[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION
TO REVIEW THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE NATIONAL ENERGY LABORATORIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
November 18, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-51
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., ZOE LOFGREN, California
Wisconsin DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
DANA ROHRABACHER, California DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
RANDY K. WEBER, Texas DON S. BEYER, JR., Virginia
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan PAUL TONKO, New York
STEVE KNIGHT, California MARK TAKANO, California
BRIAN BABIN, Texas BILL FOSTER, Illinois
BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia
GARY PALMER, Alabama
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
DARIN LaHOOD, Illinois
------
Subcommittee on Energy
HON. RANDY K. WEBER, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
MO BROOKS, Alabama MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts
STEPHAN KNIGHT, California ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado
BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
November 18, 2015
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Randy K. Weber, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 7
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Alan Grayson, Minority Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space,
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 13
Written Statement............................................ 14
Witnesses:
Mr. TJ Glauthier, Co-Chair, Commission to Review the
Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories
Oral Statement............................................... 16
Written Statement of Mr. TJ Glauthier and Dr. Jared Cohon,
Co-Chairs, Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the
National Energy Laboratories............................... 20
Dr. Peter Littlewood, Director, Argonne National Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 27
Written Statement............................................ 29
Discussion....................................................... 32
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Mr. TJ Glauthier and Dr. Jared Cohon, Co-Chairs, Commission to
Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories... 52
Dr. Peter Littlewood, Director, Argonne National Laboratory...... 55
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Response to the Final Report of the Commission to Review the
Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories.............. 58
Recommendations of the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of
the National Energy Laboratories (Testimony of Professors
Venkatesh Narayanamurti, Laura Diaz Anadon, Gabriel Chan and
Dr. Amitai Y. Bin-Nun.......................................... 116
Statement submitted by Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 121
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COMMISSION
TO REVIEW THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF THE NATIONAL ENERGY LABORATORIES
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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Randy
Weber [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairman Weber. The Subcommittee on Energy will come to
order. Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the Subcommittee at any time.
Welcome to today's hearing entitled Recommendations of the
Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy
Laboratories. I now recognize myself for five minutes for an
opening statement. Good morning, and as I said earlier, welcome
to today's Energy Subcommittee hearing on the Recommendations
of the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National
Energy Labs. Today we will hear from the Commission's co-chairs
Mr. TJ--is it Glauthier?
Mr. Glauthier. Glauthier.
Chairman Weber. Glauthier. I can do this--and Dr. Jerry
Cohon as well as Dr. Peter Littlewood--thank you for having a
simple name, Doctor--Director of Argonne National Laboratory
regarding the extent to which the DOE lab system is working
well and where it can improve.
Like many topics we discuss in the Energy Subcommittee,
this one requires a thorough understanding of the details. Of
the DOE's 17 national labs, ten are stewarded by the Office of
Science for Basic Research, three by the National Nuclear
Security Administration, or the NNSA, to maintain the nuclear
weapons stockpile, and four by their respective DOE applied
energy programs.
Each of the 17 labs has distinct characteristics and
capabilities that bring a unique set of challenges when it
comes to management, oversight, safety and security. For
example, this summer I along with staff had the opportunity to
visit the Savannah River National Lab along with some of my
colleagues on the committee. The Savannah River complex is
hundreds of square miles and houses critical infrastructure for
the Nation's nuclear deterrent as well as facilities to support
research subjects ranging from national security to
environmental management.
As the witnesses will observe today, 16 of the 17 national
labs are government-owned, contractor operated, which requires
a certain degree of trust between owner and operator for us to
achieve optimal results. That said, there is one fundamental
question relevant to every subject we're likely to discuss
today whether it's collaborative research with the private
sector, technology transfer, laboratory-directed research and
development, also known as LDRD, or safety and security. So the
question is how much discretion should the DOE delegate to
contractor operators while balancing the need to maintain DOE's
oversight responsibilities? Ultimately we're debating a risk-
reward concept that is familiar to Congress because we have to
balance similar concerns when legislating federally sponsored
research and development.
On the one hand, providing more discretion to the
researchers allows them to pursue the most creative ideas
without encumbrances. But on the other hand, too much
discretion without effective oversight can lead to waste or
misuse of taxpayer funds. And as I mentioned before, the 17
labs are very diverse so the approach for each lab should be
distinct if we're going to get this right.
That said, I look forward today to the recommendations of
this distinguished witness panel as we consider legislative
options to help the labs reach their full potential. Again, I
thank the witnesses for their attendance, and I look forward to
your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Weber follows:]
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Chairman Weber. And with that, I recognize Mr. Alan
Grayson.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing today on a very important topic, our national
laboratories and how to improve them. I'd also like to thank
our witnesses for offering their expert recommendations and
insights.
The United States invests more than any other nation in
research and development, yet when you put that investment in
context as a percentage of our GNP, it becomes much less
impressive. Our R&D investment is stagnating, while other
countries are seizing the opportunity to try to out-innovate
the United States. China is currently on course to overtake the
United States in actual R&D dollars spent sometime in the next
decade.
However, the United States has an incredible innovation
asset, our national labs. In order to take advantage of them,
we must try to provide the national labs with the necessary
resources not only to maintain and grow a vast array of
facilities and equipment, but also to fund the exploratory
research that produces results we may never have expected.
Beyond providing resources, the Commission to Review the
Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories has offered a
number of substantive recommendations in their report, and
we're here to talk about them today. This Congress and this
Administration can act on the Commission's recommendations
quickly and make meaningful improvements to our network of
national labs.
For years the relationship between the Department of Energy
and the national labs has been a complicated one. The
Commission has to find the means to try to improve that
relationship--that was part of your charge--and make it more
productive and effective. This motivation is apparent in a
number of your recommendations, and I hope that the Department
will take each and every one of those to heart.
Providing laboratories with increased levels of
independence and freedom is bound to cause some transitional
issues. But the result could be a more innovative atmosphere
that provides scientists the freedom to produce groundbreaking
outcomes.
The Commission's overall message is clear: The national
labs are unique and irreplaceable. They must be a high priority
in our budgetary decisions both now and in the future. I
certainly will be a strong advocate myself on that point and I
urge my colleagues to join me in that effort. Thank you again
to the witnesses for being here today, and I yield back the
balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grayson follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Mr. Grayson. I now recognize the
Chairman of the Full Committee, Mr. Smith.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today we will hear
recommendations from the Commission to Review the Effectiveness
of the National Energy Laboratories. The Director of Argonne
National Lab also will testify about his perspective on how the
labs could operate more effectively.
The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's
jurisdiction over the country's ``scientific research,
development, and demonstration'' makes possible American
innovation and competitiveness. The Department of Energy is the
largest federal supporter of basic research and sponsors 47
percent of federal basic research in the physical sciences.
The Department's science and energy research infrastructure
at its 17 national labs and facilities are used by over 31,000
scientific researchers each year. The Commission to Review the
Effectiveness of the National Labs was established by Congress
to assess strategic priorities, unique capabilities, size, and
accomplishments of this research network.
The Commissioners here today visited national labs,
interviewed researchers and DOE officials, and compiled a
detailed report with recommendations of how Congress and the
DOE can ensure that national labs are able to reach their full
potential.
Last month, the Commission released its final report. It
found that the DOE lab system provides unique, long-term
research capabilities that could not otherwise be reproduced by
universities or the private sector. However, the Commission
also found that the labs spend an excessive amount of time to
navigate through government red tape created by the Department
of Energy. Burdensome operating requirements can delay research
projects and make it more difficult for researchers to pursue
high-value science.
Congress has limited resources for research and
development. We have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer
dollars are spent efficiently and effectively. To achieve the
best return on investment for the American people, we must
ensure the DOE labs are able to realize their full potential.
I thank our witnesses for their testimony today, and I look
forward to a productive discussion about how we can improve our
national labs. A primary goal of this Committee is to ensure
that federal research and development is effectively directed.
As we consider how to best direct the Department of Energy, we
must focus on policies that enable breakthrough discoveries.
