v36 no2 03 review

1Vol.36, No.2, 2003

New Pathways to ResearchThis edition of the ORNL Review could appropriately be dedicated to Pythagoras, a Greek mathematician

who, to the best of our knowledge, left no written record of his life and work in the 6th century B.C. Although mostmiddle school students are familiar with his theorem of the right triangle, Pythagoras had a far more profoundimpact on scientific discovery than his belief that the entire cosmos can be expressed in mathematical formulas.

For those of us at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the enduring legacy of Pythagoras and his followers wasthe ability to adapt their thinking to new conditions and new ideas. Translated into the modern vernacular, theywere able to abandon conventional wisdom and think “out of the box” in ways that reshaped fundamental notionsof how the universe works. From mathematics to astronomy to music, their capacity to think independentlyproduced a creative energy that 25 centuries later fuels our scientific agenda.

As they did for Pythagoras, evolving technologies have combined with world events in ways that make itnecessary for us to revisit our strategies and scientific priorities at ORNL. The past three years were a period inwhich we developed distinctly new strategies in pursuit of our mission on behalf of the Department of Energy. Thestrategies are designed to support our staff as they challenge long-held assumptions and blaze bold scientifictrails in areas such as fusion energy and high-performance computing. Our Laboratory agenda includes newmanagement techniques that make it possible to dedicate extensive resources to the emerging fields of nanoscalematerials and functional genomics. A commitment to broaden the Laboratory’s core competencies has enabledORNL to emerge rapidly as a leading center for national security technologies. Each of these initiatives hasattracted funding that will strengthen ORNL’s place at the forefront of international research and result in lastingcontributions to America’s quality of life.

Significantly, some of our boldest new approaches at ORNL include the way in which we make scientificinquiry possible. More often than not, cutting-edge research is the product of world-class scientists working onsome of our most complex problems in world-class facilities. An important part of our story at ORNL is a creativestrategy designed to transform an aging and expensive infrastructure into one of the world’s most modern re-search centers. This part of our strategy includes new funding sources and new partnerships that are changing ina lasting way how we support scientific research.

This edition of the Review features some of the new pathways we are taking for scientific programs andoperational strategies at ORNL. Our readers will note that these changes include the Review itself, which fordecades has been a chronicle of the discoveries and new technologies taking place at the Laboratory. ReflectingORNL’s new image, the Review is updating its style and format. Each issue of the Review will examine in depthone aspect of the Laboratory agenda, accompanied by articles on recent research and a section on ORNL staff whohave received national recognition for their discoveries.

I hope these articles capture the enthusiasm we have at ORNL for the Laboratory’s future. With a newcampus and new partners, our research program is robust and growing. Like Pythagoras, we are gazing over thehorizon, with our minds open to the opportunities and possibilities that await us.

Bill Madia, Director

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory REVIEW2

The standing-room-only crowd assembled in Wigner Auditorium grew quiet asEnergy Secretary Spencer Abraham picked up his pen. The gathered dignitaries,including a U.S. senator and two congressmen, sensed along with Oak RidgeNational Laboratory staff the significance of the moment. With a simplesignature on a deed, the Secretary would enable ORNL to undertakethe boldest initiative since the Laboratory’s construction in 1943.


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A DAUNTING TASK

When the new team members from the Uni-versity of Tennessee and Battelle assumed

the management contract for the Department ofEnergy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in April 2000,most were “stunned” at the condition of theLaboratory’s infrastructure. Approximately one-half ofORNL’s buildings were more than 40 years old, and sometwo-thirds needed replacement or extensive renovation.The Laboratory had experienced decades of insufficientcapital investment for new buildings and deferred main-tenance for older ones. The result was an outdated re-search complex that was increasingly expensive to op-erate, impairing the Laboratory’s ability to produce goodscience. Utility costs, for example, averaged more than$3000 per occupant at ORNL, nearly four times the av-erage for comparable facilities.

The impact of the aging infrastructure was felt inareas besides cost. Expensive facilities handicappedORNL staff in the competition for research funding. Pro-gram managers found it difficult to recruit world-classstaff to what some referred to as “third-world” laborato-

ries. Conditions were so bad in ORNL’s mouse genomicsresearch facility, or “mouse house,” that managementgave up altogether on recruiting new staff.

The most disturbing fact facing ORNL managementwas the likelihood that the problem would only getworse. Congress and the Department of Energy gave noindication that sufficient funding would be available evento stabilize the decline of existing facilities. Given thatother DOE laboratories had similar infrastructure needs,the notion that ORNL could secure congressional fund-ing adequate to replace deficient buildings and modern-ize the Laboratory in five to six years was clearly be-yond the realm of political possibility.

BREAKING THE MOLD

Officials at both ORNL and the Department of En-ergy realized that an unconventional strategy would berequired to fund large-scale modernization of the Labora-tory. In May 2000 the Laboratory presented DOE with anovel proposal: UT-Battelle first would secure a fundingcommitment of $26 million from the state of Tennesseefor four new facilities on the ORNL campus. The state com-

The Laboratory is replacing old facilities suchas Building 3024, a machine shop built in 1947that was commonly referred to as one of the“Quonset huts.”

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mitment would be accompanied by a pledge from Battelle to ob-tain approximately $72 million in private funding for three addi-tional buildings. Finally, the state and private commitments wouldbe used to leverage about $225 million in funding from DOE forthe renovation of the Laboratory’s largest existing facility and theconstruction of six new buildings.

The proposal was as delicate as it was novel. Each facet ofthe funding plan was contingent upon the success of the others.Viewing ORNL as an untapped potential for the state’s economicdevelopment and the University of Tennessee’s research program,Governor Don Sundquist joined the speakers of the TennesseeHouse and Senate in pledging $26 million to ORNL as the state’sshare of the package and appropriating an initial sum of $8 mil-lion to fund a new facility for computational sciences, called theJoint Institute for Computational Sciences. The commitment bystate government to fund facilities at ORNL provided momentumfor another unprecedented initiative. To obtain private financing,UT-Battelle would have to convince DOE to transfer to privateownership a six-acre parcel located literally in the middle of theORNL campus. Such a transfer would have to overcome, in addi-tion to decades of institutionalized government policy, seriousreservations about how facilities on private property would beconstructed and managed, as well as how they could be expectedto support DOE’s mission on an ongoing basis. Absent a willing-ness by DOE to break the mold, ORNL’s modernization plan hadlittle chance of success.

A turning point came in September 2000 when Energy Sec-retary Bill Richardson traveled to Oak Ridge and endorsed ORNL’smodernization plan. Standing beside Governor Sundquist andLaboratory Director Bill Madia, Richardson unveiled a drawing ofthe ORNL campus as envisioned in 2006, complete with federal,state, and private facilities. The Secretary’s endorsement providedcritical momentum to the modernization effort. To support whatwas no longer exclusively a federal project, state government madeavailable resources to help complete environmental assessmentsand monitor construction of private and state-funded buildings.DOE attorneys joined in drafting stacks of legal documents neededto transfer the property and finalize the lease agreement.

