful review
to make sure that CASL has met the various criteria that were
laid out at the start that would be taken into account for
continuation.
As you note, CASL has performed, in my estimation,
extremely well. They have been very effective in their primary
focus in bringing high-performance computational tools to
industry. The industry involvement is superb, and their ability
to transfer tools to industry has been excellent.
As far as additional high-performance computing, and
modelling, and simulation, we also propose in this budget a
significant expansion in the so-called NEAMS program, the
Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program, which
I view as highly complementary to the hub or the CASL program.
Within the NEAMS program, we developed the advanced tools
which, in turn, transition to the CASL program for more
involvement with industry.
Several different laboratories are involved in both NEAMS
and CASL. CASL has lead to Oak Ridge, but other laboratories
participate and in the NEAMS program. There are strong roles
for Oak Ridge, Idaho, and Argonne are the three main
contributors to NEAMS, but there are other labs that also have
smaller roles.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Dr. Lyons.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. This year's request includes a new
crosscutting proposal to accelerate commercialization of
electrical power generation using super critical carbon
dioxide. As I understand it, this is a collaborative effort
among the Offices of Nuclear Energy, Energy Efficiency and
Renewable Energy and Fossil Energy for a total of $57 million.
The questions, and I will ask all of them, and then we can
go down the line: Dr. Lyons, your office budget request
includes $28 million for a pilot demonstration project, and $3
million in research for this effort. Can you explain to us how
this technology is important and, if successful, the impact it
will have on making electrical power generation more efficient,
and how quickly would the Department proceed with this
demonstration project in fiscal year 2015 if it were approved,
and what type of technologies are you most likely to consider?
And can you explain why the pilot demonstration is in your
office's budget and not, say, in EERE's?
Dr. Danielson, as I understand it, there is also $25
million in your budget for this initiative within the solar
energy program. Can you explain what this research funding will
support, and how you plan to collaborate with the Office of
Nuclear Energy in this respect.
And Mr. Smith, if successful, this program would seem to
have a transformational impact on improving the electrical
power generation of natural gas-fired power plants, yet your
office is only investing $2 million into this crosscutting
research. Can you describe what your research will support, and
how would you propose to spend additional funds if they were
provided for this initiative?
First, Dr. Lyons.
Mr. Lyons. Thank you, sir. An important question and that
is a very important program. In past years, there have been
activities within three offices that you outlined, and while
there has been some degree of coordination among the offices,
our intent with this proposal is to bring about a much more
focused coordination among the efforts in the three offices.
This is another example that is referred to earlier of the
Secretary's very strong interest in looking at crosscutting
technologies that have impact in a number of different areas.
Super critical CO2, so-called Brayton cycle, has
the potential to increase the power conversion efficiency very
substantially. Right now, with nuclear power plants, light
water coolants, our conversion efficiency of heat to
electricity is about 33 percent. Using the Brayton cycle with
super critical CO2, and with advanced reactors, we
anticipate raising that up into the range of, perhaps, 45
percent or even higher. That is a very, very substantial
improvement in the conversion efficiency and, therefore, the
overall efficiency of producing electricity.
The funding probably could have been placed within any of
the three offices. However, we have had a strong effort within
the Office of Nuclear Energy in the past in the Brayton cycle
work. So has Dr. Danielson in his office. The intent is to
coordinate this very completely among the three offices and to
assure that any activities that are taken, some that are
specific to our interest in nuclear energy, or EERE, perhaps,
for Dave's programs, that funding is within each office. But
then the demonstration program is the $27 million that is
proposed for the step crosscutting initiative, within NE, but
that will lead to a demonstration that will benefit all three
offices and allow us to hopefully prove that this technology
can advance in America.
This is another example of an area where there is an
opportunity for American leadership in an important energy
field. And one of the goals of this program is to encourage
U.S. energy, U.S. energy companies, through cost sharing with
us in this demonstration to advance and move ahead, hopefully
to build U.S. competitiveness in what we think may be a very
important new approach to power conversion. Maybe that is
enough for my office, and--
Mr. Danielson. Thank you for your question, Chairman. I
think we, you know, anything like this you need a good solid
leader, so we are seeing the nuclear office as it really is
taking a lead role here in this cross cut with the rest of us
working collaborating very closely. You know, the demo
occurring in nuclear is going to be a really important full
system scale demonstration in addition to the nuclear-specific
R&D. The focus at EERE, you know, so this effort, you know,
increasing the thermal to power conversion efficiency for
concentrated solar thermal plants is critical for us to achieve
our 2020 goal of having directly cross-competitive concentrated
solar power by 2020. And our efforts are really going to focus
on research and development of components at the--that would be
relevant for the 10-megawatt scale that are more specific, that
are quite specific to our unique application requirements,
which are higher temperatures, in particular, and also the
requirement that we have high temperature receivers that are
going to actually receive the concentrated solar power and be
able to transfer that to energy storage media. And so the high
temperature components, we are looking at higher temperatures
than the nuclear office, in addition to the integration with
solar receivers and with thermal energy storage materials is
going to be a big part of what we are developing. I think with
the system level demonstration innovation that nuclear is going
to demonstrate, you know, after this 3-year program, we will be
able to evaluate whether this technology is ready to hand off
completely to the private sector or whether further government
involvement is required.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the question.
The Office of Fossil Energy is currently managing eight major
demonstration projects that are at various levels of
development throughout our portfolio. We certainly could have,
you know, potentially managed another one, but we would be,
will be working very closely with the Office of Nuclear Energy.
We think this is a great place to put this particular
demonstration. As Dr. Lyons mentioned, the advanced
supercritical and the Brayton cycle is applicable to a broad
range of technologies in terms of increasing efficiency. So we
have got some work that we are going to be doing that is
supplementary to the demonstration that is going to be managed
in the Office of Nuclear Energy. We are going to be looking at
ways of implementing these results and pressurized oxy-
combustion applications for fossil energy power plants. So we
are going to learn a tremendous amount from the work that is
being pioneered by the Office of Nuclear Energy, and on our
side, we will be doing the appropriate complementary research
so that we can take the learnings there and apply it to
ensuring that we are increasing efficiency and safety and
reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Another issue that is kind of cross
cutting, I guess, but a key challenge for energy systems of the
future is the potential for development of hybrid systems,
coupling a nuclear power plant with another energy system to
balance the disparities between production and demand. This
model would enable the integration of various energy
technologies into a single system to create efficient, stable
deployment of renewable energy, while expanding nuclear energy
beyond baseload electrical generation. I understand the Office
of Nuclear Energy and the Office of EERE are in the initial
stages of collaboration on such a project.
Would Dr. Lyons and Dr. Danielson like to discuss that for
a moment?
Mr. Lyons. Yes, Chairman Simpson. You described it very
well. And there is very strong interest, I think it is fair to
say, in both of our offices. Both of us have been encouraging
that this work proceed between NREL and INL. I think we are in
the process of changing the name of hybrid energy systems to
actually another word that you used, of integrated energy
systems. And I think, in general, the idea of viewing energy
systems as moving outside the box where you think of nuclear as
just electricity or renewable as just electricity and, instead,
asking how for that particular example--but it could be other
examples--renewables and nuclear can work together in order to
provide a range of products on the output, not just
electricity, but maybe liquid fuels or maybe hydrogen.
We think it is a possibility. It looks very good, certainly
in paper studies. We are continuing that. And other labs have
expressed substantial interest in also joining in this work as
well. So I anticipate that this will be further broadened.
Mr. Danielson. And just to add a little bit more, you know,
we are absolutely supportive of this partnership, and it is a
great example of crosscutting partnership between our National
labs, in particular, Idaho National Lab, and National Renewable
Energy Lab, and it is going to leverage the investment
supported by this committee and the energy systems integration
facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is
going to be a great facility to allow for collaboration with
some of the very advanced work that has been going on at Idaho
National Lab, looking at nuclear integration of the energy
systems, to break down the barriers between electricity
infrastructure, thermal infrastructure, and fuels
infrastructure.
Mr. Simpson. Dr. Lyons, last year, we, as you know,
transferred safeguards and securities at the Idaho National Lab
to your Department. Although it has only been a few months, how
is that working out?
Mr. Lyons. First, thank you very much for the committee's
action in making that change. I believe that gives us far more
flexibility in optimizing the overall needs of the Idaho
National Laboratory, and that safeguards and security is
absolutely essential, of course, if we are going to be running
a laboratory, and that lab, INL, has a substantial number of
safeguards and security challenges that have to be
appropriately met. We appreciate the ability to have a little
bit more control by having it within the Office of Nuclear
Energy, although I believe it still stays in an 050 account,
but it gives us considerably more flexibility. We appreciate
it, and we believe that this will result in a stronger and
well--and better integrated approach to safety and security at
the Idaho National Lab.
Mr. Simpson. Okay, the fiscal year 2015 budget proposal
requests an increase of $90 million for the Used Nuclear Fuel
Disposition subprogram, which is prepared to examine dry cask
storage at the INL. Please describe in more detail the purposes
of this funding and what the Department's goals are with
respect to developing capabilities to examine and evaluate
spent nuclear fuel contained in dry storage casks.
Mr. Lyons. Thank you also for that question. A very
important effort, well underway within the Office of Nuclear
Energy now, is to develop a stronger and better understanding
of what could be degradation mechanisms for fuel that is stored
in dry casks. This is already moving ahead with the strong
industry involvement and will result in dry casks with so-
called high burnout fuel in dry casks and being carefully
monitored over a period of many, many years. In order to do
that monitoring, although we will put some instrumentation
within the casks, there is going to be a need to open those
casks under a dry environment. And in general, when such casks
are handled, they are handled under water in anything but a dry
environment. But we must develop the capability for dry
handling of the dry casks, keeping them dry, and then being
able to evaluate any changes in the fuel structure.
Idaho has some facilities, so-called INTEC facilities, that
we believe can be modified to open a dry cask in a safe
configuration that has a potentially very high radiation
environment, has to be done very, very carefully, but there are
facilities in Idaho that we believe can do that and the
capabilities at Idaho for post-irradiation examination will
also be very important in allowing us to take samples of that
fuel as it has been stored for years, or decades, and then
carefully evaluate any structural changes in the fuel.
So it is an extremely important program. We are looking
forward to a key role for Idaho in this project.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. One last thing from my perspective,
and then I will turn to Marcy for any questions that she has
left.
But Dr. Danielson, I want to read you a paragraph from your
testimony that you wrote, I suspect. And you mentioned part of
it there in your testimony--I don't know if it was the whole
paragraph or not--and then ask you about it. It says, ``The
United States has world-class innovation capacity, a unique
culture of entrepreneurship, well-developed capital markets,
and the finest scientists, engineers, and workers in the world.