With improvements in the effectiveness of the national lab
system, we can keep the best and brightest researchers here in
the United States to continue to explore new ideas. This allows
the national labs to provide the foundation for private sector
development across the energy spectrum, create jobs, and grow
the American economy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll now introduce
our witnesses. Our first witness today is Mr. TJ Glauthier, Co-
Chair on the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the
National Energy Laboratories and President of TJG Energy
Associates. Welcome. Mr. Glauthier previously served as the
Associate Director of OMB and Deputy Secretary and COO of the
DOE under President Bill Clinton. Mr. Glauthier received his
bachelor's degree in mathematics from Claremont McKenna College
and his MBA from Harvard Business School.
Our next witness today is Dr. Jared Cohon, Co-Chair on the
Commission and President Emeritus and university professor at
Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Cohon previously served as
Chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board from 1997
to 2002. Dr. Cohon received his bachelor's degree in civil
engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and his Ph.D.
in civil engineering from MIT.
And I now recognize the gentleman from Illinois, Mr.
Lipinski, to recognize our final witness today, Dr. Peter
Littlewood, Director of the Argonne National Lab. Congressman?
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's my pleasure to
introduce Dr. Peter Littlewood, Director of Argonne National
Laboratory. Dr. Littlewood came to Argonne in 2011 when he was
appointed Associate Laboratory Director of Argonne's Physical
Sciences and Engineering Directorate. He was appointed as
Director last year. He is an internationally respected
scientist who holds six patents, has published more than 200
articles, and has given more than 200 invited talks at
conferences, universities, and laboratories. He is a fellow of
the Royal Society of London, the Institute of Physics, and the
American Physical Society.
Dr. Littlewood holds a bachelor's degree in natural
sciences and a Ph.D. in physics both from the University of
Cambridge. I want to welcome Dr. Littlewood today.
Chairman Weber. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. In lieu of giving
separate statements, Mr. Glauthier has elected to give
testimony on behalf of himself and Dr. Cohon, I understand. So
I now recognize Mr. Glauthier for ten minutes to present that
testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. TJ GLAUTHIER,
CO-CHAIR, COMMISSION TO REVIEW
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NATIONAL
ENERGY LABORATORIES
Mr. Glauthier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Ranking Member
Greyson, other Members and staff of the Subcommittee and others
here who are interested in the national laboratories. Dr. Cohon
and I are happy to be here today to discuss the report of the
Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy
Laboratories. Congress created this Commission in the FY 2014
Omnibus Appropriations Act. The President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology developed a list of potential
nominees, and then the Secretary of Energy selected the nine
Commissioners from that list. The two of us have served as the
co-chairs of the Commission for almost 18 months, and we're
privileged to serve with an outstanding group of Commissioners
with strong backgrounds in the science and technology
enterprise of the Nation.
We are pleased that this is a consensus report. We received
excellent cooperation and support from the Department of
Energy, all of the relevant Congressional committees, the White
House, the National Laboratories themselves, and many others.
During the course of our work, we visited all 17 of the
national laboratories, heard from 85 witnesses in monthly
public hearings in the field and here in Washington and
reviewed over 50 previous reports on this topic from the past 4
decades. We'll come back to that point in a little bit, 50
reports.
We have titled our report Securing America's Future:
Realizing the Potential of the National Energy Laboratories.
Our overall finding is that the national laboratory system is a
unique resource that brings great value to the country in the
four mission areas of the Department of Energy: nuclear
security, basic science R&D, energy technology R&D, and
environmental management.
For example, the national labs have four of the world's
fastest supercomputers which are helping the Nation extend the
lifetimes and safety of our nuclear warheads without nuclear
testing. In basic science, their world-class particle
accelerators, light sources, and other user facilities host
over 30,000 researchers every year from our universities and
industry partners. And in energy technology R&D, the labs have
played an important role in helping to develop the innovations
that have led to the Nation's shale gas revolution and surge in
wind and solar energy.
However, our national lab system is not realizing its full
potential. Our Commission believes that can be changed. We
provide 36 recommendations that we believe, if implemented,
will help the labs to become more efficient and effective and
have even greater impact, thereby helping secure America's
future in the four mission areas of the Department.
We'd like to highlight a few of our major findings and
recommendations and then would be happy to address any others
of particular interest to you.
Our most fundamental conclusions deal with the relationship
between the Department of Energy and the national labs. We find
that the trusted relationship that is supposed to exist between
the Federal Government and its national labs is broken and it's
inhibiting performance. We note that the problems come from
both sides, from the labs and the Department of Energy.
We want to be clear that this situation is not uniform
across all of the labs. In particular, the labs that are
overseen by the Office of Science generally have much better
relationships with the Department of Energy than do those in
the other program offices.
Many of our recommendations address this fundamental
problem. We conclude that the roles need to be clarified and
reinforced, going back to the formal role of the labs as
federally funded research and development centers for the
Department of Energy. Under this model, the two parties are
supposed to operate as trusted partners in a special
relationship with open communication.
DOE should be directing and overseeing its programs at a
policy level, specifying what its programs should achieve, and
the labs, for their part, should be responsible for determining
how to carry them out and then executing those plans. In doing
so, the labs should have more flexibility than they do now to
implement those programs without needing as many approvals from
DOE along the way. In return, of course, the labs must operate
with transparency and be fully accountable for their actions
and results.
This flexibility, in our view, should be expanded
significantly in areas such as the ability to manage budgets
with fewer approval checkpoints; managing personnel
compensation and benefits; entering into collaborations with
private companies, including small businesses, without having
each agreement individually approved and written into the lab's
M&O contract with DOE; building office buildings on sites that
are not nuclear, not high hazard, and not classified;
conducting site assessments that are relied upon by DOE and
others to minimize redundant assessments; and sending key
personnel to professional conferences to maintain DOE's work in
leading-edge science and for their professional development.
In the Congressional charge to us, we were also asked to
examine whether there is too much duplication among the DOE
labs. We looked into this in detail and have included two
recommendations in this area. The first regards the NNSA
laboratories, the nuclear weapons laboratories, where we
conclude that it is important to the Nation's nuclear security
that the two design laboratories' capabilities continue to be
maintained in separate and independent facilities.
The second recommendation in this area regards the way the
Department manages through the life cycle of R&D topics. In our
view, they do a good job at encouraging multiple lines of
inquiry in the early, discovery stages of new subjects, and
they're good at using expert panels and strategic reviews to
manage mature programs. However, at the in-between stages, the
Department needs to assert its strategic oversight role earlier
and more forcefully to manage the laboratories as a system in
order to achieve the most effective and efficient overall
results for the Nation.
We want to acknowledge the progress that currently is being
made in some of these and other areas by the current Secretary
of Energy and the current Directors of the National
Laboratories. We encourage them to continue their efforts, and
we encourage the subcommittee and others in Congress to support
them and future administrations in this direction.
Let us turn to our recommendations for how we believe
Congress can help to improve the performance of the national
labs. We would like to cite four here in our opening statement.
First, we conclude that the laboratory-directed research and
development, LDRD as the Chairman mentioned earlier, is vitally
important to the labs' ability to carry out their missions
successfully, and we recommend that Congress restore the cap on
LDRD funding to the functional level that it was historically
up until 2006.
Second, to support strong collaborations between businesses
and the national labs, Congress may need to clarify that the
annual operating plans that we recommend should provide
sufficient authority for the labs to enter into CRADAs and
other agreements under the Stevenson-Wyler Act and the fast-
track CRADA Program.
Third, we urge Congress to continue to recognize the
importance of the role of the national laboratories in building
and operating user facilities for use by a wide range of
researchers in universities, other federal agencies, and the
private sector.
Fourth, there does seem to be a serious shortfall in
funding for facilities and infrastructure at the national labs.
However, the scope and severity of that shortfall are not well
defined. We recommend that the Congress work closely with
Department of Energy and with OMB to agree first, upon the size
and nature of the problem, and then upon a long-term plan to
resolve it, through a combination of additional funding, policy
changes, and innovative financing.