Significantly, the transition from a Democratic to a Repub-lican administration after the November 2000 elections did notslow modernization plans. DOE’s new leadership embracedORNL’s efforts to use creative approaches to funding and con-structing facilities in support of DOE’s mission. In June 2001,Secretary Spencer Abraham came to Oak Ridge to sign person-ally the deed transferring DOE property to the newly created UT-Battelle Development Corporation. Several hurdles remained, butfor the first time even skeptics began to believe that UT-Battelle’splan might actually become a reality.

OVERCOMING THE UNEXPECTED

Implementation of the modernization plan acceleratedthroughout the summer. Working for the first time outside the


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government’s conven-tional process for pro-curement and con-struction, ORNL man-agement, through theUT-Battelle Develop-ment Corporation,modified and fast-tracked the process ofselecting a firm to de-sign and build thethree privately fundedfacilities. Just as inthe private sector, theflexibility gave ORNLthe opportunity to so-licit comprehensiveproposals for design,funding, scheduling,and constructionbased on the conceptof “best value.”

The new approach attracted seven proposals, each withdistinctly unique architectural and financing components. Theproject’s new-found flexibility was reflected in the winning pro-posal, which urged ORNL to reduce construction and operatingcosts by combining the three facilities into one, begin designwork prior to the bond closing, and accelerate construction by

starting when 30% of the design was completed. In a conven-tional process, such changes might have taken months or evenyears to gain necessary DOE approval. Instead, UT-Battelle De-velopment Corporation quickly approved the changes and inAugust 2001 selected Colliers Keenan, a developer in Colum-bia, South Carolina, to move forward with the project.

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Tucked away in Governor Phil Bredesen’s first proposed budget toTennessee’s General Assembly in March 2003 was $400,000 in plan-ning funds for the Joint Institute for Biological Sciences at Oak RidgeNational Laboratory. The fact that the funds were part of a budgetthat contained substantial cuts in state spending was an extraordi-nary statement about the importance of the maturing relationshipbetween Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University ofTennessee.

Since the Laboratory’s beginning in 1943, ORNL staff have taughtscience and engineering in an adjunct capacity at UT, while universityfaculty have served as consultants and research participants at ORNL.The relationship expanded in 1984 with the creation of the ScienceAlliance, a state-funded program that promotes joint research andeducational collaboration between the Laboratory and university.Both institutions have strengthened their research agendas throughthe Distinguished Scientist program, which attracts world-classresearchers who split their time and cost between ORNL and UT.

The relationship took a new direction in 1999 when UT sought to benot just a partner but also a manager of the Laboratory. Joining withBattelle, UT presented Tennessee’s governor and legislative leader-ship with an unprecedented contract proposal: UT-Battelle wouldcommit to commercializing ORNL’s extensive portfolio of technolo-gies partly through creation of at least ten new companies a year. Inreturn, the state would commit to building four facilities on theORNL campus that would be used and managed jointly by UT andthe Laboratory. The state’s investment, in effect, would bring a“three-for-one” benefit. State funds would leverage federal andprivate funds for ORNL’s modernization initiative; UT would see itsresearch program strengthened by greater access to ORNL resourcesand by new facilities for biological, computational, and neutronsciences; and ORNL would make its portfolio of technologies avail-able for the creation of new jobs.

Less than three weeks after the selection, ORNL’s moderniza-tion plan was threatened by the kind of challenge that no one couldhave anticipated. The September 11 attack on the World Trade Cen-ter sent a shock wave through the nation’s financial markets. In-deed, the anticipated bond insurer for ORNL’s constructionproject suffered extensive human and financial losses in theattack and had to withdraw from the deal. Overnight, multi-mil-lion dollar bond ventures such as ORNL’s were viewed with agreatly heightened sense of caution. The unconventional natureof ORNL’s project, which involved a private developer buildingand leasing a large research facility, occupancy by a third party,and funding contingent upon annual appropriations from thefederal government, served only to intensify the reservations ofthe bond market.

Unfortunately for ORNL, the repercussions from the terror-ist attacks were followed in late 2001 by another unforeseen se-ries of events that further clouded efforts to finance the project.

A succession of corporate scandals, many of which involved de-ceptive accounting and financing schemes, served to make bondanalysts even more skeptical of proposals that included unusualelements. ORNL managers found themselves pitching one of themost unique and complex proposals in the history of govern-ment construction at the very moment investors were seekingsimplicity and a minimum of risk.

Discussions with potential investors throughout the win-ter made evident that the bonds would have to be sold at a highercost if the project was to survive. Finally, on March 4, 2002, Bancof America Securities closed a $72-million bond sale that pro-vided the needed funding. Unexpected events had delayed theproject about three months. But within two weeks of the bondsale, workers began tearing up parking lots and digging founda-tions for the largest construction effort in Oak Ridge since theManhattan Project of World War II. Sailing into the wind, the Labo-ratory was taking a distinctly new pathway to research.


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The state of Tennessee’s financial support of ORNLand UT’s new management role have redefinedand strengthened the partnership between theLaboratory and the university. The new jointinstitutes are a critical part of ORNL’s efforts tocompete for funding from new Departmentof Energy programs in genomics, nanophasematerials, and high-performance computing.Simultaneously, UT’s strengthenedpartnership with ORNL will enable theuniversity to expand its researchagenda. The 60-year relationshipcan now be viewed from a newperspective, broadening thehorizons of both institutions.

From the earliest discussions in the spring of2000, ORNL officials were determined to adopt

a new approach to the planning of the Laboratory’smodernization initiative. Since 1942, dozens of large

and small facilities had been constructed, largely on anad hoc basis, with little thought given to the relationship

of individual buildings either to the existing campus or tofuture construction. The result was an inevitable hodgepodge

of mismatched buildings and unsightly parking lots that leftORNL looking more like an aging industry than a modern

research campus.

The presence of the University of Tennessee as a new managing part-ner of ORNL afforded the unique chance to develop a long-term master

plan for the Laboratory’s modernization. The effort was led by UT Collegeof Architecture Professor Jon Coddington, whose resumé includes the de-

sign of Nashville’s Bicentennial Mall. Employing the talents of UT faculty andgraduate students, Coddington worked closely with ORNL staff to develop a

modernization plan that seeks in a number of ways to transform how staff andvisitors view the Laboratory.

The UT plan was sweeping in scope. A former parking lot became the new center of theLaboratory, with five new facilities located around a grass lawn, much like a college cam-

pus. Both the interior and exterior elements of the new buildings were designed as compo-nents of a larger architectural theme. Construction materials incorporated rigorous environ-

mental standards for energy and recycling. Signage was standardized, including large stonesigns that introduced visitors to ORNL’s major research facilities. Planners modified the Labora-

tory entrance and added a new street lined with trees and closed to vehicles. The new cafeteria wasdesigned with glass walls overlooking a pond with swans and falling water.

ORNL’s modernization efforts will replace an aging infrastructure with state-of-the-art research facilities.Thanks to a growing partnership with the University of Tennessee, these facilities will also reflect a new

spirit of time and place at ORNL.