However, despite this tremendous opportunity, the U.S. energy
industry is systematically underinvesting in research and
development (0.4 percent of sales versus 12 percent for the
aerospace/defense industry, 20 percent in pharmaceuticals,
according to one estimate). This significant underinvestment in
energy research and development by the private sector, in spite
of the highly strategic importance of energy to American
economic growth, energy security, and the environment, makes
government support for applied energy R&D critical for our
future competitiveness and economic prosperity.''
You and I have talked about this in the past, and I suspect
you know what the question is. It sounds like if a sector of
our economy underinvests in its own future, it is an
opportunity for the government to step in and do it. Why
wouldn't the aerospace industry or any other industry that you
have mentioned here, pharmaceuticals or whatever, say, Well,
let's stop investing because if we do, it is critical; the
government will step in and fund it. Why isn't the energy
sector investing in the research and development that other
sectors of our economy are, and is the government taking its
place for the private-sector investment? And how do you decide
when you decide what you are going to do, whether this is
something that the private sector should really do or whether
it is a government responsibility or something that we can just
lend a hand in?
Mr. Danielson. Mr. Chairman, that is a great question. It
is very important, and you know, I have enumerated for you the
five core questions that drive our decisionmaking, our
prioritization at EERE, one of which is additionality. You
know, would the private sector invest in this area already? Is
the private sector or other agencies already investing
sufficiently so that it wouldn't be a high-impact opportunity
for EERE to invest taxpayer dollars?
And then one of the other five core questions is the proper
role of government. So is this a high-impact proper role of
government versus something best left to the private sector?
I come from the private sector. I was a venture capitalist
before I came to the Department of Energy, so I am very
familiar with the operation of the private sector and
industrial technologies and in energy technologies, which are,
you know, generally large-scale, you know, kind of industrial
technologies.
You know, an MIT study on the production of the innovative
economy recently came out and identified that over the last 25,
30 years, there has been a systematic reduction in the long-
term R&D in our large industrial companies for a number of
reasons, one of which was a move toward the financialization of
corporations where they were no longer thought of as a kind of
long-term entities that would keep their employees for a long
time and would be able to monetize a lot of the benefits of the
research, and resulted in a kind of a loss of our industrial
commons to a large extent, and so, you know, we work very
closely with our stakeholders and others to identify where they
are making their investments, you know, and where they see that
they are not able to make investments in the private sector.
And we really emphasize problems that are both high impact and
where there is high additionality. But I think you make a very
important point that I take to heart, that government has to be
very careful about displacing private-sector funding when it
makes these kind of decisions.
Mr. Simpson. Well, and I appreciate that. And we have
discussed this a couple of times in my office. I am one that
believes there is a role the government can play in advancing a
lot of these things. And I think Marcy would agree that we hear
on the floor repeatedly that the government shouldn't be
involved in a lot of different things. And the private sector
should take it over, and all we are is displacing private-
sector dollars. And that is an argument that continually hits
us. So when we have these different types of investments, even
with nuclear energy, or other things, we have to be able to
explain to our colleagues and others that this is an investment
that government ought to properly make. So I appreciate your
answer on that.
Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Boy, I could make a lot of comments.
Mr. Simpson. I know. I know you could.
Ms. Kaptur. If the private sector had done such a good job,
we wouldn't be importing $2.3 trillion. If you look at amount
of imports in energy over the last decade, the current system
we have has placed America at an enormous risk. And it isn't
just risk at our generating facilities or our transmission
facilities, but it is the blood, the sort of the energy blood
that flows through us is all transfusion, and that is not a
healthy position for the United States.
In fact, I was sitting here thinking about President Jimmy
Carter. I served President Carter in the White House during
those years, not as his energy advisor, but you couldn't
possibly serve during those years with the first Arab oil
embargo and not be completely transformed as an American.
And I was thinking about him and the Department of Energy
and looking at all of these photos up here as you are
testifying and thinking about how far we have come as a
country. We can at least talk about the dimension of the
challenge, and how far we have come. We have some quantifiables
now. And I was thinking about each of you, what an excellent
team you are for our country, and thinking what exciting jobs
you have and inventing the future. Not every American----
Mr. Simpson. I bet they sometimes don't think it is like
that.
Ms. Kaptur. I am sure. I am sure. But really, how few
Americans ever have the opportunity to do what you are doing,
and what a tremendous responsibility you have, and how very
very important what you are doing is to the country. And we
still aren't, in my opinion, close to the finish line. We
haven't--we are not at the goal. We are not at the goal post.
That is for sure. But at least we have some sense of direction,
and we are trying to work together.
In that regard, I wanted to ask you, Dr. Danielson, if I
asked somebody in the Agriculture Department, you know, where
do you produce soybeans, they can give me a map right down to
the acre, and how much per bushel production has increased over
some period of time. If I were to ask you for the manufacturing
sector, and I am very grateful for the Department of Energy and
its focus on the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation,
but if I were to ask you for a map that would show me on the
industrial side the relative importance of industrial firms
that suck energy from our grid, wherever it might happen, could
you provide me that kind of visual?
I can't believe--well, now that we have got all of these
semiconductor, Google and all the rest, sucking up a lot of
energy, I would be really interested, for instance, how my part
of America and the industrial spine district that I represent
compares to the Everglades. I don't have any such information
that has been made available to me. It would be most
interesting to compare, for example, ArcelorMittal in
Cleveland, and Alcoa, their 50,000 press, 50,000-ton press, and
the energy users along the corridor that I represent versus
some other part of the country and trying to understand a
little bit about, okay, so we are here today, and if I wanted
to--if I really wanted to help those companies become more
competitive, how do I think about that? We talked to several
steel companies this morning about becoming more energy
independent. How do we do that? How do we help them become more
competitive? Have you ever seen such a map at the Department of
Energy? Is there some kind of a--I don't even know what to call
it--user, energy user map of industrial companies with our part
of America, would the Great Lakes region light up compared to
Idaho? I think it would.
Mr. Danielson. It is a great question. I don't have that
map, you know, fully developed today. But it is definitely
something we could develop that would show the industrial
energy usage by State and in addition to industrial energy
prices.
But what I will point out is that, you know, in our vast
manufacturing office, we have a major effort to help energy-
intensive industries reduce their energy costs by--actually
visited ArcelorMittal and Alcoa to be part of an in-plant
training, where they were teaching each other some of the best
solutions that they had achieved. And through our Better Plants
program, Better Plants Challenge program, since 2010, our
partners have lowered their energy bills by more than $1
billion.
But also on the research and development side of the
Advanced Manufacturing Office, we are looking to prioritize the
kind of high-impact opportunities that will help, you know,
large industrial players and large energy users lower their
energy costs and be more competitive.
Be more than happy to follow up with you to deliver on this
map.
Ms. Kaptur. I would be very interested to look at the
geographic distribution of this. And to think about how do we
make that corridor competitive where we have corridors. Not
every part of America has a corridor. But, you know, when you
are building an Abrams tank, you use a lot of energy. It's a
little different than if you're sewing pajamas. I mean, there
is a difference there.
Mr. Simpson. Use a lot more horsepower. Horses.
Ms. Kaptur. In talking to several automotive manufacturers,
they can point to where they have problems, you know, put paint
shop in this place or stamping over here. So I am just real
interested.
I am not sure where the map will lead me, but I would sure
be interested in looking at it.
I would ask for the record if you could provide information
about what has happened to the Department of Energy support of
biorefineries. Secretary Chu, when he was Secretary, and
Secretary Vilsack from Agriculture, announced three
biorefineries around the country several years ago, let's say 6
years ago, whenever it was. So what? Okay. So we did it. They
are under way. What have we learned from that? Be really great
to have something back to the record on that.
Mr. Danielson. Absolutely.
Ms. Kaptur. I wanted to ask Dr. Lyons also whether the
Department maintains any bilateral relations with Ukraine on
Chernobyl and Japan on Fukushima.
Mr. Lyons. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur. And if you look at what happened, if there is
any way you could condense what we have learned in terms of
environmental degradation, cleanup, zones of--where you can't
really still go into--I would be very interested. I haven't
seen reports on that. If you could provide that in some way?
Mr. Lyons. We can certainly provide some information. We
don't actually have reports. But we will certainly provide what
we have. And we are very, very active in Fukushima-related
activities.
Ms. Kaptur. What about Chernobyl?
Mr. Lyons. Chernobyl, not to any substantial extent. There
are a number of U.S. companies involved in Chernobyl. I am less
sure that there is work within my office. Now, there has been
other work within Ukraine on providing fuels and improving
safety of Ukraine's power plants. But I would have to check on
Chernobyl. I am not sure that we have been directly involved
there.
Ms. Kaptur. Like, you know, what are the long-term
consequences of what happened there. So if you could dig around
a little bit, I would be really interested in human health
impacts as well as environmental, and what is being done
technologically to either cap or contain or whatever at this
point so many years later.
Mr. Lyons. We can certainly provide some information along
those lines. Some of this also would be within our
environmental management program----
Ms. Kaptur. All right.
Mr. Lyons [continuing]. That has some interactions, both at
Fukushima and Chernobyl.
Ms. Kaptur. I think it would be important for the world to
know.
Mr. Lyons. I would be happy to talk in great detail about
what we know about Fukushima and the causes and effects.
Ms. Kaptur. Very good. I wanted to ask just two more
questions. One everybody can be thinking about as I direct my
last question to Dr. Danielson.
Each of you works in a really exciting part of the future.
And think about some innovation you could talk about here today
that you personally witnessed as a result of your work that you
knew was going to carry America forward into a new age. And
share it with us. And share it with those who will read the
record here today.
But my question to Dr. Danielson, as you all are thinking,
is, you have made a proposal for a National Network for
Manufacturing Innovation. And I am interested in some of the
topical areas that the Department has focussed on. Could you
discuss that a little bit, and will there be additional topical
areas that the administration will select? And how will you
work to make sure there is no duplication with other Federal
agencies?
And how long do you think these partnerships will last?
Mr. Danielson. Great. Thank you for that question. So the
National Network for Manufacturing Innovation is a centrally--
coordinated by the Advanced Manufacturing National Program
office in the National Institute for Science and Technology--
for Standards and Technologies, NIST, and Commerce.
And so they really are pulling us all together, all the
agencies, to ensure no duplication, to make sure we have best
practices. These are meant to be 5-year, $70 million awards.