In the interest of time, let us finish by highlighting our
final recommendation. We found that in the past 4 decades there
have been over 50 previous commissions, panels, and studies of
the national labs. It is our view that Congress and the
administration would be better served by some sort of standing
body of experienced people who could provide perspective and
advice on issues relating to the national labs without having
to create new commissions or studies every time. Such a group
could potentially be housed at the National Academies or report
to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology or be somewhere else that would provide the
independence that Congress requires.
On behalf of our nine commissioners, we want to thank you
for this opportunity to serve the country on this important
commission. Dr. Cohon and I would also like to acknowledge the
great work of our staff at the Science and Technology Policy
Institute led by Susannah Howieson and Dr. Mark Taylor who is
with us today. We hope that our work will be helpful and are
happy to answer questions and to discuss our findings and
recommendations. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gauthier and Dr. Cohon
follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Mr. Glauthier. I now recognize
Dr. Littlewood for five minutes.
TESTIMONY OF DR. PETER LITTLEWOOD,
DIRECTOR, ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. Littlewood. Thank you very much. Chairman Weber,
Ranking Member Grayson, Members of the Committee, my own
Congressman Lipinski, thank you for the opportunity to share my
thoughts about the findings and recommendations of the
Commission.
Let me start by acknowledging the Commission for performing
a thorough analysis. Commission members are really to be
commended for the time and effort they spent on examining all
17 national laboratories' missions, capabilities, operations,
and challenges. It was a very thorough investigation, and we're
grateful for that.
My fellow lab directors and I are pleased with the
Commission's assessment that the laboratories provide great
benefit to the country, that we serve not only the DOE mission
but also support the broader science and technology community
and help fulfill the security needs of the Nation.
At the Secretary of Energy's request, we are collectively
preparing a detailed response for his eyes, and we have
actually already submitted that to him in the last day or two
and I'm sure he will want to share that with you in due time.
But following many discussions that the lab directors and I
have had together, I believe that my colleagues broadly endorse
the major recommendations of the report. We commit to
wholeheartedly engage on our part to work with DOE to make the
necessary changes to further increase the value of the national
laboratories.
In the testimony that follows, I will give you mostly my
perspective as Argonne Director, but as I say, I think I
broadly represent the views of my fellow lab directors.
The recommendations made by the Commission demonstrate
certainly that they heard our feedback and ideas. We are
gratified in particular by what I see as a prevailing theme on
which I would like to focus my remarks today, the theme of
reintroducing acceptable risk-taking into the lab enterprise, a
theme which was already touched on by the Chairman in his
opening remarks.
Risk can seem like a negative word, and I would agree that
risk is negative in the realm of safety, but frankly, safety is
the only area in which I would agree we should never take a
risk.
What has developed within the DOE and its laboratories over
time and in response to various events is increasing attention
to detail and attempts to reduce uncertainty. This approach
isn't unexpected and not necessarily all bad, wishing to manage
risk in a multibillion-dollar institution like DOE is of course
reasonable. But we've reached a point where we punish failure
rather than rewarding success, and we're concerned that we've
traded innovation for regulation.
So reinvigorating the government-owned, contractor-
operated, or GOCO, model as recommended by the Commission
essentially helps us hit the reset button. When DOE gives the
laboratories and their contractors the authority to operate
with more discretion, we are empowered to take the kind of
risks that are imperative for scientific discovery and for
technological innovation. In return, we accept the need for
transparency and accountability.
So to chart new frontiers, laboratories must take risks in
breaking down barriers. We must work across scientific
disciplines, between fundamental and applied science, between
research institutions, and between funding agencies. This means
overlap, sometimes messy.
A fear of supporting what might be presented as duplicative
research by different agencies or in different institutions is
now resulting in challenges in building the pipeline from
fundamental research to product. The large user facilities of
the labs support communities of researchers who lie well
outside DOE's own mission space, but just in medicine that
intersection has supported in the past such important advances
as proton radiotherapy, many major drug developments, the human
genome initiative, and the artificial retina.
And just as surely as we must risk failing, we must risk
succeeding and being able to handle the new challenges prompted
by that success. Success in science and technology inevitably
leads to positive but sometimes disruptive change.
Perhaps no other endeavor we undertake at our labs better
exemplifies the need for accepting risk than the LDRD Program.
We welcome the Commission's recommendation to restore the cap
on LDRD to six percent unburdened or equivalent.
Investment in LDRD has enabled virtually every major
Argonne initiative including the original Advanced Photon
Source and its upgrade, the Leadership Computing, the Joint
Center for Energy Storage Research, four Energy Frontier
Research Centers, advanced nuclear fuel cycle and reactor
modeling/simulation processings. LDRD is peer-reviewed and
extraordinarily competitive.
So to conclude, I want to reiterate that I largely support
the Commission's report, as it speaks to the ideas and feedback
that we have shared. The recommendations, when implemented,
will help create a working atmosphere to which the labs and I
believe DOE as well aspire, an environment where we are
empowered to take risks leading to new scientific discoveries
in support of critical mission areas for the Nation.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Littlewood follows:]
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Chairman Weber. Thank you, Dr. Littlewood. The Chair now
recognizes himself for five minutes for questioning. I guess
this is to Mr. Glauthier and Dr. Cohon. My first question is
for both of the co-chairs. Would you all for us please identify
the most recognizable inefficiencies between the DOE and its
Science and Energy Labs? And when you do that, please explain
to us how they affect, how these issues affect research on a
daily basis? Mr. Glauthier.
Mr. Glauthier. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the
inefficiencies that we noticed the most are the transactional
oversight, the amount of approvals required, the amount of
investigations and inspections and the like and that there's a
lot of time spent on both sides, both at the Department and in
the laboratories on these processes that is detracting from the
time spent on the research mission that the laboratories carry
out.
Chairman Weber. Dr. Cohon?
Dr. Cohon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would add just for
emphasis something that Mr. Glauthier mentioned in our
testimony and that's this issue of duplication. As he
explained, duplication is desirable early on as a new field of
science is emerging. Having multiple laboratories trying out
different approaches is a good thing. But there comes a point
where the science becomes clearer and a particular approach
seems like the--emerges as the preferred one. We need, we all
need DOE to assert itself more forcefully at that moment so we
don't waste time and money on multiple approaches.
So what we've urged in our recommendation is that DOE look
for that opportunity and intervene more forcefully in that
process.
Chairman Weber. Dr. Littlewood, I'm going to come to you,
but before I do, I want to go back to Mr. Glauthier. You said
in your opening statement I think you had studied 50 reports?
Was that right?
Mr. Glauthier. Yes, that's right. We think we're report
number 56.
Chairman Weber. Number 56? Okay. And so have you seen a
trend through that timeframe of the detail, getting bogged down
into more and more of exactly what you're talking about?
Mr. Glauthier. Yes, I think for the last 20 years going
back to the Galvin Commission in the mid-'90s, that these
recommendations have been very similar, and there's been a lot
of concern about the transactional oversight or the amount of
micromanagement that's gone on.
Chairman Weber. Dr. Cohon, did you wish to weigh in on
that?
Dr. Cohon. No, sir.
Chairman Weber. Smart man. Dr. Littlewood, I'm going to
come to you. How do you think these suggestions apply to your
laboratory?
Dr. Littlewood. Well, let me make a brief comment about
transactional oversight. Of course, we're not opposed to
oversight. Oversight is important. We must demonstrate that
we're using the taxpayer money well. But just a small comment.
In 2014 we had four significant findings from audits. All of
those were found by internal audits. We had 12 internal audits,
50 assessments and audits that came from outside.
So we spend a lot of time on trying to make sure that we do
a good job ourselves. And I will say that the attempt to bring
in the contractor assurance system which has come in the past
few years and was commented on in the report I think is a very
good idea. I will say that there seems to be resistance within
the system to bringing that to the stage that it was needed.
