Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee
ORNL is a world-class, wide-ranging scientific R&D institution thanks to its technical accomplishments, outstanding staff, extensive facilities, diverse programs, and broad collaborations. The 5,100-member ORNL staff represents an unusually wide range of disciplines, and includes 1,500 scientists and engineers. ORNL hosts more than 4,000 guest scientists per year, representing 250 companies and universities, as well as over 20,000 students and several hundred teachers. ORNL core competencies include:
- Energy production and end-use technologies: ORNL is one of the world's premier centers for R&D on energy efficiency and supply technologies and on the economic, social and environmental consequences of energy systems and processes. The Buildings Technology Center has the nation's most versatile capability for testing and analysis of building equipment and envelope systems.
- Biological and environmental science and technology: ORNL offers unique capabilities for investigating pathways, fate and effects of anthropogenic materials in the environment, and has the only formal Protein Engineering Program within DOE. The Mammalian Genetics Facility is a unique national resource for genetics research.
- Advanced materials synthesis, processing, and characterization: An extremely broad range of materials R&D is conducted, with particular excellence in high temperature ceramics and composites, metals and intermetallic alloys, superconductors, semiconductors, optical materials, and surfaces and thin films. The High Temperature Materials Laboratory is a unique and popular user facility for materials research.
- Neutron-based science and technology: This competency includes the design and operation of research reactors, accelerators, and hot cells; neutron scattering; isotope production and research, materials irradiation and testing, neutron activation analysis, radiation chemistry, health physics and radiation effects, and nuclear medicine. Unique facilities include the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and Radiochemical Engineering Development Center (REDC).
Supporting these core competencies are facilities and capabilities unavailable elsewhere, such as the:
- Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility,
- Center for Computation Science (one of two such DOE centers).
Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL), Washington State
PNL and its 4,000-member staff are located on the H2nford Site, a factor which heavily influences the Lab's technical composition. PNL entered the DOE Multiprogram Laboratory System in 1986, well-positioned to shift focus from support of defense production to environmental issues and cleanup. DOE and PNL management committed to establish a world-class fundamental science base in bioscience, chemistry, chemical physics and process science, directly related to the nation's environmental problems. PNL possesses three core competencies:
- Integrated Environmental Research: Key technical capabilities are in the fields of ecological sciences, hydrology, geochemistry/geophysics, atmospheric chemistry, chemistry and chemical physics, bioscience, economics and policy analysis, and computational sciences. PNL offers a proven ability to form large cross-disciplinary teams to address large-scale environmental issues. PNL leads the OHER Subsurface Science Program, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program of the DOE Global Environmental Change Research Program, and is constructing the Environmental and Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL) as a national collaborative research facility.
- Process Science and Engineering: As the science and technology integrator at H2nford, PNL leads in H2nford's Tank Waste Remediation System and the National Tanks Program -- bringing to bear long-standing process skills related to defense-waste storage, treatment and packaging technology. This competency is highly coupled with the integrated environmental research competency because remediation and storage performance criteria must be based on scientifically sound standards governing environmental and biological risk. Technical skills are focused on chemical and physical characterization, tank safety, separations science, waste form development and performance, and systems engineering.
- Energy Systems Development: Energy Systems Development is underpinned both by technology, and economic and policy analysis expertise. Historically, PNL has played key research roles in regional power issues, energy policy analysis, and more recently in technical areas of residential and industrial power usage, and power transmission and distribution systems. Distinguishing characteristics are exemplified by excellence in scientifically based economic models to address energy, agricultural, and ecological policy issues relative to global and regional environmental change.
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), New Mexico
Sandia is a systems engineering laboratory. It was created in 1949 to team industrial management and government experience in the design of deployable nuclear weapons as well as the surety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile.
Sandia is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in Livermore, California, with the New Mexico site being the larger facility. Sandia operates a wide variety of technical and user facilities, the collection of which constitutes one of the world's premier research, development, and testing complexes. The staff of 8,500 employees performs work for DOE national security programs (about 50% of laboratory effort), DOE energy and environmental programs (about 25%) and work for other federal agencies (25%). Ninety percent of the work for other federal agencies is for DoD.
Sandia's core competencies include the following research foundations and integrated capabilities:
Research Foundations:
- Engineered Processes and Material: The synthesis, characterization, and processing of metallic, ceramic, organic, and composite materials; advanced materials and processes tailored for specific applications.
- Computational and Information Sciences: The development of advanced computing networks, computational methods for emerging computer technologies, mathematical techniques for information surety, and computer-based techniques for intelligent machines.
- Microelectronics and Photonics: Materials growth and development, device design, fabrication technologies for silicon and compound semiconductor devices, and design of processes and equipment for the manufacture of integrated circuits.
- Engineering Sciences: Fluid and thermal sciences, solid and structural mechanics, radiation transport, aerospace sciences, geoscience, combustion science, and the development of interdisciplinary capabilities.
Integrated Capabilities:
- Advanced Manufacturing Technology: Leadership in advanced manufacturing to make continuing, critical, and valuable contributions to national security, energy security, environmental stewardship, and economic competitiveness.
- Electronics Technology: Leadership in electronics technology for defense and industry.
- Advanced Information Technology: Technology and systems for nuclear weapon programs, related mission assignments, other strategic thrusts, and national information initiatives.
- Pulsed Power Technology: High-power x-ray and gamma ray sources for a variety of applications, including nuclear weapon survivability testing, light-ion beam inertial confinement fusion, materials processing, waste and product sterilization.