And at the end of 5 years, our expectation is that these
facilities, cutting-edge emerging manufacturing facilities,
should be transitioned fully to private sector support. That is
kind of the nature of these funding areas.
So there are a number of areas that we have under
consideration. Just brought in a new advanced manufacturing
office director from ARPA-E, who is going to be doing a series
of stakeholder engagement workshops, requests for information,
over the next 6 months to identify a set of high opportunity
topics that we will then workshop out with key stakeholders.
Areas of interest include roll-to-roll manufacturing for
battery technology, for membrane technology, for efficient
separations for fuel cell membranes and other areas; process
intensification to enable chemical industry to dramatically
lower their energy footprint; applying big data, high
performance computing, and smart manufacturing to energy
intensive industries to dramatically lower their energy
footprint; and a number of other areas that I would be more
than happy to submit for the record to the committee.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you. And if we could just go, something
you have seen that maybe the average American hasn't seen that
you would view is an innovation that you have witnessed, maybe
something that is not completed but in process that you think
will be really transformative. Doctor.
Mr. Lyons. This committee strongly cites the NP 2010
program that enabled a new generation of passively safe nuclear
reactors to be licensed. That has led to the Westinghouse AP
1000 reactor, which is passively safe. Under construction the
United States, China, will be constructed in the U.K. Was being
viewed in a number of places around the world. That program
also supported a General Electric passively safe design that I
hope will also achieve design certification.
``Passively safe'' means that in an accident scenario, you
do not require the operator to do anything quickly. In an
actively safe plant, the operators are trained, but they have
to respond within time scales of half an hour. An AP 1000
Westinghouse plant requires no operator actions for 3 days. The
SMRs, small modular reactors that we are supporting, the mPower
requires no operator action for a week, NuScale requires no
operator action, period. Indefinitely.
Those are dramatic changes in nuclear safety.
Mr. Danielson. The technology I would put forward is an
area of next generation power electronics based on a new
generation of semiconductors beyond silicon, which is a
traditional material we have today in all of our phones. So
silicon carbide, gallium nitride, these are areas the
Department of Defense invested in materials development for a
couple decades. And now through--and manufacturing innovation
we are helping bring this next generation, very efficient, very
low cost power electronics technology to a wide array of
applications.
One very exciting application is in variable speed drive
motors. Maybe it doesn't sound like the hottest topic ever, but
more than 40 percent of the electricity we use in this country
goes through motors. And we can reduce the energy usage of an
industrial motor by 40 percent with this kind of technology. So
this technology alone, that application alone, could lower our
electricity usage by 10 percent. But it is also used in next
generation electric vehicles, solid state transformers, which
would you think of as, like the next generation Internet router
for the grid, and a number of other high impact applications.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Ms. Hoffman. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to
talk about innovation because most of the time I talk about
what scares me at night or keeps me up at night. So I
appreciate the opportunity.
One of the things that this committee has invested in is
information technology for the grid, which I think has opened a
huge opportunity for development both on the transmission and
distribution system.
What we have done is we have placed sensors--I should back
up. In the 2003 blackout in the Northeast, there was a
recommendation that came out of that followup report that the
system needed wide area visibility, that grid operators needed
to be able to talk to each other during an emergency, during an
event.
What we have done is we have placed over a thousand sensors
across the transmission system. We are developing real-time
visualization technologies for grid operators to see what is
happening to the system to be able to understand the
characteristics of the transmission system so that they can
proactively mitigate any sort of disturbance that has occurred.
Having that access to the information technologies and more
transparency of data and information across the electric grid
has led to a series of innovations. But that is one that I am
particularly proud of.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for the question.
So I would highlight the work that we are doing in our
Office of Clean Coal in terms of working to reduce the cost of
capture out of existing sources of carbon pollution. And
ensuring that all of our sources of energy are going to be
relevant to the clean energy economy of the future. So we are
doing tremendous groundbreaking work in terms of sponsoring
major demonstrations to accomplish those things around
capturing CO2 that is coming out of coal fire power
plants. That does a couple of important things. First, it
ensures that we have got a diverse source of energy, not only
now, but also in the future for American businesses and
American families.
And also, if--you know, an important thing for us is that
if you care about reducing carbon pollution, if you care about
tackling the problem of anthropogenic CO2, doing
something about climate, then dealing with CO2 that
is coming out of coal fire power plants, not only domestically
but abroad, is something that is tremendously important. So we
think that in the global clean energy economy of the future
there is going to be two types of countries, going to be those
countries that invest, that innovate, that create the new
technologies, and then there are going to be those countries
that buy those technologies from the first category.
So we are very much in the first category. We've government
great collaborative partnerships between government and
industry. We are working with companies like Southern, with
Archer Daniels Midland, with Air Products, with Summit Energy.
And we are making great progress to not only showing the
feasibility of these concepts, but also to drive down the costs
and make sure that they are applicable to the challenges that
are facing us. So I think that is tremendous work that the
Department and the National Energy Technology Laboratory is
leading on a global scale.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I just have to say for the record I don't
know about Idaho, but for the region that I represent, what has
happened in my lifetime is a complete transformation in the way
that we produce energy. So, for example, when I was growing up,
we had a locally-owned Edison company that got its coal from
southern Ohio. And it brought it up. And we had a massive power
plant down to the river. It drew the water from there with big
stacks. And all of the people that built the plant and worked
in the plant and repaired the lines were all from our
community. And there was a lot of local capability. We may not
have had the most clean producer, but it was local.
And what I have seen happen over the years is a
transformation to where now the actual control, command and
control sits in New Jersey. And the original facilities are
being dismantled or have been dismantled. So all the skills
that went with it have migrated and transformed. And our
power--we are dependent on, I would say, in some cases, distant
producers or producers where the talent is located far away
from our region.
I don't know what that means across America. But I am just
not somebody who is comfortable with things that are so far
away. And I like to in-source talent, I like to in-source
material control and so forth. Because wealth creation then
accrues with that.
And so sort of like our airports, you know. You have to go
to these huge airports now, and our medium-size and smaller
airports have been diminished in the national context. It has
been a real big transformation since World War II. And it is
just the way we do things now, but I can see the change, I have
lived the change. And I am concerned about distant control over
life in given places and the ability in the event of tragedy or
difficulty the ability of local communities to respond, and
what happens in that regard.
So I just wanted to place that on the record and thank the
witnesses this morning. Mr. Chairman, you have been very fair
with the gavel and generous with your time. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. I
don't know if it was the first law or third law of dynamics or
something that was for every action there was an equal and
opposite reaction. Something like that. Just remember, when you
are out making cars more efficient, fuel efficient, with better
batteries, all those improvements, you are screwing up our
funding source to pay for those roads. We have to find a way to
do this.
But anyway, thank you all. Thank you for the job you are
doing. Be sure that you get the questions answered back to us
within 4 days because we are going to be marking up fairly
early this year, and we do want your responses so that we can
take those into consideration as we do markup.
Thank you all very much.
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Tuesday, March 25, 2014.
SCIENCE FY 2015 BUDGET
WITNESS
PATRICIA DEHMER, ACTING DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY
Mr. Nunnelee [presiding]. This hearing will come to order.
I am Alan Nunnelee, the vice chair of the subcommittee, and Mr.
Simpson is required to be in two places at this moment, so he
asked me to go ahead and gavel the committee in, and then he
will be here as quickly as he can.
So I welcome our witness, Dr. Pat Dehmer, the Acting
Director of the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Dr.
Dehmer, this morning the subcommittee heard from the
Department's applied energy programs. One of the challenges
they continually face from the committee and from Congress is
to justify how their programs are able to support this Nation's
energy sector without displacing or duplicating work the
private sector is or should be doing. It is a question that has
no easy answer, but we need to be mindful of staying on the
right side of that line.
The challenge you will be facing this afternoon is not an
entirely different one: to explain to this subcommittee,
populated as it is with nonscientists like me, why investing in
your programs is good use of our taxpayer dollars.
Your program has, of course, generally received broad
bipartisan support; however, as budgets continue to be
constrained, you and your colleagues will have to work even
harder to find ways to illustrate the importance of your
programs as they compete with others for funding.
This challenge is made even harder because it seems as if
the very nature of scientific investment has changed over the
last couple of decades. Cutting-edge science is even more
reliant than ever before on multibillion-dollar facilities that
few, if any, countries are willing to fully support alone. That
means investing in the biggest scientific questions of our day
relies at least partly on multinational teams. At the same
time, it is difficult to justify spending billions of U.S.
taxpayer dollars on international efforts abroad while our
constituents here at home need jobs and support.
Yet even our domestic facilities, many of which are among
the best in the world, face an uncertain future. Realistically,
your outyear budgets are more likely flat, if not declining. We
have been telling you this for years, yet your budgets are
increasingly consumed by operating your existing machines and
constructing new ones. I hope we will hear today what you feel
to be the correct balance between facility operations and
investments on one hand and, on the other hand, investing in
the highly trained workforce needed to preserve our country's
position leading the international scientific community.
Dr. Dehmer, please ensure that the hearing record questions
for the record and any supporting information requested by this
subcommittee are delivered in final form to us no later than 4
weeks from the time you receive them.
Members who have additional questions for the record will
have until the close of business tomorrow to provide them to
the subcommittee office.
With that, we will ask Ranking Member Kaptur for her
opening statement.
[The statement of Mr. Simpson follows:]
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Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much, and
welcome, Dr. Dehmer. It is really a pleasure to have you with
us today. And the Secretary of Energy Dr. Moniz has repeatedly
stated his belief in an all-of-the-above strategy for our
country that promotes production of domestic energy, creates
jobs and opportunities for American families, and addresses the
serious issues imposed by climate change. I believe that much
of the inspiration to overcome these challenges must come from
your Office of Science.
Last week there was an interesting New York Times article
that I will ask unanimous consent to insert in the record
entitled ``Billionaires with Big Ideas Are Privatizing American
Science.'' And I admire the motivation to give back to society,
and we can certainly all use the help in this time of budget
austerity; however, I am concerned that this trend points to
the fact that the United States Government is failing in an
area critical for future economic growth, and that is high
science.
Innovation is one of the last frontiers where the United
States has and continues to clearly lead. We cannot become
complacent believing that these philanthropic-minded citizens
are able or will continue to fund the Nation's needs, or even
will figure out the most important arenas in the national
interest.
Moreover, innovation outside the public sphere threatens
our ability to ensure the work of our best and brightest leads
to domestic growth and manufacturing in America's interests;
not just in some subset of us.