So that's one comment. And then to comment about the
competitive nature of science, I again agree, and I think there
is some movement in the right direction. So firstly, science is
a competitive discipline. That's one reason that the United
States is so good at it. And so the fact that we use
competition in the early stages to drive discovery is
necessary. And then I think the ability to bring that together
at the point where a program can be constructed and driven is
something that has emerged strongly as a focus of the current
Secretary in the past few years through ideas such as the Big
Idea Summits, working together in cross-lab groupings, and it's
something that the lab directors support. I think that wasn't a
characteristic of activities 5 or ten years ago.
Chairman Weber. You said in your comments, Dr. Littlewood,
that you look forward to the theme of reintroducing acceptable
risk-taking into the lab enterprise. I think that's what you
said.
Dr. Littlewood. Yes.
Chairman Weber. I'm reading from them.
Dr. Littlewood. Yes, that's correct.
Chairman Weber. Okay. Would you elaborate on that? And then
how do you define success based on what kind of, quote, failure
and risk-taking? I'll leave that to you.
Dr. Littlewood. Right. So I think that--well, sometimes
actually you must risk success. So we're often concerned about
doing things in slightly uncharted areas because the result of
success would be a project that was successful perhaps slightly
outside the DOE mission space. We're very conscious, however,
of not doing things that could produce failure. Scientific
failure is something that one should expect occasionally as a
function exercise. When you fail, you know that you should stop
doing that and find ways of doing something else.
I'm concerned that we actually have too many programs which
can neither succeed, nor can they fail, and therefore they tend
to stagnate.
Chairman Weber. Okay. Thank you. I'm reminded about Thomas
Edison's quest to invent the light bulb on his thousandth try,
and his staffer said doesn't that just frustrate you? It's a
thousand failed attempts. He said what are you talking about?
We now know a thousand ways it won't work. We're closer than
ever.
So the Chair now recognizes Mr. Grayson.
Mr. Grayson. Thank you. I'd like to conduct a brief high-
level, somewhat abstract discussion that is untethered from any
specific recommendations that you made.
Why do we have national labs instead of competitive grants
open to everyone? Mr. Glauthier?
Mr. Glauthier. I'm sorry, Mr. Grayson. I didn't quite
understand the question.
Mr. Grayson. Why do we have a national lab system instead
of taking the same amount of money and dispersing it through
DOE to competitive grants open to everybody, presumably the
best offeror? Why do we do it the way we do it?
Mr. Glauthier. Well, I think what we've tried to recognize
is there's a role for the national laboratories in this system
of research enterprise for the country that is important and
that you can have a lot of very successful research done in the
university community, for example, by individual investigators,
principal investigators, who compete for grants of the type
you've mentioned. At some stage you need to have large-scale
programs that are complex interdisciplinary and that extend
over longer periods of time. And those in particular are places
where the national laboratories can house those projects.
There's still a degree of competition among the funding
programs at the Department and elsewhere.
One of the things we recommend in our report is there
should be much better use of peer-review groups so that as
programs exist and are funded over time, there are--the experts
in the field are brought together from time to time from the
university community, industry, and the other labs to review
the work and to make sure that it is the appropriate work that
the Federal Government should be supporting and that it should
be done there at the labs as opposed to done in the nature of
grants that would be funded elsewhere.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Cohon, go ahead.
Dr. Cohon. Yeah, please. I'd like to add to what TJ has
said. For me--well, let's take the weapons labs and put them
aside because they clearly have a reason for being which is
unique. But to the way you put your question which I like very
much, I have a very large number of colleagues who would say,
yes, that's exactly the right question. All the money should
come to us and not to the labs.
I think that the reason for being in the first instance,
the non-weapons labs, are the user facilities. These truly are
unique. They could not be mounted or maintained by any single
university that I know of. Universities collaborate together
but not that well and not that effectively, which they surely
would have to do to maintain these facilities. So for me that's
the foundation.
Having created those facilities and maintaining them, that
naturally first of all requires scientists and technical people
to maintain them but also attracts to them world-class
scientists to use them and to support them.
So I think that's the most compelling answer to your
question. But I don't want in any way want to take away from
what Mr. Glauthier said. I think he's absolutely right. If you
look at the continuum of R&D from basic research to the
marketplace, the labs do occupy a niche somewhere between
universities and companies. They are able to do these large
long-term collaborative projects that Mr. Glauthier mentioned.
Mr. Grayson. Dr. Littlewood?
Dr. Littlewood. Thank you. Yeah, I of course do agree with
everything we've heard, so I don't want to expand on those. But
I'll add one further thing where I think the labs could play a
big role and that's actually by bringing together consortia
that often involve universities and industry to work on large,
long-term problems that are necessary to do that. You know, as
an example, just a local one for Argonne, we run the Joint
Center for Energy Storage Research which is a $25 million a
year program with DOE that involves a collaboration between
five labs, four major universities sort of as partners for
companies and many other academics. It would be very difficult
to bring that kind of collaboration together from the vantage
of being a university academic. And I can tell you that because
I've been one and tried to do that kind of thing, and it isn't
so easy from that side.
So I think that's another key role I suspect for the labs.
Mr. Grayson. Mr. Glauthier, briefly, since I'm almost out
of time here, why have contractor-operated facilities instead
of government-operated facilities directly managed by DOE?
Mr. Glauthier. The contractor-operated facilities, which
are the majority, 16 of the 17, have a very good record of
having been able to attract and retain top-quality scientists
and to be able to manage that effectively.
Certainly there are government laboratories at not only DOE
but elsewhere. Our sense is that the quality of the science has
been better at these run by M&O contractors, consistently
better. There's good research at the other labs but not as
consistently high quality.
Mr. Grayson. Thanks. I yield back.
Chairman Weber. Dr. Littlewood, if I understood your
response to his question about the research being done at the
labs to the universities, did you say that the universities can
learn something from you all but you all have never really
learned anything from the universities?
Dr. Littlewood. I don't think----
Chairman Weber. I'm just----
Dr. Littlewood. --I'd quite put it that way.
Chairman Weber. Okay. I was just double-checking. The Chair
now recognizes the two young gentlemen from Illinois. Would you
like to--would the gentleman from Illinois like to introduce
them?
Mr. Hultgren. Glad to have some very important staff with
me today, my son, Kaden, and my son, Kole. So I'm glad they're
joining me in Washington, D.C.
Chairman Weber. Welcome, gentlemen.
Mr. Hultgren. Thank you. Thanks, Chairman. Thank you,
gentlemen, for being here. I really do appreciate your work so
much, and Director Littlewood, I especially want to say good to
see you, always good to see you. And certainly I love to tell
the story of what great things are happening in Illinois with
our great laboratories, Argonne and Fermi and research
university. So thank you.
Dr. Cohon and Mr. Glauthier, we'd also like to thank you
for all your work your Commission did after the cromnibus. I
know you've both been very available to my staff with the
National Laboratories Caucus as well in both the House and the
Senate. I certainly share your goal of finally implementing
some of the changes which we seem to be rehashing every few
years.
A little over two years ago, this subcommittee held a
hearing looking at the ITAF study on the labs done by Heritage
and the Center for American Progress, certainly very bipartisan
groups. Last year, Brookings put together a good study looking
at ways to better utilize the labs' tech transfer capabilities
to spur local and regional economic development.
So I see your concern and agree with it about the number of
studies which have been showing many of the same things over
and over again. I also want to see that some of these things
finally get acted upon.
In the last two Congresses the House has passed my
legislation to free up the labs to do the work without
unnecessary burdensome oversight. Some of the most important
provisions in my bill freed up the ability of the labs to be
able to enter into ACT agreements, gave signature authority for
tech transfer agreements under $1 million to lab directors, and
allowed for some early stage proof-of-concept work to be done
with tech transfer funds.
In the Statement of Administration Policy on this year's
COMPETES' reauthorization, the President's Senior Advisor
characterized these sections as reducing oversight in a way
that would increase the exposure of the federal government to
risk and liability while also conflicting with the execution of
the DOE mission.
Dr. Cohon and Mr. Glauthier, I wondered, this seems to me
to be the lack of trust you mentioned throughout your report. I
wonder if you could explain to the Committee how the M&O
contracts do and perhaps should work? It also seems to me that
a lab would be hesitant to stray from the DOE mission risking
the loss of their contract which comes under review every few
years.