ORNL’s modernization planincludes the eliminationof approximately1.4 million sq. ft ofoutdated facilities.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory REVIEW8 Oak Ridge National Laboratory REVIEW8

In April 2000 UT-Battelle’s modifi-cation of Oak Ridge National

Laboratory’s scientific agenda added a ma-jor new category to the list of research ca-pabilities. World events, including the dis-solution of the Soviet Union and the in-creased risk that nuclear materials wouldbe sought by America’s adversaries, cre-ated new challenges to the nation’s secu-rity and the need for new scientific ap-proaches to meet these challenges. ORNL’scapabilities in a suite of emerging technolo-gies provided a potential match for severalof these challenges. Together, these tech-nologies form the basis of ORNL’s new Na-tional Security Directorate.

Today, national-security-relatedprojects represent about 15% of ORNL’s re-search portfolio. The terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, intensified theLaboratory’s emphasis on identifying andmodifying technologies in support of theefforts of the new Department of HomelandSecurity (DHS). ORNL’s associate labora-tory director for national security is FrankAkers, a retired Army Brigadier Generalwhose job is twofold. In Washington, heinforms DHS and other federal agenciesabout ORNL’s research capabilities. Athome, he focuses on educating ORNL staffresearchers about the needs of a major newcustomer, the DHS.

“The Department of Energy and theDepartment of Defense have investedheavily in the development of new tech-nologies at ORNL and other labs that theDHS could harvest for pennies on the dol-lar,” Akers says.“The DOD and DHS haveretired military and national security per-sonnel who can readily determine howto apply ORNL technologies to criticalsituations.”

A NEW MISSIONFOR ORNL

The new Department ofHomeland Security embraces 22former agencies and 170,000 em-ployees and has an annual bud-get of $38 billion. The creation of

the department marked the largestreorganization of the federal govern-

ment since the formation of the De-partment of Defense in 1947.

The new department, headedby Secretary Tom Ridge, includes

the Secret Service, Coast Guard, and theTransportation Security Administration,which is responsible for providing secu-rity for all transportation regulated by theDepartment of Transportation. ORNL’s ca-pabilities at the National TransportationResearch Center and earlier researchconducted for the Department of Trans-portation and the Federal HighwayAdministration exemplify how the Labo-ratory is positioned to assist the newagency in a variety of tasks to strengthentransportation security.

Matching the Laboratory’s resourceswith its opportunities is one of the jobs ofORNL’s Mike Kuliasha, a member of theNational Security Directorate. Asked toevaluate a broad and complex array ofthreats, Kuliasha seeks a practical ap-proach that produces economic as well assecurity benefits. “If we improve our infra-structure to prevent an attack, we can cre-ate a secondary return on our investment.We would have a more responsive publichealth system. We would have a more ro-bust economy if we keep better track ofimported products because they will be dis-tributed more efficiently. We would havebetter equipped and trained emergency re-sponders who can respond faster and moreeffectively to a natural disaster, such as atornado. We can justify the costs of betterprotection against terrorists in terms of ad-ditional social benefits.”

Still, Kuliasha is realistic about theneed to make hard choices. “We can’tstop every suicide bomber entering a gro-cery store or mall,” Kuliasha says. “Wemust think about how to stop terrorists

Frank Akers

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Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attack, Ron Brown, director at Nashville’sFlashTechnology, which manufactures, installs, and remotely monitors

aviation strobe lighting on cell-phone towers, had an idea. He had readabout ORNL’s work for the U.S. Army to develop the Block II Chemical Bio-

logical Mass Spectrometer (CBMS) for detecting chemical and biological war-fare agents. Why not put such detectors at cell towers, which are located near

population centers and are equipped with communication technologies?

Brown’s idea found its way to Jim Kulesz in ORNL’s Computational Sciences andEngineering Division. Kulesz who had just proposed combining CBMS with ORNL’s

Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC) and LandScan software. If givenwind speed and direction and the threat agent’s concentration, HPAC can predict

where the agent will migrate and how many people nearby could be exposed unlessthey evacuate or take cover in safe facilities.

After hearing Brown’s proposal, Kulesz conceived of SensorNet, a combination of sen-sor and communication technologies at cell towers and other national infrastructuresto detect radiological, biological, and chemical threats and provide immediate threatinformation to emergency response command centers. These command centers couldthen convey timely and meaningful information to emergency responders, health-carecenters, and affected populations.

SensorNet is now designed to maximize participation by the government and privatesectors. SensorNet will use “best in class,” commercially ready, radiation detectors andsensors of chemical and biological threats combined with the best modeling tools, suchas HPAC and LandScan software, to provide threat information over a secure data net-work to local, regional, and national command centers. The threat detectors, comput-ers, and communication technologies would be located at many of the existing 145,000private-sector cellular sites and other national infrastructure components at anestimated cost of $2 billion.

The SensorNet concept was successfully field tested in March 2002 in Tennesseeusing three mass spectrometers to detect airborne chemical and biological warfaresimulants in Chattanooga, Knoxville, and Nashville. All sensors were networkedto a command center at the state’s Office of Homeland Security in Nashville. Injust 96 seconds, the command center detected and identified simulants anddeveloped a plume model for each city.

The SensorNet team includes the departments of Energy and De-fense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

SensorNet, which has received $3 million in initial federal funding,has experimental test beds in Washington, D.C., and East

Tennessee, including a radiation interdiction node at atruck weigh station off Interstate 40 near Knoxville. A

SensorNet Communications Center is being developedat the ORNL-UT National Transportation Research Center.

The project’s goal is to achieve detection and analysisnationwide in less than 5 minutes.

SensorNet cannot prevent a terrorist at-tack, but researchers believe the sys-

tem could provide informationfast enough to prevent a

widespread tragedy.

to protect against mass casualties,such as 9/11, in which more than3000 people were killed. We mustalso prevent events of high conse-quences, such as the anthrax attackson the mail in 2001 in which 5 peopledied, 22 were infected, 30,000 weregiven an antibiotic, and millions wereterrorized. As a result of the dis-persal of a few grams of weaponizedanthrax in the mail, 23 sites werecontaminated, 30 tons of wastes havebeen disposed of, and more than halfa billion dollars has been spent onbuilding decontamination.”

The government is concernedabout terrorists taking out a key in-frastructure. “We can’t guard allplaces,” Kuliasha notes, “So the high-est-risk areas, such as the Golden GateBridge, are targeted for special protec-tion during alerts.”

One goal of DHS’s EmergencyPreparedness and Response person-nel is crisis management, which fo-cuses on ensuring that first respond-ers have the equipment and commu-nications they need. Another goal isconsequence management. For ex-ample, Kuliasha says, after the Sep-tember 11, 2001, attack on the WorldTrade Center, federal officials imme-diately had to manage consequencesthat included the shutdown of thestock market, the partial destructionof the New York City subway, and theneed to aid the injured and familiesof the victims and to clean up the de-bris. “This office is also concernedwith developing a plan for monitoringthe U.S. infrastructure before it is at-tacked and maintaining it after an at-tack,” he says.

