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Energy Secretary's Priorities Include San Francisco-Area Research Projects

Posted on: Monday, 10 November 2003, 06:00 CST

Nov. 11--Bay Area research labs got a big boost Monday when the Secretary of Energy unveiled his priorities for major research projects his agency hopes to fund over the next two decades.

Among the agency's 28 top priorities are a major computer expansion and an experiment examining the expanding universe that could be housed at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and a powerful X-ray laser planned for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

Those sites and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory are major participants or beneficiaries of a half dozen other projects that range from protein biology to high-energy physics to high-tech microscopes.

In a speech Monday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham unveiled the prioritized list of major research projects, ranked by when they might be built. The projects mark the direction the Department of Energy will take in the future.

"The fact that the secretary gave the speech himself I think is a very positive sign of the priority that (the energy department) gives to basic science," said Karl van Bibber, of Lawrence Livermore.

A major move to understand the "dark energy" that is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe was of major interest at Lawrence Berkeley. While the priorities did not single out the lab, officials were encouraged that a photo of their satellite-based telescope appeared on the report's cover.

"We definitely feel like we have a very strong concept developed," said the project's chief scientist, Saul Perlmutter. "We are in good shape to try to carry it through.

A senior DOE official said developing powerful new computers to model what is happening in nature and crunch increasing amounts of data is of major importance to the agency, and the Berkeley lab is home to much of that research. Two initiatives will fund expansions of computer capability housed at the lab. A third will create new centers with massive new computers.

"Berkeley will definitely be interested in bidding," said Horst Simon, head of lab computing programs.

The Linac Coherent Light Source, at the Stanford accelerator, was tied for third on the priority list. That facility will use its existing beam to create a high-powered X-ray laser to let scientists look at chemical or biological reactions that take place in just a fraction of a second. It will be at least 10 times more powerful than any previous source.

"We were thrilled to see that. . . . It just enables so much new science," said Persis Drell, research director at the Stanford lab.

The lab is also heading up research on a new high-powered linear collider that would send electrons. The project, which also includes researchers from Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley, was the highest ranked project on the mid-term timing list. The international community is still deciding a design for the accelerator, and then it will tackle where the miles-long underground accelerator should be located -- one possible site is in the Central Valley.

"That is a very important step to have the Office of Science put it in such a high priority" position, Drell said.

The agency's top priority is an international project to fund fusion research, once a major research focus of Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab has just started a new initiative to revive and expand its magnetic fusion research.

Van Bibber said "the lab is angling to play a major role both in the theoretical and computational physics associated with" the project, which aims to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction and, eventually, a clean energy source.

Livermore is also interested in developing detectors to help understand the particles that make up atoms at both an underground neutrino detector and massive particle accelerator in New York. At the Rare Isotope Accelerator, the lab hopes to be involved in experiments that allow scientists to better study rare atoms that only live for a brief instant inside nuclear reactions or the sun.

Also, the Livermore and Berkeley labs hope to get one of four major projects in the agency's Genomes to Life initiatives that have not been assigned to specific sites yet.

One project almost certain to be located at the Berkeley lab is a new electron microscope that will be able to see tiny objects more clearly than ever before, including the important new advances in nanotechnology.

"We are really excited. We have never gotten this close," said Uli Dahmen, director of the lab's National Center for Electron Microscopy.

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(c) 2003, Contra Costa Times, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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