Mr. Glauthier. Yes, Congressman, happy to respond to this.
And we think that your legislation actually is directed in the
right way, the principal elements of it, to make it easier for
partnerships between the laboratories and the private sector or
others, and our recommendations are very consistent with that.
I think the key element is that it's not just letting the
labs free to go off and do all those things. But our
recommendation is that there ought to be an annual operating
plan at the beginning of each year where the government and the
laboratory agree on the scope and scale of the things that
laboratory's going to do for the coming year. And that would
include the amount of cooperative work that they tend to do
with industry, and they're going to describe the nature of that
work.
Let's say a laboratory like Argonne is going to do $50
million worth of cooperative work with various industries, a
lot of it consistent with what they've done in previous years.
And once they've had that discussion and they've agreed with
the government about that, then the laboratory ought to be free
to carry it out. And as long as the agreements with companies
would be consistent with that plan and within that scope, they
ought to be able to go ahead and do it exactly as you described
in your legislation.
But there doesn't seem to be that predicate, that
description, discussion up front, an understanding of what the
areas are in which the laboratories are going to do this sort
of work. But the key is the laboratories should be responsible.
It does have to be transparent as it goes forward. It has to
report what it's doing. It has to share that information with
the Department and be accountable for the way it's done.
Mr. Hultgren. Dr. Cohon or Director Littlewood, do you have
any thoughts on that?
Dr. Cohon. I would only add to echo what we say in our
report that the DOE should be identifying what needs to be done
in collaboration with the laboratories and then leave it to the
labs to figure out how to do it, which is again, very
consistent with your legislation.
Mr. Hultgren. Thanks. Dr. Littlewood?
Dr. Littlewood. Yeah. I mean, let me actually broadly say
that from Argonne's perspective, our interactions with the
Office of Science are quite positive often in many regards
associated with this. But I think I'd like very much to build
on the number of challenges you address, somehow getting rid of
the sand and grit out of the works, in particular, being able
to deal with industry. Sometimes we find it easier to deal with
big companies because they have about the same number of
lawyers as we do. When we want to be fast and nimble and help
small companies take things to market, you know, we need more
rapid methods of doing this. And I think many of the labs are
looking for experiments to do this. They're being supportive
through DOE by for example the invention of the Office of Tech
Transfer. But I think that they can be further engaged by the
kind of legislation you're pushing.
Mr. Hultgren. Thanks. Five minutes goes by way too fast. I
have a couple other questions. If it would be all right if we
could follow up in writing with you all, that would be great.
But with that, Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time I
don't have.
Chairman Weber. I thank the gentleman from Illinois. I
recognize the other gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My first question is
for Director Littlewood. As you know, I'm very interested in
ways that can help the national labs bring new energy
technologies to market faster, in general, the whole idea of
improving technology transfer. I was pleased to see the
recommendation 25 in the Commission's report mentioned the need
to continue to look for ways to improve the technology transfer
process.
I know that Argonne puts a lot of emphasis on the
commercialization portion of their mission. So I want to ask,
does Argonne have challenges in taking technologies to market
that we might be able to alleviate or lessen with Congressional
action? Are there any recommendations you would make to us?
Dr. Littlewood. Thank you very much, Congressman. As you
remarked, it's really an important part of that business to try
and take technologies to market.
What I'd like to see in fact is an expansion of what I
would call the user facility concept in this space. So we're
used at Argonne to having 5,000 users who come from all to use
our advanced photon source, but we also have large and embedded
facilities of the labs that can be really important in taking
technology to market, and we'd like to find ways of making them
more accessible.
So sometimes those facilities have been funded by DOE.
Sometimes they've been funded by different pieces of DOE, and
we found for example that we've kind of got an unwieldy
internal portfolio of activities and sometimes difficulty
bringing those together in kind of one-stop shopping for any
customer who is interested in our business. And DOE is helpful
about this, but sometimes DOE looks over its own shoulder at
duplication.
So I'll give you one small example. We have a project that
I'm very proud of which is to develop better combustion
chemistry for engines, and it goes all of the way from
fundamental chemistry all the way up to design of engines. That
program is funded by four different pieces of DOE. Because of
concern about duplicative research and duplicative oversight,
those pieces of DOE look at the boundary between the areas
they're funding and are very concerned about overlaps. If you
want to go from tech transfer, you want to take something from
fundamental science all the way through to the market, you must
engage in overlaps.
So I think Congress could help by putting in language which
is more sophisticated about duplicative research, overlaps that
would in fact encourage overlaps and enable things to get to
market more quickly.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. I wanted to use the rest of my
time to move onto sort of reiterating and getting more from all
of you about the duplication of research issue that Mr.
Glauthier had mentioned. I know that the report also states
that most duplication that occurs within the R&D programs of
the labs is intentional, managed, and beneficial to the Nation.
And I want to make sure that everyone here understands that
this is not government waste that we're talking about here.
Can you explain a little better, Mr. Glauthier, Dr. Cohon,
why well-coordinated independent replication of research
activities is valuable to the scientific process in national
labs? And if there's anything that Dr. Littlewood would want to
throw in there--I just wanted to make sure that we all
understand what this is really about.
Mr. Glauthier. Sure. Let me start, Congressman. The
duplication if you will at the NNSA labs, the weapons labs, is
quite different than that of the others. So let me start with
those. And there we did state very clearly that the duplication
or the fact that we have design capabilities of nuclear weapons
programs for the country--you have two different labs--is very
important to the country. We have seen the benefits of the two
different groups of weapons designers being able to validate
their designs or to be able to test those against each other.
And that's a specialized case where it's a very important one
for us.
The other types of duplication if you will are really a
misnomer. For the most part, the work that's being done is very
similar but it's different. The accelerators is one of the
examples, light sources or other forms of accelerators that the
government has funded and operates at different science
laboratories around the country. Each one is a light source all
right, but they're different. There are different degrees of X-
rays, different speeds and hardness, different kinds of
applications. And so researchers end up using those for
different types of research. And our group was quite satisfied
as we went through this that the processes that the Office of
Science uses in this case to bring together experts to really
examine that and be sure as they go over the process of
building new facilities or maintaining these is one that is
serving the right needs of the country and not duplicating
science.
Mr. Lipinski. Dr. Cohon?
Dr. Cohon. I'd like to support and join the comments that
Dr. Littlewood made before about the nature of science and its
competitive nature. He's absolutely right about that. One of
the major reasons that the United States is such a leader in
research is because of the competitive nature of our research
enterprise. So allowing for and managing that competition among
the laboratories is actually a very good thing for the Nation.
And the key is the management part of it and understanding at
what point the competition should end and we should move on.
And I also want to agree with Dr. Littlewood's comment
before that this administration of the Department has done
quite well in this regard, and there's been very good progress.
So it's not a waste. In fact, it's a very key attribute of the
national lab system.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
letting us go a little bit further. But I think that was a good
explanation we needed to hear. Thank you. Yield back.
Chairman Weber. Well, I'm going to take you a little
further if the gentleman would--little help over here. Dr.
Littlewood, you had six patents, is that correct?
Dr. Littlewood. Uh-huh.
Chairman Weber. Okay. And so when you went through that
process of--I guess that was research and development of
something. You would say that there's steps, identifiable
steps, one, two, three, four, I don't know. Maybe not like
Edison with over a thousand but a certain number of steps. And
I think what I hear you all saying is if you've got two
processes going on at the same time, maybe somebody does a
better step three than your process has. And so in that regard,
the taxpayers come out because we actually get the best bang
for our buck. The entire process becomes better. Does that make
sense?
Dr. Littlewood. I agree entirely. That's very well put. So
the process of scientific invention and tech to market is many
things.
Chairman Weber. Sure.
Dr. Littlewood. Lots have to be joined up.
Chairman Weber. All right.