Another DHS program, the Infor-mation Analysis and Infrastructure


Poison the waters. That’s what a terrorist cell mightwant to do to people drinking from a municipalwater supply, but a green plant cell could be thekey to saving lives after such an attack. ORNL re-searchers have devised a fluorescence technique us-ing naturally occurring algae in primary source drink-

ing water to spot water that has become suddenlytainted, potentially detecting a terrorist attack.

Algae grow naturally on and near the surface of our surface-exposeddrinking water sources by using the energy of sunlight and carbon dioxide in the

air. Through photosynthesis, healthy algae absorb considerable light but “leak” a littlebit of it, according to Eli Greenbaum, a researcher in ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division(CSD). Greenbaum and CSD research assistants Miguel Rodriguez and Charlene Sandersfound that this light leakage gives healthy algae a fluorescence signature that can bemeasured by a standard fluorometer and recorded by a computer.

“If algae in drinking water are exposed to a poison such as potassium cyanide,methyl parathion, or the herbicides Diuron or Paraquat, the algae become unhealthy,”

says Greenbaum, who came up with the idea to use algae to detectwater contamination. “These aquatic plants then leak more or lesslight than is usual.”

In low concentrations, these chemicals can damage the kidneys, cen-tral nervous system, or respiratory system. In high concentrationsthey can kill people.

The researchers found that algae exposed to any of these poisons indrinking water give off a detectable fluorescence signature that is

different from that of normal, healthy algae. They observed thatdifferences between fluorescence signatures of algae in ambi-ent water and those of algae in poisoned water could be deter-mined by a fluorometer linked to a laptop computer.

“Our AquaSentinelSM can detect a broad spectrum of poisonsin water and send up a red flag,” Greenbaum says. “It is

not as sensitive as a gas chromatograph mass spectrom-eter system, but it is sensitive enough to trigger analarm to indicate that a city’s drinking water may beunsafe. AquaSentinelSM uses no reagents and it can runcontinuously without being attended.”

With funding from the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency, the researchers have developed afield-deployable system. They are testing this pro-totype AquaSentinelSM at a continuous pumpingstation on the Clinch River near ORNL’s roboticsresearch laboratory.

Further development of AquaSentinelSM will befunded by United Defense, a U.S. government de-fense contractor headquartered in Arlington, Vir-ginia. United Defense has an option to be the first

company to license the AquaSentinelSM technology.

David E. Hill of ORNL’s Metals and Ceramics Divi-sion is helping the CSD researchers develop a database of a

variety of algae signatures. They are also writing software toenable the computer to match detected and recorded signatures,

to identify any poisonous substances added to the water. Hill isalso developing Internet access to this database.

AquaSentinelSM will be designed to warn municipal reservoir manag-ers that the water supply may have been poisoned. They can then decide

whether to shut off the water intake to protect the city’s population from apossible terrorist threat.

Protection office, seeks to harnessinformation technologies to identifywhich packages and containerscoming into the country are mostlikely to pose a danger. “You mightexpect that packages shipped bySony are okay, but what about anunlabeled package from Yemen? It’snot feasible to check every con-tainer, so our front-end defense isinformation technology that canhelp workers separate the riskypackages from the safe ones. Thebest approach is an inspection veri-fication tracking system in whichthe container is inspected when it’sloaded at another nation’s seaport.This system would eliminate theneed to inspect packages deemedto be safe and allow inspectors tofocus on packages with a higherprobability of containing a weaponof mass destruction. In all these ef-forts, ORNL technologies can be apart of the solution.”

ORNL’SEMERGING ROLE

DHS may have as many as fiveCenters for Homeland Security. “Wehope ORNL will have a center alongwith DOE’s Pacific Northwest Na-tional Laboratory and the three de-fense labs—Sandia, Los Alamos,and Lawrence Livermore nationallaboratories,” Kuliasha says.“ORNL and PNNL have the largesthomeland security research and de-velopment portfolios among theDOE science labs.

“We’re teaming with universitymedical schools and hope to be-come a National Institutes of Health(NIH) Regional Center of Excellencein Biodefense,” he adds. Theschools are Emory, Vanderbilt,


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Duke, University of Alabama at Birming-ham, University of North Carolina at ChapelHill, and University of Florida.

Kuliasha has presented several talkson homeland security technologies devel-oped at the DOE national labs. His audi-ences have included Senator Bill Frist’sForum on Technology and Innovation, theNaval Research Advisory Committee, andthe Army’s U.S. Northern Command, as wellas groups at DHS, DOD, the Center for Dis-ease Control and Prevention, and NIH.

ORNL researchers have developed anumber of technologies that have at-tracted national media attention. Three ofthe technologies were showcased in De-cember 2002 on “ABC World News To-night,” resulting in inquiries from a num-ber of companies interested in potentialcommercialization.

Two of the featured concepts wereSensorNet, which is expected to receive$3 million in funding, and AquaSentinelSM

(see sidebars). A third showcased ORNLtechnology was the boarding pass ana-lyzer, a mass spectrometer that detectstrace explosives on boarding passes toscreen for passengers that might havehandled explosives. The $180,000 detec-tor developed by Gary Van Berkel and oth-ers at ORNL is substantially faster andmore accurate than the $60,000 ion mo-bility mass spectrometer currently usedat airports.

“Ion mobility spectrometry gives a lotof false positives,” Kuliasha says. “Shoepolish and banana peels set it off. By thetime it indicates the presence of a possibleterrorist, the suspect has already gottenthrough to the airplane.”

ORNL’s boarding pass analyzer ishighly specific, sensitive, and fast, makingit worth the extra $120,000, Kuliasha says.The mass spectrometer detects and identi-fies RDX and TNT and can tell whether aperson testing positive has been around ex-plosives or has merely packed nitroglycerinmedicine for a heart condition.

The list of ORNL technolo-gies of potential interest to DHSis growing. They include theBlock II chemical biologicalmass spectrometer, the multi-functional biochip, and the“point-and-shoot” Raman inte-grated tunable sensor(RAMiTS), which can rapidlydetect and identify chemicaland biological warfareagents; frangible bulletsthat break up rather thanricochet off walls, pre-venting unwanted inju-ries to security forcesand unwanted damageto strategically valu-able property; compos-ites to make baggagecompartments in air-planes more resis-tant to damage fromexplosives; the“ H o t s p o t t e r ”hand-held moni-tor that detectsand identifies ra-diation (devel-oped in col-laboration withY-12 research-ers); and graphite foamthat conducts heat unusually well,making it potentially useful for increas-ing the comfort and productivity ofsuited-up first responders and for pro-viding cooling that would enable next-generation computers to be faster and bet-ter able to intercept and decode commu-nications between terrorist cells.

ORNL’s information technologiessuch as VIPAR, which searches for and clus-ters similar information from disparatesources on the Internet, as well as from for-eign newspapers, classified intelligence,and satellite images, could help the U.S. gov-ernment better spot trends in buying and

training patterns and other activities thatmight signal an imminent terrorist attack.

From information technologies tomass spectrometry to the detection ofweapons of mass destruction, ORNL’s na-tional security portfolio is expected to con-tinue its rapid growth. In the new environ-ment, the challenge is to stay one stepahead of our adversaries.