Recognizing the budgets that are the current reality, the
Department must approach its science portfolio with even more
rigor than before, and we know you are. There is evidence of
such an effort in this administration's request, and I hope
today you will help the committee understand the trade-offs we
are making in the name of scarcity. Our leadership in many
areas of science and technology depends in part on the
continued availability of the most advanced scientific
facilities for our researchers, and as we discussed last year,
many of the Department's infrastructure plans were developed
with a far more optimistic funding profile than current reality
will support.
Now that you have had several years to reorient your
program, I hope today you will take time to discuss both the
hard choices made by this budget request and those challenges
yet to come under a flat budget scenario. I want to touch
briefly on the national labs which are rightly viewed as a
national treasure. However, coming from an area without a
national lab, as most Members do, I continue to wrestle with
how the labs can play a transformational role for organizations
beyond their boundaries and help jump-start sectors of our
economy that so desperately need their technology, beginning
with American manufacturing. I look forward to your insights.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this time, and we look forward
to your testimony.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
Ms. Dehmer, we are looking forward to your testimony.
Ms. Dehmer. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, Chairman
Simpson, Ranking Member Kaptur and members of the committee. I
am pleased to come before you today to discuss the President's
fiscal year 2015 budget request for the Office of Science. I
first want to thank you all and everyone on the committee for
your continued support for the Office of Science, and
especially for your support in the 2014 omnibus.
In formulating our budget this year, our decisions were
based on several considerations. The first priority is the
pursuit of leadership in areas judged to be critical for the
U.S. and for the Department of Energy's mission. At the top of
this list is high-performance computing.
The Office of Science is on a path to deliver a capable
exascale machine by early in the next decade. We expect that in
the coming decades, computational modeling and simulation will
play an integral and essential role in all facets of science
and engineering.
We cannot cede the discoveries afforded by high-performance
computing to others, and, indeed, other countries are now
aggressively pursuing exascale computing using indigenous
components.
Today modeling and simulation already have enabled us to
examine subatomic phenomena such as the quark-gluon plasma at
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider; to develop new materials
such as superconductors; and to understand the workings of
proteins, the perfect and still largely inscrutable
biomolecular machines that power life.
In the world of engineering and manufacturing, today's
leadership computing facilities at Argonne and Oak Ridge
National Laboratories have modeled neutron transport in reactor
cores to predict the behavior of nuclear fuels; have conducted
combustion simulations to increase fuel efficiency in vehicles;
have made U.S. airplane engines quieter, more fuel efficient,
and less polluting; and have simulated ice formation in water
drops to reduce the wind turbine downtime in cold climates.
The next generations of computers promise even greater
understanding and predictivity, permitting engineering design
with confidence and without prototyping; permitting materials
design without an experimental laboratory; and permitting the
understanding of complex coupled phenomena. So what do I mean
by that? That sounds pretty techie. For example, can we predict
the flocking patterns of birds, knowing only how a single bird
flies? This is a trivial example of perhaps one of the greatest
challenges we will put to computers, that of understanding
complexity, how the behavior of a system derives from its
parts. The U.S. needs to be the first to benefit from the next
generation of computers.
Our second priority includes selected increases for
research and for instrument and facility construction. Even in
constrained budgets, we must move forward with new things, and
we are willing to do so. The fiscal year 2015 request includes
a new activity in the Basic Energy Sciences program for the
development of computer modeling in material sciences. Though a
leader in the development of many, if not most, scientific
modeling codes, the U.S. researchers still rely on materials
modeling codes developed outside the United States. Our
researchers must pay to use the codes. They do not have access
to the source code, and the codes do not run very well, very
efficiently on machines with multiple processors like our
Leadership Computing Facilities. This is completely
unacceptable in a field as important to innovation as materials
design.
The 2015 request also includes increases for ongoing major
construction projects such as the Linac Coherent Light Source
and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. It includes increases
for detector upgrades of the Large Hadron Collider and for new
buildings or infrastructure upgrades at four of our
laboratories.
Our third priority is the optimal operation of our
scientific user facilities, which together serve 28,000 users
annually. Again, we give priority to those facilities that
align with areas judged most critical. Facilities that are
operated at 100 percent optimal are the Leadership Computing
Facilities and NERSC, and the Basic Energy Sciences X-Ray Light
Sources Neutron-Scattering Facilities, and Nanoscale Science
Research Centers, which together support materials design,
development and characterization.
Finally, our fourth priority is maintaining a balance
between research and facilities. Overall, 40 percent of our
budget is invested in the support of researchers in academia
and in the DOE laboratories. This percentage has been steady
for many years, and we commit to continuing this.
Finally, our budget was informed by considerable external
advice. Our choices were informed by important advice from the
Federal advisory committees and also by the year-long activity
to prioritize existing and proposed scientific user facilities.
This activity also involved all six of our Federal advisory
committees.
In the near future, indeed 2 months from now, at the end of
May, we are looking forward to receiving input on the strategic
plan for the High Energy Physics program from the High Energy
Physics Advisory Panel.
In formulating this budget, we did, indeed, make hard
decisions. Overall, we are confident that the budget will
advance science, will provide 21st century tools and facilities
for our research communities, and will maintain U.S. leadership
in key areas important to U.S. competitiveness.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
Mr. Simpson [presiding]. Thank you.
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Mr. Simpson. Doctor, could you just out of curiosity tell
me what an exascale machine is?
Ms. Dehmer. An exascale machine is a machine that runs at
10 to the 18th operations per second. And so let us see if we
can tell you what 10 to the 18 is.
Mr. Simpson. That is a lot.
Ms. Dehmer. Okay, it is a lot. So you know what a million
is, and you know what a billion is because you deal with those
dollar amounts, right?
Mr. Simpson. We even deal with trillions.
Ms. Dehmer. That is where I was going. You know what a
trillion is because you deal with deficits. So the next one up
is 1,000 up from that, and that is a quadrillion. That is a
petascale, and we have petascale computers now. And 1,000 up
from that is quintillion, and that is exascale. So it is 1
million up from the dollar amounts you are used to dealing
with.
Mr. Simpson. That is a bunch.
Ms. Dehmer. That is a bunch.
Mr. Simpson. That is a pretty fast machine, isn't it?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And the world is in a
race to make those.
Mr. Simpson. Just out of curiosity, what are the
advantages, disadvantages if we do or don't do that?
Ms. Dehmer. Oh----
Mr. Simpson. What does that give us the capability to do
that we can't do now?
Ms. Dehmer. Yeah. I think I tried to touch on that in the
opening statement. It gives us a predictability to look at
real-world systems and to model and simulate them without
having to prototype them. So, for example, if you are trying to
create an engine, if you are Ford Motor Company or GM and you
are trying to create an engine, in principle you will be able
to start prototyping these what they call in silico using the
computer without having to make prototypes. You will be able to
understand parts of the world that are inaccessible to you
because they are too dangerous, they are too far away, so
forth.
So the faster computers get, the closer you can get to
simulating the real world without approximations, and that is
the power of these computers, and that is why the world is in a
race to approach exascale.
Mr. Simpson. That is fascinating. Kind of blows your mind.
The Office of Science is one of our bill's top priorities.
It obviously drives American innovation, keeps our science and
engineering workforce competitive, and leads to tomorrow's jobs
in manufacturing and other sectors. In the Department, the
Office of Science supports remarkable research, and there are
great opportunities that you have mentioned that are out there,
but we also face a stark fiscal reality. This year's request
proposes to reprioritize funding within the science portfolio
by cutting the Fusion and High Energy Physics Programs in favor
of Basic Energy Sciences and Nuclear Physics. In these times of
fiscal austerity, can you walk us through the difficult trade-
offs these programs face in the coming years?
Ms. Dehmer. Sure.
Mr. Simpson. Because I don't see our budget getting any
better for the next while, frankly.
Ms. Dehmer. Right.
The decrease in High Energy Physics was driven by a couple
of factors. One, some of the construction projects were rolling
off, and so funding decreased. Second, we are not going forward
with major new starts, and the major new start under discussion
is the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment, until we hear the
priorities put forward by the High Energy Physics Advisory
Panel. So that is the decision on major increases in the High
Energy Physics Program is essentially delayed until we get that
advice.
In Fusion Energy Sciences, we want to keep a vigorous
domestic program. This year we had a cut in the ITER
construction in response to what is happening in the ITER
Organization. The administration absolutely maintains its
commitment to the joint implementing agreement that was put in
place in approximately 2006, but realistically we believe that
our request this year will provide the ITER project with what
it needs this year.
Mr. Simpson. And we, in fusion energy, we cut the ITER by
$15 million, and domestic fusion energy research by what, $40
million?
Ms. Dehmer. It is less than that, I believe. I would have
to look at the numbers. I don't have them.
Mr. Simpson. Overall, it was about 90--$90 million cut on
that.
But nevertheless, the fiscal year 2012 bill directed the
Department's energy programs to transition away from awarding
multiyear grants that mortgage future years' appropriations
unless absolutely necessary as in the case for large
construction projects that we simply cannot fund in 1 fiscal
year. We find tremendous value in fully funding projects up
front, particularly small grants, so that we can more adeptly
handle the fiscal environment in which we find ourselves in in
any given year.
I am happy to report that the bulk of the Department's
energy programs made this transition quickly, and now these
programs are in a position to react more quickly to changes in
funding and market conditions. The Office of Science, however,
was never as nimble on this subject. Of the 43 multiyear awards
made by the Department's energy programs in the first 2 months
of this fiscal year, 41 were made by the Office of Science, or
95 percent of them. And to clarify, these were not large
projects. The average total science award was only $952,000.
This has been consistent with your office's previous practices.
As a result, last year's omnibus appropriations bill included a
requirement to fully fund awards and grants less than $1
million. And can you provide us with an update on how that
transition to fully fund projects of under $1 million is going?
Ms. Dehmer. We are absolutely following the direction to
the letter.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.
And thank you for your testimony, Doctor. I was just going
over the last page of your testimony where you talk about
Science Laboratories Infrastructure, and you talk about funding
requested for 2015 to complete construction of Science and User
Support Building at the SLAC National Accelerator Facility.
Where is that located?
Ms. Dehmer. California.
Ms. Kaptur. California.
And then it talks about infrastructure at Princeton----
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur [continuing]. New Jersey, and completing design
studies from materials design at Argonne, an existing
laboratory, and then Photon Sciences Lab, again at SLAC, and an
Integrative Genomics Building at LBNL.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes, that is the Berkeley lab.
Ms. Kaptur. Also at Berkeley.