Dr. Littlewood. And there you have it exactly right. They
must----
Chairman Weber. I appreciate it, and thank you all for your
indulgence. I recognize the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. Loudermilk. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very
interesting topic, especially to me. The Chairman took--we took
a CODEL not too long ago to the Savannah River Lab which my
father actually worked at right after World War II. The first
time I had visited there. But I'm also on the Homeland Security
Committee. So the research and development and everything that
goes on within the Department of Energy for our national
security is of exceptional interest. But what really interested
me is we share a lot in common after reading recommendation
number two. We all agree that overregulation is not healthy for
competition and for development, for innovation. And I think
you identified that having a trusting relationship that is free
from expensive, burdensome administrative oversight from DOE
would be very helpful. And I appreciate that.
Obviously oversight of sensitive national security research
is very important. We need to have a level of oversight. We
need to make sure that we control what we're doing, that the
intellectual properties, that it stays within the defense
community.
But the domestic, non-defense related research and
development, I think we agree--maybe we can reduce the
regulatory burden on these. So Mr. Glauthier, and I'd also like
to hear from Mr. Cohon as well. When considering legislative
improvements for the national labs and the amount of DOE
oversight, should Congress make a clear distinction between
national security and domestic research?
Mr. Glauthier. That's a very interesting question. I think
both of them need the effective oversight that makes sure that
the work is being done in a way that's consistent with the
policies of the Nation. Frankly, we found that the planning and
oversight processes in the weapons program were not as
effective, are not as effective, as those in the Office of
Science programs for example. And we recommended that some of
the procedures being used in the Office of Science ought to be
adapted and used in the other areas as well.
The peer review processes in particular, sometimes the
weapons programs I think use the excuse that their -- that the
classified activities restrict the number of people who can
participate in peer reviewed and the like. But our feeling is
that there are ways to make those peer review processes more
effective and use the discipline that comes from that to make
the whole program more successful, more effective, and to
manage projects in a way that brings them in on schedule, on
budget and the like at the performance levels of her plan.
Mr. Loudermilk. Dr. Cohon?
Dr. Cohon. I have nothing to add to that.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay.
Dr. Cohon. Thank you, Mr. Loudermilk.
Mr. Loudermilk. One last question on this for you two--what
can Congress do to facilitate this, reduce the red tape?
Mr. Glauthier. That's a great question. The Department of
Energy actually has the authority to do most of the things that
we recommend if they are willing to do it. So one of the
aspects is that the Congress can be supportive, can indicate to
the Department that you really want them to restore this kind
of working relationship. Another key element I think goes back
to what Dr. Littlewood talked about which is risk acceptance. A
lot of the rules that the Department have been put in place
because something went wrong, and people put a new rule in
place and said, well, we're never going to have that problem
again. Okay, but you've got a lot of other problems. Over time
it becomes a very cumbersome working environment.
I think we have to recognize that things will go wrong. If
you have 55,000 people working at the national labs, there will
be some mistakes. We have to make sure we manage the risk side
so that really serious mistakes don't happen but that smaller
errors can. An example is property management. We've got rules
for tracking laptop computers that mean they have to inventory
those and find every one of those at every lab every year. And
there's a point of diminishing returns. Some of those laptop
computers are so old they're not worth tracking down. You ought
to decide that at some point you draw the line and say, okay,
we've gotten 98 percent of them. There are just rules of that
sort. I think Congress can be supportive of a risk acceptance,
a risk management approach to the way the Department is run.
Mr. Loudermilk. Okay. Dr. Littlewood, would you like to add
anything?
Dr. Littlewood. I think I'd just echo that. I think we
don't have a risk-based management approach of the labs, and
that's something that we would really benefit from.
Chairman Weber. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman
from California is recognized, Mr. Swalwell.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for those who
participated in the study, and also I want to thank Mr.
Littlewood for coming here and representing a national
laboratory as well. I am proud to represent Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory as well as Sandia National Laboratory,
approximately 8,000 lab employees in our district. A good chunk
of them are scientists. And so when we think about the lab
community, 17 different laboratories, 55,000 people, Dr.
Littlewood, could you just very briefly describe to me
approximately how many of them are scientists, people with
advanced degrees or even a bachelor of science degree or
beyond?
Dr. Littlewood. I'm not sure I could say that for all of
the labs but I think probably reflecting your labs, too. I
mean, at Argonne, we have 3,500 employees, 1,500 of them have
advanced degrees. I think that's probably a common proportion
across the labs. And many of those of course who don't have
advanced degrees will have bachelor's degrees and working this.
Mr. Swalwell. And Dr. Littlewood, to get an advanced degree
today or even 10 or 15 years ago, you agree it's quite an
investment in one's future?
Dr. Littlewood. Yeah, I agree.
Mr. Swalwell. And one challenge that I have come across
talking to our lab employees at home is that because the labs
are operated as government-owned, contractor-operated, these
scientists who have made six-digit investments in their future
with the student load debt that they've taken on do not qualify
for the public student loan forgiveness program. Are you aware
of that?
Dr. Littlewood. I was aware of that, yes.
Mr. Swalwell. And so my experience--and maybe you could
tell me if it's different at Argonne or other national
laboratories--is that these scientists are, you know, for all
intents and purposes, they are committed to serving our
government. They are career scientists. They're likely not
going to leave, but they're ineligible for a program that other
federal employees are eligible for.
Dr. Littlewood. That's correct. So you're quite right to
say that, you know, we have truly dedicated staff. We of course
have lots of very close collaborations with Livermore and
Sandia. So we know them very well. And these are staff who are
dedicated to public service. They're not officially federal
employees.
Mr. Swalwell. Do you think that it would help you recruit,
attract, and retain these bright scientists if we were able to
make them eligible for the public student loan forgiveness
program? And I'd open that up also to the other participants as
well.
Dr. Littlewood. I mean, I've not thought in detail about
it, but it seems very clear. I will say that the labs have some
concern about recruitment over the years, particularly my
colleagues who run weapons labs. It's very important for them
to be able to recruit actually very substantial numbers of
scientists and in particular, those who are able to hold a
clearance. And so we're actually collectively very concerned
about pipeline issues and anything that we can do to bring
people into this area of public service is something I would
support.
Mr. Swalwell. Great. Thank you. And maybe the other
witnesses who studied in our national laboratories, is this an
issue that we should look at opening up and making lab
employees who are not today eligible, making them eligible
for--in the program, just so you know, if you make 120 payments
serving the public, maybe as a teacher, maybe as a prosecutor,
maybe as a public defender, 120 payments, the balance of your
student loans is forgiven. But lab employees don't qualify.
Mr. Glauthier. Congressman, I think it's a very interesting
proposal and not one that we studied in our work. But we did
look at the issue about attracting and retaining, you know,
really qualified people for these laboratories and particularly
the weapons labs, such as Livermore. And it is a real
challenge. So there are several of our recommendations that
speak to that. One is the increase or restoration of the LDRD
level of funding----
Mr. Swalwell. That's right.
Mr. Glauthier. --which is very important at the weapons
labs. As Dr. Cohon has said from his background in
universities, our universities today do not train weapons
designers. That's done at three facilities in the country, and
people need to be brought in who are very bright and trained in
disciplines that are relevant and then given the opportunity to
work in these areas. To bring them in is best done through
funding like the LDRD programs.
We also address our recommendations on facilities and
infrastructure to these areas as well. The run-down state of
some of the facilities has been an impediment to recruiting and
retaining really top-quality people, and those labs that have
been able to build new facilities, new office buildings, new
research facilities have seen the resulting benefits in their
recruiting processes, too. I think your proposal is an element
that would fit in very constructively to that program.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, and I hope my colleagues on the
other side would entertain that. It's something our offices
have been working on with other member offices with
laboratories. But I do share a belief that, you know, these
scientists who work on national security programs shouldn't be
treated any differently when the eligibility is considered for
student loan forgiveness once they serve for ten years. So I
yield back.