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As has been the case with most events that shaped world history, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

presented both opportunities and challenges to the UnitedStates. The removal of an aggressive military superpower had aprofound positive impact on America’s security and its abilityto channel resources toward domestic needs. Unfortunately,many Americans were unaware that the dissolution of the So-viet Union left behind some 1300 metric tons of weapons-us-able nuclear material, much of it in the hands of fledgling na-tion states such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Beset with a mul-titude of problems associated with building a new governmentwith new institutions, these former Soviet republics often lackedboth the security resources and diplomatic sophistication re-quired to manage their nuclear stockpiles.

In these new countries, as in the new Russian Federation,the economic chaos that accompanied political freedom pre-sented a grave security threat to the nuclear weapons stored atvarious locations. Soldiers and scientists sometimes were notpaid for months. Inadequate funds for basic operation and main-tenance led to a serious deterioration of facilities and securityprocedures. The rapid rise in each of these countries of orga-nized crime increased the likelihood that nuclear materials mightbe purchased or stolen and made available to the highest bidderon the world’s underground black market.

The United States, working through the Department of En-ergy and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA),is actively addressing the problem of preventing the prolifera-tion of nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union. Amultidisciplinary suite of technologies makes Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory ideally suited to help develop, coordinate, and imple-ment domestic and international policies designed to preventthe illegal transfer of nuclear materials and to find ways of usingthose materials for peaceful purposes.

Securing Nuclear Materials

ORNL’s efforts are led by Larry Satkowiak, deputy directorfor Nuclear Nonproliferation Programs. Satkowiak helps man-age the Material Protection, Control & Accounting program, whichworks with 80 Russian facilities. The group’s goals are to securethe weapons-usable nuclear materials, help improve safeguardsand security systems, and improve accounting systems that makeit possible to keep track of the nuclear materials.

“Our program is considered the ‘first line of defense’ inpreventing Russian weapons and weapons-usable material from‘leaking’ to rogue nations and terrorists,” Satkowiak says. “Inthe ‘second line of defense’ program, ORNL is helping Russiancustoms officials detect nuclear materials being smuggled out

of the country by providing them with radiation monitoring equip-ment and training.”

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Laboratory also fo-cused on the stockpiles of weapons-usable nuclear material,mainly highly enriched uranium (HEU), which remained in theformer republics under varying levels of protection. ORNL staffhave helped recover and transport much of these materials tomore secure locations for disposition.

In 1994 under Project Sapphire, an Oak Ridge team helpedensure that 600 kilograms of HEU were loaded safely andshipped securely from Kazakhstan to what is now the Oak RidgeY-12 National Security Complex. A few years later, under ProjectOlympus, several hundred kilograms of HEU were transferredfrom the Republic of Georgia to a processing facility in the UnitedKingdom. In 2002, ORNL staff worked with experts from NNSA,the Department of State, and the International Atomic EnergyAgency (IAEA) to safely remove and package 50 kilograms ofHEU from the Vinca Institute reactor near Belgrade, Yugosla-via. The material was transported to Russia for conversion toreactor-grade fuel.

From Bombs to Kilowatts

ORNL researchers also are developing technology and pro-viding systems to verify that HEU has been blended downinRussian Federation facilities for conversion to nuclear fuel.An ORNL-developed system monitors the down-blending of HEUto low-enriched uranium, which is then supplied to manufacturers of fuel for U.S. commercial power plants. A 20-person Oak Ridge team assists in nearly continuous“on-the-ground” monitoring of this blend-down activity.

ORNL is DOE’s lead laboratory for developingnuclear-based technologies to enable the use of sur-plus plutonium in existing reactors in the United

A LABORATORY THAT HELPED DEVELOP THE FIRST NUCLEAR WEAPONS TODAY


13Vol.36, No.2, 2003

States, Russia, and possibly Canada. “Our aim is to reduceinventories of surplus weapons-usable materials worldwide ina safe, secure, transparent, and irreversible manner,”Satkowiak says. ORNL’s Domestic Plutonium Disposition pro-gram is managing a multi-site effort to fabricate, irradiate, andtest mixed-oxide fuel containing plutonium and uranium foruse in power plants. ORNL’s Russian Plutonium Dispositionprogram manages and conducts research with Russia aimedat developing the technology needed to fabricate mixed-oxidefuels for Russian reactors.

Preventing “Brain Drain”

ORNL partners with Y-12 in two efforts to help downsizethe former Soviet Union weapons complex: the Initiatives for Pro-liferation Prevention (IPP) and the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI).IPP’s goal is to provide meaningful, sustainable, non-weapons-related work for researchers formerly engaged in weapons workwho now live in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. Sev-eral have started new businesses with help from ORNL. One suc-cessful business has developed a new method for recycling co-mingled metals, and another is producing and marketing an im-proved gas chromatograph. NCI focuses on the “closed cities” ofthe Russian weapons complex. One highly successful start-upis the ITECH security company within the city of Snezhinsk.ITECH is marketing label technologies it developed for tracking

high-value goods and materials.

Tracking Them Down

ORNL is providing technical support togovernmental organizations, such as the StateDepartment, for negotiations that would re-

duce deployed strategic nuclear warheads and provide optionsfor bilateral monitoring of warhead subassembly dismantlement.One technology being considered for monitoring is ORNL’snuclear material identification system. This interrogating radia-tion detector can confirm the presence of a warhead withoutrevealing sensitive design details.

A key component of America’s non-proliferation policy iscontrolling nuclear material and devices exported from the UnitedStates and from other nations. ORNL researchers have been re-viewing proposed exports of nuclear and nuclear dual-use equip-ment, materials, and technology. They have been assessing therisks that nuclear exports could be diverted to outlaw nations orterrorists and that exported reactors or materials could be usedto make nuclear weapons.

ORNL provides support to DOE’s International Safeguardsinitiatives. These initiatives are designed to increase the IAEA’seffectiveness and efficiency in independently assuring theinternational community that countries are complying withnonproliferation commitments. An ORNL group helps providetechnical expertise to a DOE team that has been implementinginternational safeguards at Y-12 and other DOE facilities. ORNLhelps DOE develop, test, and evaluate strengthened safeguardsmeasures for IAEA to apply globally. These measures includeORNL-developed mass spectrometer methods of determining ura-nium and plutonium concentrations in environmental samplesto detect “undeclared activities” at suspect sites.

To help prevent the smuggling of illegal nuclear materialsand weapons into our country, customs officials need radiationdetectors that are more sensitive and easier to use. Such detec-tors also would be useful to help monitor international compli-ance arms control treaties. ORNL researchers are developinggreatly improved thin-film scintillators and other radiation-sensitive materials to increase sensitivity and enhance the useof radiation detectors.

To some, these technologies represent an ironic evolutionof ORNL’s mission and priorities. Oak Ridge National Laboratorywas founded 60 years ago to end a war by helping develop aweapon of mass destruction. Today, ORNL is equally dedicatedto the cause of avoiding future wars by preventing the use ofthose same weapons.