I just wanted to step back for a second and say to you in
your position, you know, if you were to overlay the Nation of
various academic institutions and how we disburse Federal funds
for research, I remember when I was first elected many years
ago, and we didn't even have a phone connected on the 6th floor
of Longworth, and the first visitor in the office was from MIT,
the MIT lobbyist. And I actually studied at MIT, so I
appreciate it, but they didn't even know that. They were just
there to lobby a freshman. And I thought, my gosh, my
university people don't even know what my office number is yet
from out in Ohio.
And I guess my request to you is, as I visit these various
laboratories, and I look at the infrastructure and the fine
minds that are working there, and then I look at the parts of
the country that have been economically hurting for a long
time, all I would ask you to do is find a way to find the
universities in places that aren't the favorite few here in
Washington and to do some affirmative effort to find what is
there, and to see, whether it is engineering, whether it is
math, whether there are ways that with all of the duties you
have that you could really look at parts of the country that
have major, major challenges, and not all professors in those
regions are inadequate. Many are there for various reasons, and
they have something to contribute.
But I found, for instance, when I was on the National
Science Foundation Committee, it was the same universities all
the time. And I just look at the flow of funds over, you know,
25 years, and I think, okay, it is great for the country, but
it is not so great for many other regions of the country.
So if there is anything you could do to broaden the
umbrella--we are not even asking for buildings; we are just
asking for inclusion--and to particularly look at those places
in the country that have had serious outwashes of production,
and where the people are still struggling to obtain work.
The role of these incredible institutions can really make a
difference, and we have had really good--made some good efforts
in our area to sign an agreement with Argonne, for example,
with a NASA facility, which is the only Federal research
facility we have in northern Ohio.
But I just look around the country, and I think, you know,
it is a good life working at Berkeley. Man, you look out over
the Pacific, you know, and fog comes in, and the sun comes up,
and places for lunch, and comfortable. And, you know, everybody
has got an IQ above, what, 120, 150--2,000, probably. And I
just look at the places in the country. Our chairman of the
full committee comes from Kentucky. I look at some of the
struggles that he has in Kentucky, and I think in the high
sciences they ought to at least be surveying the horizon and
taking jewels that exist in different parts of the country,
including them.
I remember when I was on one of the veterans subcommittees
and I said, you know, you have got a problem with all of these
veterans who are sick in the beds every day in these hospitals,
and let us take a look at who is on your protocols, which
scientists are coming in to make decisions about where to give
grants for this or that within the VA. It was the same thing.
So I see a Federal pattern across different departments,
and I am just trying to sensitize you to my concern that there
be inclusion, and that somebody be thinking about that
somewhere in your shop and at least provide opportunities to
include people on peer review panels, places that the
Department of Labor can tell you exactly where these
communities are, and there are whole regions that lack the kind
of capacity that many of these facilities that you have
mentioned in your testimony have.
So I just wanted to make that point. I just want to go to
my questions here. I wanted to ask you a question about other
countries, and when you talk about everybody wanting to get
into certain types of high science. In the way you look at the
world, how would you rank those countries and in which areas of
inquiry?
Ms. Dehmer. Okay. Let me back up a little bit. When I
started in science, it was a very long time ago, probably 40
years ago, the United States was the place to be. The United
States has not diminished at all. We still have outstanding
researchers who are well funded. The change has been that other
countries, other areas of the world recognize that science and
engineering are incredibly important for their economic
development.
So now I would say that, for example, in high-performance
computing, big competitors are in China-- China actually has
the number one top-performing computer right now; in Japan and
in Europe.
In light sources, light sources are incredibly important
because they can examine materials at the atomic level. And if
you know how materials are made at the atomic level, you can
start building new ones. We were dominant. The United States
was dominant in light sources for decades, and I know because I
used some of the early ones in the early days of light sources
in the 1980s. Today China, Japan, Europe, South America are all
building light sources that are competitive with ours. It is
not that we aren't well funded, and building outstanding
machines, and having outstanding people work; it is that the
rest of the world has figured out that they have to do this,
too.
And so we are in a race in the important technological
areas that drive innovation with other parts of the world.
Ms. Kaptur. Where is Russia?
Ms. Dehmer. Russia is not at the same level in computing.
It is not at the same level in materials characterization using
these very advanced tools, but they have some outstanding
researchers, and they have outstanding facilities for particle
physics and high-energy physics. Novosibirsk is one that comes
to mind.
Ms. Kaptur. You have talked about material science.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur. And we know that that is critical for the
advancement of our Nation's manufacturing base. Can you take a
few moments to delve a bit more into what the Office of Science
is doing in the area of material science?
Ms. Dehmer. We have one of the biggest material science
programs, basic research material science programs, in the
government. And I think taken as a whole, the Department of
Energy is probably the lead in material sciences if you include
the technology offices.
What we have done over the past decade is we have worked
very hard to understand how materials are constructed from the
bottom up using nanoscale science. We built five nanoscale
science research centers in the mid-2000s, and what we are
doing now is trying to develop new materials with new
properties and new functionality that can actually be put into
production for things like batteries, and solar cells, and
catalysts, and so forth. So we are one of the leads in material
sciences, and we are very aggressive about pursuing new ways of
doing business.
Ms. Kaptur. Does that include metals as well as composites?
Ms. Dehmer. Absolutely. Metals, alloys, composites, soft
material, everything.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. That is my first round, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Nunnelee.
Mr. Nunnelee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Well, this is the second time today that the ranking member
and I are so much along the same line of questioning that I
think we must be working off the same notes.
To be honest, while I do consider her a friend and
respected member of this committee, I think it is more
indicative of the bipartisan nature of the work on this
committee, because the issues that we are confronting really
don't know partisan boundaries.
In my opinion, we are standing on the shoulders today of
the people who came before us that made the decision to invest
in research and those who actually conducted that research. And
almost every aspect of every one of our daily lives has been
impacted by the work they did before we got here. I am thinking
I have friends who work every day in careers that once did not
exist--In fact, there was not even terminology for these
careers when my grandparents were my age. And with that
foundation, I look forward to knowing that my children, my
grandchildren, and their grandchildren are going to be impacted
every day in their life by decisions that we make collectively
on this committee by projects that we either embrace or
projects that we reject. That is a heavy responsibility.
With that in mind, following on what the ranking member had
to say, I would just like you to continue to put in context our
Nation's investment in research as compared to that investment
being done by other global powers. Where do we fit?
Ms. Dehmer. Perhaps an example. Some years ago when I was
still the director of the Basic Energy Sciences Program we made
the decision to invest in the Linac Coherent Light Source,
which is an X-ray free-electron laser. It was throwing long. No
one, no one believed that an X-ray free-electron laser would
work, but we used the SLAC Linac, and it turns out that the day
of commissioning, many people said it will never work; it will
take 6 months to commission. It commissioned in 2 hours.
But that is not the real point of the story. The real point
of the story is that Germany was also heavily invested in free-
electron lasers, and one of the things that we did was have
collaborations with our German colleagues, and they had very
advanced instrumentation and detectors. And had it not been for
their bringing their instrumentation and detectors over, we
never would have made such a huge impact on day one of the
commissioning of the Linac Coherent Light Source.
If you go back, say, 20 years, we never could have said
that story. There never would have been a Germany that was
equal to us and in competition with us at that level. That is
becoming more and more true. And I think it is necessary to
pick areas of science where the United States wants to be
number one and make aggressive investments.
Mr. Simpson. Will the gentleman yield for 1 second?
Mr. Nunnelee. Sure.
Mr. Simpson. What does that mean? Not the last statement,
but the light source that you are talking about. I mean,
practical terms to the American people, the average individual,
what does----
Ms. Dehmer. So what do light sources do? Okay, they examine
materials at very high resolution through something called
scattering, and they can tell you the atomic composition and
the placement of atoms in materials. For example, biomolecules,
right? Biomolecules are very important, and drug manufacturers
are very keen to know the structure of proteins because they
can then make drugs that bind to the proteins, right? So the
Linac Coherent Light Source is different than conventional
light sources. Conventional light sources need tiny crystals in
order to do X-ray scattering and get structures of proteins.
The Linac Coherent Light Source actually is so bright and so
powerful that you can drop a protein, not in a crystal, but you
can drop a protein in a little jet of water down in front of
the beam, and without a crystal, one molecule at a time, you
can begin to get structures.
Now, why is that important? Why is it important to do that
fast? It is important to do that fast, because many, many
proteins, the majority of the proteins, won't crystallize. So
now you suddenly have a tool that does single-molecule
imaging--that was one of the stretch goals of this machine--
single-molecule imaging of proteins that don't crystallize, and
so it opens up a whole new world of science for the users.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right. You talked about collaboration
with other countries.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Mr. Nunnelee. So much of what we do does require that
collaboration.
Ms. Dehmer. Right.
Mr. Nunnelee. How do we achieve that and at the same time
maintain our country's global position, scientific leadership,
and our own national interest?
Ms. Dehmer. Well, there are cases where collaboration is
necessary and is good; where an instrument is too expensive,
too technologically difficult for a single country to build.
And the one that comes to mind is the Large Hadron Collider at
CERN. We are essentially out of the business in the United
States of collider physics, high-energy collider physics, but
its perfectly acceptable to us and to the rest of the world to
be users at CERN. In fact, a third of the users at the Large
Hadron Collider are U.S.
So, okay, but do you want to do that? Do you want to have a
central facility in the world that does high-performance
computing with you not having access to it or control of it? As
far as I am concerned, I don't think so, and that is reflected
in our budget. Do you want to have facilities for materials
characterization which drives new materials discovery and
development that is somewhere other than here? I really don't
think so.
So there are places where you collaborate, and there are
places where you have to have your own tools. That is how I
look at it.
Mr. Nunnelee. Mr. Chairman, four semesters of calculus got
me out of the engineering school and into the business school,
but this fascinates me.
Mr. Simpson. I agree with the gentleman. This is
fascinating stuff, and fortunately, or unfortunately, it is way
above my pay level, it is up there, but it is interesting. And
that is why I ask on the practical level, how do I explain some
of this stuff to the average Joe that wonders why we invest in
this stuff? So I appreciate your answers.
Mr. Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
welcoming me to the committee.
Doctor, I have some particular concerns I would like to ask
you. I assume in nuclear experiments that chaos is not a good
thing. And yet I have delved a little bit into this ITER
facility, the international organization that runs this ITER
facility, and it appears to be pretty chaotic. And I think that
that is affirmed by the budget request which is lower for
Fusion Energy Sciences. And in one particular sentence that you
have in your testimony, it says, our present assessment of the
international project is that it cannot under current
conditions meet the most recent schedule put forward by the
ITER Organization.