Chairman Weber. The gentleman yields back. The other
gentleman from California is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much. Let me just note
there are contractors not just in the labs. There are
contractors throughout the federal government, many of them
risking their lives, having operations overseas with our
military and our intelligence agencies. And that's--whether or
not we want to do it for contractors what we do for a federal
employee is something that is also designated by ballot--excuse
me, by budget issues which if we indeed say all federal
employees are going to--all federal contractors will get every
right as a federal employee, yes, it'll cost the federal
government more money and thus there may be less money for
research projects in their labs because we have a limited
amount of money we're dealing with here. But maybe that is the
best use of the money, getting the best contractors you can to
work for you might be worth it. But we----
Mr. Swalwell. Would the gentleman yield for just 15
seconds?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Sure. Sure, go right ahead.
Mr. Swalwell. And thank you. And I certainly agree with you
because a lot of the contractors work for a year, two years at
a time, and this federal program which was already funded
requires ten years of service.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay.
Mr. Swalwell. Thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Rohrabacher. All right. Well, we'll be taking a look at
it I'm sure. I have been looking at this. We have, what, 17
national labs, and their budget is $14.3 billion of which $11.7
billion comes from the Department of Energy. And that
represents--that $11 billion represents 82 percent of the
funding for the national labs. Yet of the national labs,
there's a great discrepancy in terms of how much of their
project is actually being financed that way. For example, Fermi
National Accelerator Lab receives 100 percent of its funding
from the Department of Energy but the Savannah River National
Lab only receives less than seven percent of its total budget.
Now, where's that other money coming from? If it's not coming
from DOE, where's it coming from?
Mr. Glauthier. Congressman, thank you. The laboratories at
Savannah River is an unusual case because so much of that site
is actually the environmental management work. And so I'd point
to some of the other labs such as the Pacific Northwest Lab or
Sandia Lab where there's a large percentage, 30 percent or more
of the total funding of the laboratory comes from other
sources. Those tend to be the Department of Homeland Security,
Department of Defense, the intelligence community.
Mr. Rohrabacher. How much of it is private sector?
Mr. Glauthier. A very small amount actually comes from the
private sector. I don't have the percentage at hand, but I
would say it's certainly less than five percent. It's probably
1 or 2 percent.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Okay. So if the private sector is involved
with using these labs, they--do they then pay? They're paying
rent for their--they're paying for the use of the facility, is
that it?
Mr. Glauthier. For work that they do that is proprietary,
that is, such as the pharmaceutical companies who test all of
their new drugs in the light sources of the Department, they
pay full cost recovery. So when they're using those, they pay
the total cost of the resources that they use. If they're
engaged in partnerships where they're doing early stage basic
research that's going to be published and they're not going to
have any patent rights to it or anything, then they don't have
to pay for that.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, what if they do have it or are
private companies now receiving patents for the work that they
did in the national labs?
Mr. Glauthier. Yes, and Dr. Littlewood might be in a
position to actually give some examples of that.
Dr. Littlewood. Well, yeah. So often what happens of course
is that there is research which is done in the national labs
that is licensed to private companies.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right. And I -- but does the federal
government get an ownership share or a profit share in
something that we have been provided for these private
companies?
Dr. Littlewood. Well, the -- we're regulated in this really
by the Bayh-Dole Act.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Say that again?
Dr. Littlewood. Bayh-Dole Act. So going back to 1980, the
ability actually to take federally funded research and license
it to private companies were effectively regulated in the same
way that a university would be over that license.
And then there are other examples where we do what one
might call--well, what are explicitly cooperative Research and
Development Agreements, where we agree in advance to do
collaborative work with industry. With an agreement in advance
about what will happen to the IP portfolio?
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yeah. Let me just note that I think it's a
good thing that we have companies and other government agencies
utilizing this asset. That's why we've invested in it and I
think we do, if it's possible, we're always looking for some
way because we're operating on deficit right now. But by and
large, the idea of having our companies in the United States
and other government agencies have that capabilities they
wouldn't have otherwise is a good thing. And that's what it's
all about. So thank you very much.
Chairman Weber. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize
my good friend that serviced on the Texas Legislature with me
until we got demoted. Mr. Veasey?
Mr. Veasey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that. And
I had a question for Mr. Glauthier and Dr. Cohon about the
report about the National Laboratories and finding new ways to
be able to work with universities and wanted to ask, were you
able to particularly identify any notable obstacles that
prevented labs from being able to work with universities?
Dr. Cohon. No, Congressman. We think that the relationships
now among the laboratories in many universities are really very
good and no major obstacles for further collaboration. We
underline it in our report because we think it's so critical,
both for the laboratories and the universities. But there are
no major barriers to that. We want to of course see it stay
that way.
Mr. Veasey. Are there any things that you think Congress
can do to even further encourage those relationships?
Dr. Cohon. Probably hearings like this and asking questions
like that is a good way to do it, sending the message that it's
a desirable thing to see those kinds of collaborations go
forward. Dr. Littlewood has a lot of experience with this, and
I'm guessing he's going to agree that there are no obstacles to
this. Let's not create any.
Dr. Littlewood. Indeed. So I would comment on that. So, you
know, as an examples and Argonne isn't very different from any
of the other science labs. We actually have 200 joint
appointments with local universities. I've talked about joint
research programs that we go together.
But I will say that for us, the ability to work with
universities in a regional context is beginning to be even more
important because universities engage in their region. They
engage with business, and they begin to form the ecosystems
actually that can brings the lab in to be more effective in
tech transfer. So in Chicago, University of Chicago has the
Chicago information exchange, innovation exchange, which
Argonne is part of because we have this relationship with the
university. That connects us to a much broader ecosystem that
would be difficult for a lab that's got a fence around it. So
actually, the universities often can be a ways out for us to
work with the broader community. What I will say, however, is
that indeed I think we try very hard to have good relationships
with their university colleagues. I think there are a few
barriers at the moment. I hope we don't create any.
Dr. Cohon. Could I just follow on that? I'm really glad
that Dr. Littlewood brought that up, this idea of collaborating
with universities regionally for regional economic development.
Argonne stands out among the 17 labs in being both open and
proactive in that regard. We, our Commission in our report,
signal--not Argonne now but the opportunity for that kind of
engagement in regional economic development is a potential
that's not being realized by most of the labs. And doing it
collaboratively with regional universities is a very good idea.
So seeing much more of that I think would be a very good thing.
Mr. Glauthier. May I add one more thought?
Mr. Veasey. Yes, please.
Mr. Glauthier. And that is that the role of the DOE labs in
building and operating user facilities is very important for
this collaboration of the university community, and sometimes
it's not understood that the Department of Energy is operating
facilities that are used by grantees from the National
Institutes of Health or from NSF or others and that role of the
laboratories is a very important one. And so Congress could
continue to really embrace that and be sure that those
facilities are for widespread use by researchers in all fields.
Mr. Veasey. Thank you very much for your answers. Mr.
Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Weber. All right. Mr. Foster, you are up for five
minutes. Welcome.
Mr. Foster. Thank you very much, and I would like to thank
Chairman Weber and Ranking Member Grayson for allowing me to
sit in on this subcommittee hearing. While I don't sit on the
committee, I spent 23 years of my life as an employee of Fermi
National Accelerator Lab and now I'm one of two members that
represent Argonne National Lab.
And I have to start out by saying that I resonate very
strongly with the comments you've made on the risks of
excessive risk aversion, that this is something that we--those
of you who've lived through the Tiger Teams. You remember that?
Yes? Okay. Yes. You're bowing your heads appropriately. Let the
record show that they nodded with a wry smile.
You know, these sort of things represent an overreaction
that typically----
Chairman Weber. So ordered, without objection. But can you
spell wry for it?
Mr. Foster. W-r-y.
Chairman Weber. All right. I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Foster. Anyway, you know, very often this starts when
something bad does happen, you know, there's an injury or
something like this or a security breach. And so there's a
newspaper story, frankly an overreaction in Congress, and this
gets amplified down the command chain at every step at every
level in the bureaucracy, someone wants to make sure that
everyone reporting to them absolutely isn't the one that trips
over whatever rules are established. As a result, by the time
it gets down to the working level, sometimes these have morphed
into really silly things like tracking down 20-year-old
computers. And I have strong memories as I was checking out a
Fermi lab, having to track down computers I had not seen in 20
years that were just sitting around collecting dust somewhere.