WORKS TO PREVENT THEIR SPREAD.

13Vol.36, No.2, 2003


ORNL maysoon be

involved inan inter-national

partnershipand becomethe site for a

new fusionenergy

researchdevice.

ergy missions. He recognized the importance ofstrengthening ORNL’s partnership with thePrinceton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) indeveloping compact stellarators.”

ORNL fusion researchers have enjoyed a long-term relationship with PPPL in Princeton, New Jer-sey. In 1979 ORNL’s neutral-beam technologyachieved a record-high temperature in a PPPL fusiondevice. In the 1980s, under Milora’s leadership, pel-let fueling developed at ORNL was used for refuelingPPPL devices. Today a jewel in PPPL’s crown is theNational Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), a re-search facility based on a promising plasma confine-ment approach conceived by ORNL physicist MartinPeng, who, as director of the NSTX Research Pro-gram, leads its scientific research program.

Most ORNL-PPPL collaborations have involvedtokamaks, toroidal plasma confinement devicesshaped like a doughnut. A plasma is an extremelyhot state of matter consisting of charged heavy hy-drogen nuclei (e.g., deuterium from seawater andtritium bred in the device) and free electrons swirl-ing at very high velocities. Ideally, the plasma isconfined not by the material walls but by magneticfields, including the field produced by the plasmacurrent. Confining plasma particles long enough ata sufficiently high density would allow sustainedproduction of fusion reactions, which would pro-vide the heat needed to generate electrical power.The energy produced would exceed the energy usedto operate the device.

Among the PPPL projects involving ORNL re-searchers was the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor(TFTR), which produced a world-record 10.7 mega-watts of fusion power in 1994 using deuterium-tri-tium fuel. The focus of ORNL and PPPL toroidal re-

Fusion. The very word continues to stirexcitement and ignite debate within the scien-tific community that at times seems as intenseas the solar nuclear reaction it describes. Forthree decades, scientific and political enthusi-asm for fusion energy research has ebbed andflowed. Soaring gasoline prices and threats tooil supplies have led periodically to calls for arenewed commitment to fusion research. Un-locking the secrets of fusion energy requirespatience and sustained funding over severalyears. In a world that often demands a rapidreturn on investments, some believe that fu-sion research has never enjoyed the extendedsupport needed to develop a lasting source ofsafe, clean, and abundant energy.

As the Department of Energy’s largestenergy research laboratory, Oak Ridge NationalLaboratory has chosen to make fusion energya priority item of the Laboratory’s researchagenda. With this decision, the Laboratory hasembarked upon a multi-year journey that willrequire a significant commitment of person-nel and facilities. Those involved are aware thatfusion’s future may be as uncertain as its past,and that beyond the crest of the hill, the pathORNL has chosen is unmarked. They also be-lieve, however, that the promise and potentialof fusion energy are pointing us in the rightdirection.

“Bill Madia has played an instrumental,if not inspirational, role in revitalizing our pro-gram,” Stan Milora, director of ORNL’s FusionEnergy Division (FED), says of ORNL’s direc-tor. “He believes our fusion research contrib-utes strongly to both ORNL’s science and en-


15Vol.36, No.2, 2003

The magnetic field strength of the flux surfaceand magnet coils of the Quasi-PoloidalStellarator is shown by color coding.

search is now the NSTX, much smallerthan the TFTR and shaped like a coredapple, giving it a more compact design, andthe compact stellarator. The NSTX goal isto provide data for determining whether anext-generation spherical torus devicecould produce three times the fusion powerof TFTR at a third of the cost. The compactstellarator goal is to combine the best fea-tures of the tokamak with those of theother major confinement approach, thestellarator.

NEW DEVICE FOR ORNL?

Tokamaks require a large currentflowing in the plasma for their good con-finement properties, but this current cancause a “disruptive” loss of the plasmaenergy that can damage the tokamak andwould lead to lower efficiency in an even-tual fusion power plant. The stellaratordoes not require a large current in theplasma, but this approach would lead to avery large reactor. Two experiments areproposed to study the two variants of thecompact stellarator approach: the NationalCompact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX),under design for construction at PPPL, andthe Quasi-Poloidal Stellarator (QPS), underdesign for construction at ORNL.

FED has major responsibilities forboth experiments because of its expertisein designing innovative stellarator experi-ments, its experience operating a largestellarator experiment, and its strongstellarator theory program. ORNL is re-sponsible for the engineering design of theNCSX stellarator in partnership with PPPLunder the leadership of ORNL’s BradNelson. ORNL’s Steve Hirshman leads themulti-institutional group that developedthe computational tools and initial designof the complex magnetic field coils requiredto create the NCSX plasma configuration.

PPPL and the University of Montanaare collaborating under ORNL’s leadershipin developing the QPS concept. The com-plex magnetic field geometry of the QPSwas developed by Hirshman’s team, prin-cipally FED’s Don Spong and CSED’s Den-nis Strickler, with the help of the IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer at DOE’s Centerfor Computational Sciences at ORNL. BradNelson’s group, principally DaveWilliamson and Mike Cole, are translatingthe demanding physics design into an en-gineering design for a practical device. The

proposal is to construct QPS by 2008 inthe new ORNL multipurpose facility thatUT-Battelle plans to build near the robot-ics research building on the Clinch River.

Milora has other reasons to be opti-mistic about the future of fusion energyresearch at ORNL and in the United States.“Fusion is an attractive long-term energyoption,” he says. “Fusion energy will relyon unlimited, renewable fuel. Fuel from 50cups of seawater equals 2 tons of coal.

“Fusion will be environmentally ac-ceptable because it releases no water orair pollutants, including greenhouse gasemissions. Its small amounts of wastes willgive off low-level radioactivity, but only fora short time, posing virtually no disposalproblem.”

STEADY PROGRESS

In recent years, Milora notes, steadyprogress has been made in fusion research.Fusion power has increased by eight or-ders of magnitude, and sustained plasmatime has increased 100 times. New meth-ods have quelled turbulence in high-tem-perature plasmas, resulting in dramatic im-provements in the ability to hold plasmaheat within magnetic “bottles.” In-creases in computationalpower are leadingto better un-derstandingof plasmaphysics.

Because President Bush supports the de-velopment of technologies to stabilize at-mospheric carbon dioxide to avert unde-sirable climate changes, it is believed thatcarbon-free energy production technolo-gies should be in place by the middle ofthe century. Milora notes that the May 2001report of the National Energy Policy Devel-opment Group headed by Vice PresidentDick Cheney “recommends that the Presi-dent direct the Secretary of Energy to de-velop next-generation technology—includ-ing hydrogen and fusion.”

Recently, Ray Orbach, director ofDOE’s Office of Science, requested that theFusion Energy Sciences Advisory Commit-tee (FESAC) develop a plan for the com-mercialization of fusion energy on thePresident’s time frame. The plan, preparedby a FESAC panel chaired by PPPL’s Direc-tor Rob Goldston, outlines the steps andresources required for the operation of ademonstration fusion electric power plant(Demo) in about 35 years.