Is this a waste of money?
Ms. Dehmer. No. That is not our position. You know, as I
said at the beginning, the United States, the administration,
maintains its commitment to the agreements that we made in
2006, the joint implementing agreement. I have built a lot of
projects in my years in the Department of Energy. I spent 12
years as the Director of Basic Energy Sciences, building very
large projects, the Spallation Neutron Source and several
others, and I know that projects run into trouble. And the
management assessor's report on ITER has indicated that ITER is
now in one of those periods.
What we expect is for the ITER Organization to accept the
recommendations of the management assessor's report, to create
a corrective action plan, and to begin to implement that
corrective action plan, and at that point I think it is
possible for this project to turn around and build ITER. But at
this point the $150 million request is what we believe is an
appropriate request for this project at this moment in time.
Mr. Fortenberry. I am sorry if I am confused about the
number. I am reading $225 million.
Ms. Dehmer. No, that was----
Mr. Fortenberry. This year's implemented number?
Ms. Dehmer. In 2014?
Mr. Fortenberry. Yes.
Ms. Dehmer. In 2014 the number is $200 million.
Mr. Fortenberry. And it will drop to $150?
Ms. Dehmer. Correct.
Mr. Fortenberry. Okay. I guess the point, then, is affirmed
that here we are lowering our commitment because we are
basically suggesting that the organization, this organizational
structure and the trajectory towards some outcome here appears
less and less probable.
Is this money better invested elsewhere? Should this be
revisited? This is a lot of money.
Ms. Dehmer. This is a lot of money. I think this year,
under these circumstances, $150 million is the correct request.
Mr. Fortenberry. Okay. Are we putting a Band-Aid over
something that is bleeding, and then next year we will have
another consideration as to whether or not we are going to be a
part of this at all? And when is the projected project
conclusion; 2024, did I read that correctly in another article?
Ms. Dehmer. I don't know what article you are referring to,
but the ITER Organization has committed to provide a baseline
which is the schedule for the project by summer of next year,
by summer of 2015. I don't particularly want to preclude, you
know, obviate their work by suggesting what an end date might
be for first plasma.
Mr. Fortenberry. Okay, then that is when it gets hard for
decisionmakers, because we are committed to something that
appears to be open-ended, is not going well at the moment.
There is no defined outcome. I recognize this is experimental
in nature, and it has got international ramifications.
When did this start, and when were the initial assessments
that we would actually have some conclusive data or project
that was usable, implementable, because it was a lot earlier
than this?
Ms. Dehmer. I am sorry, I don't understand the question.
When did----
Mr. Fortenberry. When did the organization start, and when
were the initial timelines and projections for outcomes?
Ms. Dehmer. The ITER Organization became an organization in
2007. And the----
Mr. Fortenberry. But the idea was much earlier than that.
Ms. Dehmer. Oh, yes.
Mr. Fortenberry. And I assume money spent on it much
earlier than this.
Ms. Dehmer. We rejoined, the United States rejoined the
ITER Organization at that time. We had been in it much earlier.
Mr. Fortenberry. And then suspended our membership. And why
did we do that?
Ms. Dehmer. I am not a historian in this particular case,
but I believe because of the--you know, the design and
schedule.
Mr. Fortenberry. So we are bumping maybe perhaps into the
same problem here?
Ms. Dehmer. I think it is a very different project at this
moment in time than it was at the time we got----
Mr. Fortenberry. What is it going to produce and when?
Ms. Dehmer. It is going to produce ITER, which is the first
worldwide experiment to create a burning plasma, and probably
the earliest--my personal guess, not an administration guess--
is late 2023.
But again, the ITER Organization has committed to provide
us with a baseline by summer of next year.
Mr. Fortenberry. Do we have some sort of probability
assessment of what a 2023 outcome is going to look like?
Ms. Dehmer. No.
Mr. Fortenberry. And then how much money will we project to
have spent by then on this?
Ms. Dehmer. So last year when we submitted the 2014 budget,
we said that we would spend up to $225 million a year, up to
$2.4 billion, but we would reassess as we approach first
plasma.
Mr. Fortenberry. Who are the largest contributors to this?
Ms. Dehmer. The E.U. is the largest contributor.
Mr. Fortenberry. And how much have they contributed?
Ms. Dehmer. They have 45 percent of the project, and the
other members have 9.09 percent each.
Mr. Fortenberry. So we contribute 9 percent to the total?
Ms. Dehmer. Correct.
Mr. Fortenberry. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Let me ask you, when these large international
joint ventures, I guess you will call them, whether it is the
accelerator at CERN or ITER, are they proprietary, the people
that do the research there, or is it shared with all of the
members?
Ms. Dehmer. No, at CERN the work is not proprietary. The
expectation is that the researchers will publish their work.
Mr. Simpson. And will that be the same at ITER?
Ms. Dehmer. I would have to go back and look at the ITER
agreement. I don't know the answer to that.
Mr. Simpson. Is it generally the standard that we use on
these types of the facilities?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes, sure.
Mr. Simpson. If it is proprietary work, they end up having
to pay for it?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes. For virtually all of our scientific user
facilities, there is no cost for nonproprietary work, and the
expectation is that the researchers will publish their work. A
very small fraction, very small fraction, a few percent of the
work is proprietary, and then the user pays full cost recovery.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Several years ago the Department of
Energy transitioned all isotope-production programs to the
Office of Science, a transition that was ordered by Congress a
number of years prior to that. In your view is the isotope
program operating well under the Office of Science, and is the
Office of Science working to ensure that commercial isotope
producers have direct working relationships with user
facilities on a day-to-day operational matter as it continues
its effort to coordinate isotope-production activities across
the DOE complex?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes, we think it is working well. There is an
isotope office at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and that is
the day-to-day contact for most people who would interact with
the program, but others do interact directly with headquarters.
Mr. Simpson. The office is authorized to charge its
customers fees to recover its costs on the isotope program.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Mr. Simpson. And I am told that it also imposes an
additional surcharge on all or most customers, which the office
says is to pay for infrastructure across all isotope
facilities.
Do you believe the pricing, including the surcharges, is
well justified and fair to both the taxpayer and the isotope
customer?
Ms. Dehmer. I am not familiar with the surcharge. I will
have to provide an answer for the record on that.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. And I apologize, Mr. Fleischmann. You
came back in, and I was thinking we were going right down the
line, and--time is yours.
Mr. Fleischmann. Well, thank you. I appreciate the line of
questioning from the chairman, and I thank you for this
opportunity.
And, Doctor, the sentiments of this subcommittee, I think
are very clear. We are truly amazed with what is going on in
your field. I have the great privilege of representing the city
of Oak Ridge. Any time I go to the lab and see Dr. Mason, I am
just amazed with the tremendous strides that we are making
across the board in science. It is so important.
I have a few questions, though. The Spallation Neutron
Source and HFIR at Oak Ridge National Laboratory make Oak Ridge
the world leader when it comes to neutron science, neutron-
scattering materials for study, and the production of isotopes
and irradiated materials with neutrons. Does the budget request
adequately support a continued infrastructure--support the
continued infrastructure needs of the neutron facilities at Oak
Ridge?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes, it does.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay, thank you.
Do you foresee an increased role for the neutron facilities
at Oak Ridge, especially in light of the closure of the Lujan
Center at Los Alamos?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes. The budget that we provided for High Flux
Isotope Reactor and Spallation Neutron Source will allow them
to accommodate a couple hundred more users, and that is roughly
the number of users that will be displaced at the Lujan Center.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. Doctor, as you are no doubt aware,
the Oak Ridge National Lab is required to maintain an increased
security footprint due to the presence of U-233, a fissile
material, in building 3019. Although the removal of U-233 from
the building 3019 is primarily the responsibility of the
Environmental Management, security is the responsibility of the
Office of Science.
How much does the Office of Science expect to spend to keep
building 3019 secure until the materials are removed?
Ms. Dehmer. I will have to get that answer for you.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. If you would provide that for us, I
would appreciate that.
Ms. Dehmer. Certainly.
Mr. Fleischmann. A follow-up to that, I know there have
been some issues with the removal of U-233 to the Nevada test
site. Can you tell the committee about some of the issues
encountered and provide with us an updated timeline, please?
Ms. Dehmer. I know that the Department of Energy is working
with the State of Nevada to try and reconcile this. I don't
know what the timeline is for an outcome of that.
Mr. Fleischmann. Okay. We discussed earlier and I
appreciate your going into some of the supercomputing issues,
which are tremendous. I wanted to talk with you about that. As
you are no doubt aware, Titan at Oak Ridge was the fastest
computer in the world until recently being eclipsed by a
Chinese computer.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Mr. Fleischmann. Could you please tell us what the
Department's plan is in order to remain a world leader in
supercomputing?
Ms. Dehmer. Well, I talked a little bit in the oral
statement about exascale. We have a plan to produce an exascale
machine by the early 2020s that will be 500 to 1,000 times more
powerful than the ones we have today.
Moreover, it will be a capable exascale machine is the
wording that we use, and what that means is it will be
programmable, and it will be usable by the scientific
communities. That is a big difference between building an
exascale machine that just runs at exaflops per second.
So our goal is to make an exascale machine that is
programmable, that has reasonable power requirements, and that
is made from commercial components. And we have two or three
generations of computers that will be installed at Oak Ridge in
the intervening years before we get to, say, 2022, 2023. So we
are aggressively going forward with that. It is our highest
priority in the Office of Science to make that happen.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you very much. I think you and I
agree that supercomputing is a superpriority for our Nation.
Ms. Dehmer. It is.
Mr. Fleischmann. And I appreciate your passion for that.
If I may in my last question, again, you have touched on it
earlier, can you please tell the committee and reemphasize just
how important this is with supercomputing to enhance and
improve other programs within the Office of Science?
Ms. Dehmer. One of the things that our Advanced Scientific
Computing Research Program does is it reaches out to all of the
programs in the Office of Science on a regular basis; has joint
workshops to find out what those programs need in terms of
capability, hardware capability; and also works with every one
of the programs in the Office of Science to advance their
scientific computing needs.
In addition, that program has reached out to the technology
offices that you talked with this morning, and is working with
them as well.
Mr. Fleischmann. Thank you, Doctor.
Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Simpson. Thank you.
I guess the reason people like Mr. Nunnelee and I find this
all so fascinating is you are sitting here talking about these
supercomputers. I can still remember when I was taking college
chemistry and physics classes when I bought my first HP
computer that added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. And
the thing is you would use it taking a test, but you didn't
trust it. So you would do it with pencil, you know. And that is
what is so stunning to us when we see all of this stuff.