And this is because probably at some point, someone--you know,
there are bad apples everywhere-someone stole some computers,
and there was a story about it.
And so I think that, when I'm trying to figure out what the
rules that you should be held to on this, I think it's useful
to segment the truly unique things we do, the part of your work
that's, you know, nuclear reactors or weapons, stuff like this,
where there are really unique risks. From the probably 90
percent of what you do that is just ordinary things that can be
compared to industry and if the standards you were held to was
really industry best practices, you know, you have to deal with
roadway safety on your laboratories, okay, as do big industrial
plants. And I think that when you compare your safety record
for roads, comparing it to what industry does would be a much
more reasonable standard. And part of that is that when
something happens, Congress has to have a more mature reaction.
You know, we are seeing in today's politics Members of Congress
standing up and saying I want to guarantee that there is a zero
percent probability that anyone we let into this country from
certain other countries will turn out to be a terrorist. And
when you hold people to unreasonable standards, unachievable
standards, then you end up with bad results.
Anyway, so I was wondering if you have a reaction to using
industry as a benchmark at least for the part of your work that
is comparable to what's done in industry? Any reactions as to--
--
Dr. Littlewood. Well, actually, let me comment. In fact, we
do that particularly over safety. So you know, as part of our
oversight process, I have a board. You know, my board of course
has a safety committee. My board is actually a rather
distinguished board that has captains of industry, former
Senators, people who want to understand these things very well.
And we use that board and their oversight role to manage the
lab in ways that we think are appropriate.
As I think you're pointing out, many of the rules and
regulations that we face are things that we have to do and I
don't believe help the operation of the lab.
Mr. Foster. Right, and so do you have an observation about
what altitude in the command chain most of these unhelpful
regulations are generated at?
Dr. Littlewood. I think the regulations may have been
dealt, delivered initially at high altitude but without
understanding the consequences. They then become imbedded in
the system at low altitudes and are impossible to remove. And
it may well be that as you say, some of these things we could
fix ourselves if we actually had the courage to just go in
there and take this out. And so I'll comment that the Secretary
himself has formed a task force to look at what he calls an
evolutionary model to try and dig out this, you know, cobwebby
stuff which has just collected over the years.
Mr. Glauthier. If I might, one of the things that previous
commissions have done often is to recommend that the Department
should review all its directives and orders and you know,
eliminate the ones that aren't needed. We took a different
approach. We said there are many situations where you shouldn't
even have to use Department of Energy rules or anything, that
in settings where you're trying to build an office building,
for example. It's non-nuclear, non-high hazard, it's not in a
classified area. Then you ought to be able to have the option,
the laboratory have the option of using the standards that are
in place in the community, in the state in which you operate.
And we cite some examples where in California, for example,
there are some electrical wiring standards for wiring an office
building that Stanford has been recently doing. The Department
of Energy has these three that we've cited that were issued in
2006. Those are the ones that contractors are supposed to use
in the real world. In the rest of the world those haven't been
updated three times since then so that the IBEW, electricians
who are out there working on these sites have standards that
are in fact being used throughout Silicon Valley, and they
should use those standards for just a regular building and that
sort. We think that's one of the elements. Just give the
laboratories that option to go with the standards that are the
appropriate ones in the area.
Mr. Foster. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Weber. Gentleman yields back. I thank the
witnesses for your valuable testimony and the members for their
questions. The record will remain open for two weeks for
additional comments and written questions from members,
including those who got wry smiles.
Mr. Foster. Mr. Chairman?
Chairman Weber. Yes.
Mr. Foster. Would it be possible for me to have another
couple minutes of questioning for--because this is so dear to
my heart?
Chairman Weber. Yes, I'm good with that.
Mr. Foster. All right. Thank you. I very much appreciate
it. You mentioned one of the Commission's recommendations is
restoring LDRD to six percent, and this is something--I was
wondering if you--you know, what is magic about six percent. Do
you think as a general matter of principle that if the fraction
of money--I'm not talking about increasing the pot--but if the
fraction of money was delivered as LDRD was increases or
decreased, whether it would result in an increase in the, you
know, innovation and the efficiency of laboratories?
Mr. Glauthier. Congressman, if we could, the level of six
percent that was without overhead burden is what the
laboratories--it's a ceiling. So not all laboratories would do
that, and of course, many of the laboratories have decided to
use lower rates. But the weapons labs especially find that it's
so important, particularly in attracting and retaining their
employees, that they do need to have substantial levels. That
six percent is the level that they were using at points where
it was unconstrained, where the government authorized LDRD but
didn't have a cap on it. And so our recommendation is to return
to the levels that they had found as effective levels at that
time.
Mr. Foster. Is the decrease that we've seen in LDRD just a
reflection of the fact the budgets have been squeezed and that
that's one of the places you can--you know, if there's some
fat--not fat to trim but you know, some optional things.
Mr. Glauthier. It's been a Congressional direction. The
change in 2006 was to add a requirement to put overhead rates
on that, and they increased the cap from 6 to eight percent,
but the overhead rate effectively made it less than it had been
before. And then that's been restricted further in the last
couple of years.
Mr. Foster. Okay. And then finally, do you think it would
be useful to have an explicit follow-up to this report, to have
actually action items and have you come back because there's a
long history of really very high-quality reports that have
gathered dust. And what's needed frankly to my mind is an
explicit follow-up, that six months or a year from now you come
back and say here are our action items and here, what we've
done in response to them.
Mr. Glauthier. Yes, but our recommendation is that there
would be a value to having a standing body of some sort set up
so that it would not just be to look at the regulations of this
Commission but to be able to be a resource to the Congress on
the implementation of these and the implementation of the
Augustine-Mies Commission a year ago and the recommendations of
another National Academy Report that Dick Meserve chaired and
whatnot. And as new issues arise, as a problem does come up at
some lab and the Congress wants to get the perspective of some
group of experienced people outside an independent view, that
that kind of a body could be a group you'd turn to rather than
having to create a new commission.
So we would encourage you to think broadly about how you
could accomplish that, how you can get that kind of oversight
and support but definitely on these recommendations and on the
whole broader category.
Mr. Foster. Thank you and appreciate it and yield back.
Chairman Weber. Before the gentleman yields back, Bill,
tell us again. You worked in the labs how long?
Mr. Foster. Twenty-three years at Fermi National
Accelerator Lab with collaborators at many national
laboratories.
Chairman Weber. In what capacity?
Mr. Foster. I was an accelerator designer and builder. I
designed and built large-particle accelerator, accelerator
components and detectors. I'm probably the only Member of
Congress that's designed and built a 100,000 ampere
superconducting power transmission line. I don't want to
overreach----
Chairman Weber. Which is why I'm saying we're glad to have
you here today. Welcome. Thank you. And I do want to mention
that we've got a bill that we should be dropping tomorrow, Dr.
Littlewood, called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities
Act. We actually worked with Mark Peters on this bill, and it's
going to be doing three things. Of course it's on advanced
reactors, modeling, and simulation. Number one, we're wanting
to focus on a fast research reactor. Then we're also wanting to
allow private reactor prototypes at DOE sites. So I thought
you'd find that interesting. Yes, sir.
Dr. Littlewood. Yeah, I actually look forward to that
because we're very proud to have Mark Peters as an alumnus of
Argonne go on to be Director of Idaho National Lab. So that's
one of the things that we like to do for the Nation.
I think that by the way, particularly in the reactor area,
I'd like to comment that Idaho, Argonne, and Oak Ridge are very
much in synchrony on wanting to push forward the next
generation of nuclear reactors. I'd like the United States to
have some options in 2050.
Chairman Weber. Absolutely, and we would, too. And Aaron
corrected me here. He actually testified on the bill is what I
meant. And we do have bipartisan--Eddie Bernice Johnson is co-
authoring the bill with us. And so if my good friends here on
the right will co-sign on with that bill while we have a good
possibility we're going to get it through.
I do thank the witnesses for your valuable testimony and
members for their questions. Again, Bill, we appreciate you
being here. The record will remain open for two weeks for
additional comments and written questions from the members. The
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:29 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
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Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
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