15Vol.36, No.2, 2003


To design a commercial fusion power plant that could compete economi-cally and environmentally with fossil and fission power plants, improvedmaterials are needed for the vessel and other structural components.Such a material must withstand the heat and radiation of a fusion plantoperating at temperatures up to 1000oC for maximum efficiency. Also, afew years after the fusion plant is shut down, the new material shouldbe no more radioactive than a pile of coal ash from a coal-fired powerplant. Thus, components made of this material could be disposed of le-gally by shallow land burial or eventual recycling.

During the early 1980s, austenitic stainless steel was considered theleading candidate structural material for fusion reactors. Studies pre-dicted that, after fusion neutrons bombarded this steel, it wouldemit high levels of decay heat and hazardous radioactivity longafter the plant closed. Such a “high-activation” material requiresspecial disposal.

In the mid-1980s it was decided that fusion plants, which will not pro-duce climate-altering carbon dioxide or health-altering sulfur and ni-trogen oxides, could be made even more environmentally attractive.One key was to identify “low-activation” materials that give off verylow decay heat and radioactivity after a short time.

NEXT STEP

So, what are the next steps to get our nation to a power-producing fusion reactor? FED’s Nermin Uckan, editor of thejournal Fusion Science and Technology, says fusion re-searchers believe that now is the time to build a burningplasma experiment.

One such experiment being planned is the Inter-national Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)partnership involving Europe, Canada, Japan, Russia andChina. Recently, the United States rejoined internationalnegotiations on ITER, suggesting that ORNL may somedayplay a role again in this important venture. ITER is designedto demonstrate essential fusion energy technologies in asystem that integrates physics and technology and will testkey elements required to use fusion as a practical energysource for electricity production. ITER’s engineering design,completed in July 2001, incorporates U.S. innovations andtakes advantage of recent physics developments that haveincreased confidence that the project will meet its goals.ITER will be the first device to produce a burning plasmaand to operate at a high fusion power level for such long-duration experiments.

“Assuming successful international negotiations, inabout a decade, an international coalition will bring theITER online,” Uckan says. “ITER is capable of producingat least 500 megawatts of fusion power in a steady flow upto an hour long. ITER plasma of high temperature and den-sity will be confined by superconducting magnets, producingmagnetic fields 100,000 times stronger than the earth’s magneticfield.” Should ITER not move forward, she adds, the U.S. plancalls for construction of a modest domestic burning plasma ex-periment called the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE).

Schematic of the proposed InternationalThermonuclear Experimental Reactor.


17Vol.36, No.2, 2003

Since the mid-1980s ORNL researchers have sought high-performance,reduced-activation, radiation-resistant structural materials. Steve Zinkle,leader of the Nuclear Materials Science and Technology Group in ORNL’sMetals and Ceramics Division, and his colleagues have been irradiat-ing alloy and ceramic samples with neutrons from the Laboratory’sHigh Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and evaluating their performance.

They found that the most promising low-activation fusion materialsare an ORNL-formulated ferritic steel, a vanadium alloy, and a siliconcarbide (SiC) composite developed by collaborators from ceramic com-panies and ORNL’s High Temperature Materials Laboratory. The fer-ritic steel and vanadium alloy have superior mechanical propertiesand irradiation resistance compared with commercial alloys. Unlikecommercially produced SiC ceramic composites that become substan-tially weaker during neutron irradiation, the ORNL fusion-formulatedcomposite, according to experiments at HFIR, actually becomes 5 to10% stronger after irradiation.

“Some 50 to 100 years after a fusion plant is dismantled, our reducedactivation ferritic steel would have a radioactivity level only abouttwice that of coal ash,” Zinkle says. “The vanadium alloy would de-cay to the coal ash level after 10 years. The SiC composite woulddecay to the same level after one year.”

ORNL is involved in both the ITER and FIRE studies.“ORNL members, along with other U.S. institutions, are assess-ing the new ITER design and its procurement packages,” shesays. “ORNL was a major contributor to ITER physics andplasma technologies during the early phases of the project, andORNL involvement will continue again in physics analysis, pel-let fueling, and radiofrequency heating.”

Milora serves on the U.S. Burning Plasma Program Advi-sory Committee, and Uckan serves as an international editorin compiling the Tokamak Physics Basis for ITER. Several ORNLresearchers participate in and chair International TokamakPhysics Activity groups that provide physics input to ITER. Otherparticipating institutions include PPPL; General Atomics; DOE’sLawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national labora-tories; and several universities.

Fusion researchers in Europe, Japan, Russia, and theUnited States have called for the construction of an Interna-tional Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility to test the proper-ties of structural and other materials to determine which onesshould be used in future plants. (See sidebar.) U.S. research-ers also propose the construction of a Component Test Facil-ity to test engineering structures to guide the design of futuredevices. Both facilities, if built, could be operating between2015 and 2020.

“After the burning plasma experiment completes its op-erational life, the United States will need a demonstration re-actor to show that new structural materials will hold up andthat heat can be extracted from burning plasma to generatepower,” Milora says.

“In the DOE system,” he adds, “ORNL is unique becauseof its variety of fusion-related capabilities. Our research em-

braces theory, computational simulation, experimental plasmaphysics, advanced materials, measurements of atomic physicsprocesses that occur when the plasma interacts with the ves-sel wall, robotics, nuclear database maintenance, technologiesfor energy production, and enabling technologies such asradiofrequency heating and pellet refueling.”

“Since the 1950s ORNL has helped advance fusion’ssteady progress,” Uckan says. “It takes a long time because,in this business, you have to learn to crawl and then walkbefore you can run.”

17Vol.36, No.2, 2003


A researcher scooped up some “clean” water contain ing bacteria and transferred the “bugs” to water with

a known contaminant. Now comes the difficult part: Predictinghow large groups of bacterial proteins, the workhorses in andaround each one-celled organism, will respond to chemical “sig-nals” from the contaminant.

Identifying and characterizing the molecular machines oflife—the multi-protein complexes that execute cellular functionsand govern cell form—is one of four ambitious goals of a newprogram started in 2001 by the Department of Energy’s Office ofScience. The Genomes to Life (GTL) program seeks to “achievethe most far-reaching of all biological goals—a fundamental, com-prehensive, and systematic understanding of life.”

DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmen-tal Research and the Office of Advanced Scien-tific Computing Research will manage the GTLprogram jointly. Both provide funding to ORNLresearchers, who are involved in three offive GTL projects.

Other GTL goals are to character-ize gene regulatory networks, charac-terize the functional repertoire of com-plex microbial communities in theirnatural environments at the molecu-lar level, and develop computationalmethods and capabilities to advanceunderstanding of complex biologicalsystems and predict their behavior.

BIOLOGY IN THEPOST-GENOME ERA

The GTL program followsDOE’s Human Genome Program,which contributed to a revolution-

ary scientific achievement in 2000 with completion of the draftsequence of the human genome. Draft sequences of the genomesof several bacteria, the mouse, and other organisms also havebeen published. They show the order of chemical bases makingup every gene in each organism.