I should have said this earlier, and welcome, Mr.
Fortenberry, to our subcommittee. It is good to have you on the
subcommittee, the Congressman from Nebraska, First District,
and we are glad you are with us here.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you.
Mr. Simpson. Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to, Dr. Dehmer, go to the area of bioenergy a
little bit, and the Department is currently supporting three
Bioenergy Research Centers, and they are in their second 5-year
term.
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur. And my question really is can you bring us up
to date on the progress in those three centers, where are they
located, and what breakthroughs have you accomplished during
that time, and how do you work with the Department of
Agriculture? I can assure you that I was on the Agriculture
Subcommittee, and Senator Harkin and I wrote the first title to
push the Department of Agriculture into energy, and they didn't
want to go there. And we did it in an appropriation bill as the
authorizers, so it is really interesting to see where the
momentum is.
Now some have discovered that, oh, gosh, there is a future
in unlocking the carbohydrate molecule. But my senses were at
the beginning of that science, so this morning I put an article
in the record dealing with an F-16 unit in our region that
flew, the first one, using a blend of canola and other petro
blends, and it didn't crash.
But I am interested in, what can you tell us about those
three centers? Where are they located? Where are you headed
with all of that? What are some of the breakthroughs you have
noted, and how do you work with the Department of Agriculture?
Ms. Dehmer. So first the centers are located at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory. They have multiple partners. Each center
has a number of partners, but the lead institution for the
first one is Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For the second one
is the University of Wisconsin, and for the third one is
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And like I said, each
one of these----
Ms. Kaptur. The third was Lawrence?
Ms. Dehmer. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Each one of these has probably 10 or 15 partners,
universities, you know, local industries, whatever.
The Bioenergy Research Centers were established in 2007,
and they were established to produce ethanol from cellulose. At
the time cellulosic ethanol was a stretch. Most ethanol was
produced from crops, food crops, that assembled the raw
material into a part of the plant that was easily obtained;
corn, for example, corn kernels, or soybeans. Cellulosic
ethanol is very different because the feedstock cellulose is
entwined inside the woody stems of the plant, and it is hard to
get out. It is not a food crop, so it doesn't compete with food
crops.
So there were three challenges for the Bioenergy Research
Centers when they were started. One is to look at feedstocks,
alternate plants. The second was what we call recalcitrance,
and that is the process of getting the cellulose out of the
plant. The plant doesn't want to give up the cellulose. The
plants have woody stalks that are very stiff, and Mother Nature
made them that way so they wouldn't fall down, and now we are
trying to get the cellulose out of those woody plants. And the
third challenge was microbial synthesis of biofuels, mostly
ethanol, but it could be higher alcohols or fuels as well.
So each center picked certain areas to emphasize. In a
sense, all of the centers touch on each one of these, but in
the area of feedstocks, there has been a tremendous effort to
look at wild-type feedstocks, for example, looking at thousands
of poplar varieties, looking at all kinds of grasses, so just
looking at what Mother Nature gives us, but second, doing
genetic engineering to make those plants have more cellulose
and make the plants release their cellulose easier. So that is
the first feedstocks.
The second is recalcitrance, so how do we get the cellulose
out of a woody plant? And there were pretreatment innovations
made. There was microbial decomposition of plants to get the
cellulose out. So in each one of these three areas, there has
been major advances made.
And the final is microbial synthesis of fuels, and a couple
of the Bioenergy Research Centers have worked very hard to
modify microbes to make fuels in a single step, or make heavier
fuels. So I think the first 5 years of these Bioenergy Research
Centers have been incredibly successful in addressing the three
main goals of the BRCs, the Bioenergy Research Centers, when
they were formed. Now they are into their second 5-year period
with even more ambitious goals, but, again, along these same
three areas.
Ms. Kaptur. But cellulosic has undergirded--it is your
fundamental material, from what you are saying?
Ms. Dehmer. Yes.
Ms. Kaptur. You focused on the alcohol side. What about the
oil side?
Ms. Kaptur. So the Bioenergy Research Centers have also
worked on modifying plants to produce oil so that the oils
would be easier to extract, but in general, their goal was not
to make plants that have oil that could be immediately
chemically altered to be alcohols.
Ms. Kaptur. And is that because that is more expensive?
Ms. Dehmer. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that,
but I do know that the fundamental goal of these centers was to
use nonfood crops that could be grown in weaker soils so that
they wouldn't compete with the soils that we use for food
crops, and make it--modify the plants, modify the microbes,
modify pretreatment conditions to make it easier to pull the
cellulose out of the plants, and then to modify that to make
sugars, and then to ferment the sugars.
Ms. Kaptur. It would be really interesting to look at the
sugar versus the oil. I don't know if you can find somebody
there who thinks about that.
Ms. Dehmer. I can certainly have a little short white
paper, you know, a page or two white paper written on using
oils versus using sugars to produce alcohols----
Ms. Kaptur. Right.
Ms. Dehmer [continuing]. Versus using cellulose.
Ms. Kaptur. I have a listing in my office one of my seed
dealers gave me with all of the oil content of seeds, and some
of them are not really edible seeds, but they produce a lot of
oil. And so I was just curious for our biodiesel market, for
example, how much research is going on there. I am trying to
get a sense of what is happening on the sugar side and what is
happening on the oil side. So any clarification you can provide
would be most interesting.
Ms. Dehmer. Okay. Okay.
Ms. Kaptur. And I wanted to ask a question I asked this
morning of our witnesses from the Department, and that is that
of everything you have seen in developing research, for the
record, are there any particular fields that, when you have
seen what is happening, it has been particularly rewarding for
you as a scientist, say, that is really going to mature quickly
and is going to make a huge difference? It sounds like
supercomputing is where you put a lot of your marbles, but
maybe there is something else.
Ms. Dehmer. I think when I look back on my time in the
Department of Energy, one of the things I am proudest of is 5
years of workshops with community input and advice from the
advisory committee that eventually led to 46 Energy Frontier
Research Centers. They are just little engines of discovery.
We recently had the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board,
SEAB, look at the Bioenergy Research Centers, the Energy
Frontier Research Centers, the hubs, and the draft report was
just posted on the Web, and the Energy Frontier Research
Centers have fared extremely well. So I am very proud of that.
In terms of my later years here, I think one of the biggest
surprises to come out of the research that is done in the
Department of Energy was the Nobel Prize to Saul Perlmutter a
few years back for his discovery of the accelerating universe.
It is rare in science that a single--a single discovery or a
single event changes the way we think about the world around
us, and this discovery of the accelerating universe did that.
So that is a key point.
The other thing, the third thing, that I would like to
mention has to do with our light sources. Every 3 years the
Nobel Prize in chemistry is awarded to biochemistry, and the
last four prizes in this area were awarded to investigators who
used the light sources to learn the protein structures of
extremely important proteins. And I think it is remarkable that
we haven't missed a Nobel Prize using a light source in four of
those, in a set of four of those.
So I think, you know, these are the kinds of things that I
think of when I think about what has really changed the way
people think.
Ms. Kaptur. That perspective is most interesting. Thank you
for sharing it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Nunnelee.
Mr. Nunnelee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You and I both have
been reflecting on our university career.
Ms. Dehmer, if you would walk me through the relationship
between the Office of Science, the various research
universities--we have four in my State--and the national labs.
How do you integrate them? How do they fit together? And what
are their roles? What is your role?
Ms. Dehmer. So in the Office of Science, we support about
300 institutions, and because there are only 17 labs, most of
those institutions are universities.
Increasingly, over the last several years, the laboratories
and the universities have partnered in big activities. The
Bioenergy Research Centers is one. All three of them have
university partners, and two of them are run by labs, but have
significant university partners.
Of the Energy Frontier Research Centers, three-quarters of
them are hosted by universities, and they will reach out to
labs and have lab partners.
So what I have seen happen is over the last 10 years that
the university community and the laboratory community have
become much more interactive, much more collaborative. The labs
have been more collaborative with one another. And the
university community has relied on the laboratories for its big
tools.
Twenty-five, thirty years ago--so I go back with the labs a
long ways--there was no such thing as a scientific user
facility that was wide open. Today the scientific user
facilities have redefined what a laboratory is. We touch as
many people by funding them directly as we do by those going to
our scientific user facilities at the labs, roughly 28- to
30,000 each. So the labs and the universities have really
become partners, each doing what it does best and each needing
the other.
Mr. Nunnelee. So how do you go about deciding whether we
need this university to partner with this lab as opposed to
that university?
Ms. Dehmer. Typically it is done by a funding opportunity
announcement, and the partnering is self-partnering.
Mr. Nunnelee. So there is an announcement, the universities
know about it, and then they just work----
Ms. Dehmer. Typically groups at universities and
laboratories will reach out to one another to form a
partnership. It is not directed by headquarters.
Mr. Nunnelee. All right. Thank you.
Yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Mr. Fortenberry.
Mr. Fortenberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to return to some of what my colleague Ms. Kaptur
was talking about regarding biofuels research and ask you to
point to some specific outcomes.
And then I do have a concern of trying to get an
understanding of what research is going on across multiple
disciplines.
For instance, when I was on the Agricultural Committee, we
had asked for a summary of all of the research going on across
the government into renewable biofuels, and we don't think we
ever got it, because it looked like to be a pretty complicated
piece of information to try to obtain. So that suggests there
might be some duplication going on. Is there a coordinated
effort here with the Department of Agriculture?
And then could you be specific in terms of what we are
looking at producing? I understand that the next generation of
ethanol was to be cellulosic, and there is some advancements
being made internationally. It is my impression is we are
lagging, though, here in the United States in that regard.
And then regarding your microbial synthesis of fuels, does
that mean algae?
Ms. Dehmer. No, it does not mean algae.
Mr. Fortenberry. Okay. Well, tell me what that means.
Ms. Dehmer. The Bioenergy Research Centers in general do
not work on algae. They work on other kinds of feedstocks. So
it would be other feedstocks using microbes to generate
alcohols directly.
I don't know enough about this to be as informed as I am on
some other subjects.
Mr. Fortenberry. Well, I think that is part of my question,
and neither do I. And I would like to know what the government
is doing everywhere, not just right here, in this regard to
ensure that we are coordinating properly, that we have not
unproductively stovepiped this between you, the Department of
Agriculture, and the Department of Defense, all of whom have
interest in this.
Ms. Dehmer. Well, I know that there are coordinating
committees, Federal coordinating committees, that do look at
this. I also know that the former Director of Biological and
Environmental Research, she retired not very long ago, came
from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And so she reached out
very often to USDA to form collaborations.
