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).
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 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.
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