In general, in the Department of Energy, in the Office of
Science, we have a good understanding of what our counterparts
are doing, whether it be USDA, the National Science Foundation,
the National Institutes of Health, or the DOD agencies.
We have a good understanding, and I have not seen an
example where partnering doesn't happen when it ought to
happen.
I am happy to get you the information on biofuels across
the government to give you a sense of where the Department of
Energy fits and where other agencies fit.
Mr. Fortenberry. That would be helpful, because--to not
only understand who is doing what and then who is making the
decision about who is going to collaborate with whom. That
would also be helpful.
Ms. Dehmer. Okay.
Mr. Fortenberry. I think that way we ensure that the proper
specialization is supported, and we are clearly always looking
for areas in which we can consolidate or make things more
effective and efficient.
But in terms of the outcomes, is my statement correct that
we are lagging in cellulosic--the next generation of cellulosic
production, whereas there are some other countries who have
integrated this more successfully into commercial outcomes?
Ms. Dehmer. I don't know the answer to that, but I will get
you the answer.
Mr. Fortenberry. It is my understanding that China may be
as--and I'm going off memory here--but Brazil, I think, has
made some advances as well.
Ms. Dehmer. Okay. Again, I don't know. Brazil, of course,
is very heavy into sugar.
Mr. Fortenberry. Right. Right.
All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simpson. Last thing I want to touch on with you is that
Congress funded the first three energy innovation hubs in
fiscal year 2010. The Committee funded a limited number of
these hubs because of their potential to deliver more per
taxpayer dollar, but we also funded them with the understanding
that the progress must be tracked closely, and that only hubs
demonstrating exceptional results should be extended beyond
their initial 5 years.
One of the three hubs, the Joint Center for Artificial
Photosynthesis at Cal Tech and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,
is under your purview. In laymen's terms, this hub aims to
create a device that creates transportation fuels from
sunlight. The budget request includes funding to renew the hub
for another 5-year term.
How has this hub performed so far, and will you look to
recompete it or simply renew it?
While hubs are originally pitched by the Secretary of
Energy as initiatives under one roof, this hub is actually
under two roofs, Cal Tech and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Is
that model proving effective? And what are its challenges? And
what have you learned from the hub model of this experience?
Ms. Dehmer. This particular hub has produced to date some
very interesting results, one of which was the development of
very high-throughput screening for parts of what will become
the artificial photosynthetic device. It has developed
apparatus for screening tens of thousands of catalysts, for
photoabsorbers and so forth quickly and rapidly, and that is a
big step in creating a device. And they have also done some
very excellent work at the beginnings of trying to assemble
components into a device.
This hub, as probably you are aware, had some management
challenges in the middle of its life. The Basic Energy Science
Program, which runs the hub, which oversees the hub, is going
in for the final annual review of the hub in April of this
year. Based on that review, guidance will be provided to the
hub director, and that guidance can span a wide array.
I can tell you that the likelihood of recompetition is
extremely small, because starting a new hub in the same area,
we would have to go through the same growing pains. I mentioned
earlier the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board review of
hubs, Energy Frontier Research Centers, Bioenergy Research
Centers, and NRBE, that report is in draft on the SEAB Web
site. It just came out this weekend.
One of the comments that it makes about hubs is that when
the renewal time comes, the options should be, for example--I
may not get this totally correct--termination, full funding, or
something in between. And----
Mr. Simpson. That leaves it pretty wide open.
Ms. Dehmer. But recompetition is not one of the options.
Recompetition is not one of the options.
The hub owner can also put out less funding, as we have
seen with the hub, the buildings hub, and dehubify it. But
recompetition is not an option.
So based on this review that will happen in April, the
program will provide direction to the hub for its renewal
proposal. And we have requested full funding for the hub, but
that is a placeholder. Once we know what direction we have
given to the hub management, we will inform this committee.
Mr. Simpson. So if those are the options, full funding or
defunding, dehubifying, whatever you want to call it, or
anything in between----
Ms. Dehmer. Anything in between.
Mr. Simpson [continuing]. Does that suggest if we--what do
you do if you have a subject matter that is potentially very,
very valuable, like this Joint Center for Artificial
Photosynthesis? Let us assume that that is a subject we ought
to be investing in and so forth, but the hub just does a poor
job, so you want to defund it. You still have the subject that
you think is important. You don't recompete it? You just say,
we picked the wrong subject? I don't know that I am explaining
it well.
Ms. Dehmer. No. I do understand what you are saying.
I don't think that will be the outcome, first, knowing a
lot about this particular hub.
There may be areas within the hub that are extremely high
functioning and ought to continue. The entire hub might well
ought to continue, but you have to--one thing that is important
to understand is that this hub is built on an incredibly large
research portfolio that the Basic Energy Sciences Program funds
in artificial photosynthesis, essentially in all of the small
components of artificial photosynthesis, light absorbers,
catalysts, so forth. And this is completely hypothetical and
has nothing whatsoever to do with how this hub will review.
Mr. Simpson. My question was hypothetical, too.
Ms. Dehmer. But, for example, let us say there were a
hublike entity, and we discovered after 5 years, after the 5-
year review, that there were parts of it that were so important
and had made such great progress that we had to continue those.
We could probably continue it within the existing hub, or we
could have some kind of other activity, you know, a set of
small Energy Frontier Research Centers that work on pieces of
it.
So I think that what the Secretary of Energy's Advisory
Board was saying is keep your options open. Not everything
needs to be a hub. Don't start over, trying to build up all the
same infrastructure all over again after 5 years. And consider
how this particular funding mechanism might work as we go into
the future.
Mr. Simpson. The batteries and energy storage hub is also
in the Office of Science----
Ms. Dehmer. Right.
Mr. Simpson [continuing]. But was funded in fiscal year
2012 and awarded at the Argonne National Laboratory. This
battery hub also involves four other national labs, five
universities, and four companies.
While the strong interest is encouraging, this does leave
us wondering whether the involvement of 14 entities will spread
funds thin and create a hub under 14 roofs. And is this what we
were originally talking about when we were talking about hubs,
trying to bring things together under one roof for a single
subject?
Ms. Dehmer. Some of the 14 are very small partners. I
think, looking at the experience of the Energy Frontier
Research Centers, honestly, I had thought that they are small,
they are 2- to $5 million. I thought that they would be largely
under-one-roof entities, and it turned out that they are not.
And they work extremely well.
The challenge when you have multiple entities is
management. The management has to very strictly and very
sternly use the partners in a way that you get an outcome in
the requisite period of time. The hub itself, or the Energy
Frontier Research Center itself, cannot be a funding agency
that doles out money to 14 partners. It has to be a strongly
organized, centrally managed entity that pulls basic research
in from its partners in order to produce a product.
Mr. Simpson. Okay. Thank you.
Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. I am going to switch to a totally different
plain here for a second.
When we were out at Berkeley Livermore, Congresswoman
Barbara Lee of Oakland joined us for some of those meetings.
And we were very enthralled with all of the work being done on
the expanding universe there and the laser research nearby, and
left viewing the property on which a $100 million solar
research facility would be built.
But one of the topics that we discussed was the growing
social and commercial bifurcation in our own society, and those
that have meager options, and the pull that is occurring within
this country right now in many, many communities. And we began
to engage in a discussion about how the Department of Energy
and its vast research resources might serve as an integrator of
capabilities that could help improve life in some of the most
forgotten corners of this country.
And we wrote a letter to the Department of Energy and to
Livermore, and we got a very good answer back, and this letter
came from the Congresswoman and myself. But we have a bit of a
coalition going here in the House including Congresswoman Fudge
of Cleveland; Congressman Fattah, who was here this morning,
from Philadelphia; and Congresswoman Moore of Milwaukee. We are
finding we share some similar challenges, including many places
where there are nutrition-short communities in this abundant
society, and where many individuals live right at the edge.
And so we started thinking about how we could restore on
the nutrition front the ability to grow and raise product, and
to create a growing system that would be the most energy and
water efficient that exists anywhere in the world. And you
could almost roll it into any neighborhood, attach it to any
church, put it up on a lot. And you would think the Department
of Agriculture would be doing this, but I guarantee you they
are not.
And even thinking about advanced systems that are very
cost-effective, but, for example, where the covering, whatever
that might be, might be a thin, multilayer creation that would
have energy capability, and where the source of water would be
well timed, and you would literally have an easy production
platform.
So the reason that I am asking this question is when we
went to Argonne a few weeks later, it was so interesting,
because I don't think the people at Berkeley told them what we
were interested in, but they presented us with this brochure
about revitalizing urban America, having a role in the
redevelopment of urban communities. It was interesting to go
through that. So Argonne is involved, making an effort in the
Chicago area.
And my question to you really is is there a way for you to
take a look at the letter that we wrote to Berkeley, what
Argonne is doing, and develop a dialogue with the Department to
find a way to pinpoint some of these smaller efforts in these
communities that we are talking about, and to develop a concept
that would really be breakthrough that we could use in this
country and, frankly, globally? And that is really, I think,
something that I would like the Office of Science to consider.
If a couple of your labs are already doing some things out
there--Mr. Fattah talked about weatherization and some of the
new energy-efficient technologies that can be integrated into
our urban communities and some of our rural communities that
are living at the raw edge.
I wanted to mention that to you, because I think we want to
grow, we want to grow this effort, and we want to see what the
Department of Energy and its incredible scientists could offer
to meet the other half of America that is not able to travel to
Berkeley or to Argonne and to see what I saw, and would very
much appreciate your attention to the letter that we sent and
some of the materials we are gathering now from the Department.
Perhaps you could find a way to help us integrate our approach.
Ms. Dehmer. I am happy to do that. I know that Argonne
National Laboratory is working with the City of Chicago and the
University of Chicago to reach out and look at some of these
issues. I am happy to look at that.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. That is my last
question.
Mr. Simpson. If there are no other questions, I thank you,
Doctor, for being here today. We look forward to working with
you on these fascinating projects that, frankly, I don't
understand, but I do like to listen to them.
Thanks for all you do, and we look forward to working with
you. I am sure that there will be some questions that will be
submitted. If you could return them within 4 weeks, because we
are going to start trying to mark up our bill relatively early,
so your input would be very valuable.
Adjourned.
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Danielson, David................................................. 71
Dahmer, Patricia................................................. 249
Hoffman, Patricia................................................ 71
Huizenga, Dave................................................... 1
Lyons, Pete...................................................... 71
Smith, Christopher............................................... 71
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