Related to the Human Genome Program is the MicrobialGenome Program, started in 1994. The program’s purpose is toapply knowledge about microorganisms to help DOE achieve theagency’s missions of developing clean energy sources and pro-

tecting the environment. These programs revolutionized biologi-cal research and provided what are now common tools used inforensics, pharmaceutical design, and disease diagnosis. Know-ing the gene sequence, however, is only a first step in fully under-standing how an organism works.

The long-term goal of the GTL program is to understand,at the molecular level, how genes, proteins, and other cellularmolecules interact to carry out life’s process within and betweencells. Meeting this challenge will require teams of biological,chemical, physical, and computational scientists. Central to theprogram’s success is the development of new analytical andcomputational tools.

Michelle Buchanan, director of ORNL’s Chemical Sci-ences Division, is scientific director for GTL’s Center

for Molecular and Cellular Systems. Task leadersworking with her include Mitch Doktycz, Greg

Hurst, Steve Kennel, Mike Ramsey, and YingXu, who coordinate contributions from other

ORNL staff. They collaborate with research-ers from DOE’s Pacific Northwest NationalLaboratory (PNNL), Argonne NationalLaboratory, and Sandia National Labora-tories (SNL), as well as two universities.

“The program initially will iden-tify and analyze protein complexes intwo types of bacteria,” Buchanan says.“Protein complexes enable cellulargrowth, metabolism, replication, repair,and responses to intracellular and ex-tracellular signals, like molecules frompollutants. They are responsible for acascade of molecular processes withinand between cells. The complexes alsodictate how a cell or organism interactswith its environment.”

Editor’s note: Exploring the life sciences hasbeen a mission at Oak Ridge National Labo-ratory since the early 1950s, when research-ers sought to understand the relationshipof radiation to the human body. More than ahalf-century later, that early mission hasembarked on a new course. The destinationis a far bolder one: understanding life itself.


19Vol.36, No.2, 2003

Buchanan’s project will begin by focusing on the applicationof analytical tools to the identification and characterization of pro-tein complexes to better understand the function of cells in twomicrobes. They are the Shewanella oneidensis (which can reduceoxidized metals in solid deposits in soils) and Rhodopseudomonaspalustris (which can fix carbon monoxide or use organic moleculesas a carbon source for basic metabolism).

“We plan to set up a high-throughput system to character-ize the protein complexes in these microbes,” Buchanan says.“We will use instruments such as mass spectrometers, the lab-on-a-chip device developed at ORNL, and imaging tools.

“Our data will help our computer scientists develop mod-els so we can take shortcuts in identifying and describing pro-tein complexes in different microbes. Our eventual goal is to do abug a day.”

Researchers working with the center will develop new ca-pabilities to prepare and culture bacterial samples, do complexseparations of components of protein complexes, identify pro-teins at the molecular level using mass spectrometry, character-ize protein complexes in living cells by imaging, and applybioinformatics and computational tools to collect and interpretdata and form databases and tools for sharing by the biologicalcommunity.

Ed Uberbacher, leader of the Computational Biology Groupin ORNL’s Life Sciences Division, says analytical tools and algo-rithms will be needed to determine how proteins interact, stimu-late chemical reactions, and move materials inside and out ofcells under different conditions.

“Proteins turn genes on and off, regulating their activities,”he says. “When a bacterial cell is moved from clean to pollutedwater, proteins capture environmental signals and turn on genesthat make proteins enabling the cell to adapt to its new environ-ment. We want to characterize this cascade of changes.”

For example, in a cell exposed to a pollutant, a phosphoki-nase enzyme may attach a phosphate to a protein to activate it.

Mass spectrometry can confirm whether a protein is linked to aphosphate.

NEW CENTER FOR ORNL?

ORNL is a potential site for one of four GTL research cen-ters planned by the Office of Science. The center, called the Char-acterization and Imaging of Molecular Machines, would be an-chored to the project led by ORNL.

Oak Ridge’s chances of hosting one of the new GTL centersare improved by a robust array of supporting programs and facili-ties. ORNL’s Center for Computational Sciences would provideone of the world’s largest supercomputers capable of processing,for example, the vast amounts of data involved with protein fold-ing. The program also would be supported by two new facilities,the Center for Functional Genomics, funded by the Office of Sci-ence, and the Joint Institute for Biological Sciences, funded bythe state of Tennessee.

“If DOE awards Oak Ridge a GTL facility, it could be operat-ing in the next four to six years,” Buchanan says. “The complexwould have offices for visiting scientists, students, and staff;biopreparation and culture labs; analytical instruments; robots;imaging instruments; clusters of computers; data visualization;and networked links to supercomputers.”

Synechococcus Sp cyanobacteria take up carbon dioxidefrom the atmosphere and store it in the ocean. But what limitsthe ability of these bacteria to fix carbon in many areas of theocean? To answer these and other questions, another GTL projectwill combine experimental and computational simulation toolsfor high-throughput characterization of protein complexes. Theresearchers also will try to identify proteins in regulatory path-ways and determine how they interact using gene microarray data.

The leaders of the project, which involves collaborators fromDOE national labs, universities, and research institutes, are GrantHeffelfinger of SNL and Al Geist of ORNL’s Computer Science andMathematics Division. Collaborating computer scientists fromORNL include Phil Locascio, Victor Olman, Nagiza Samatova,Manesh Shah, and Dong Xu.

How do gene regulatory networks behave in microbes inresponse to waste sites contaminated with metals and radionu-clides? This question will be tackled by another GTL project in-volving ORNL. DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory leadsthis project, which also has collaborators from three universitiesand a corporation. Jizhong Zhou of ORNL’s Environmental Sci-ences Division is using microarrays to help provide data onchanges in gene expression under differing environmental con-ditions for use in computer models. The goal is to rapidly predictgene and protein changes in microbes as they encounter variousstresses.

Like the Portuguese explorers of the 16th century, ORNLresearchers are sailing into uncharted waters, excited by the dis-coveries that surely lie ahead.

Bob Hettich prepares to study bacterial proteins usinga high-performance Fourier transform ion cyclotronresonance mass spectrometer.

19Vol.36, No.2, 2003


In April 2000, ORNL entered into

a historic agreement withthe state of Tennessee. Inexchange for state fundingfor four new facilities at

ORNL, UT-Battelle commit-ted to assisting the state in

creating at least 10 new start-up companies each year using

technologies developed at theLaboratory. UT-Battelle’s commit-

ment included providing $1 millionto a new TenneSeed venture capi-tal fund and another $100,000 an-nually for a new Center for Entre-preneurial Growth designed tomentor scientists wishing to com-mercialize their research.

ORNL’s technology transferprogram is headed by Alex Fischer,who came to Oak Ridge after serving in

state government as deputy governorand commissioner of Economic

and Community Development.In an interview with the Re-

view, Fischer reflected onhow and why ORNL is al-locating substantial re-sources to technologytransfer through itsOffice of TechnologyTransfer and EconomicDevelopment.

Q: UT-Battelle has helped spur the creation of 30new companies in the past three years. What are thedrivers behind this effort?

The federal government has made significant investmentsin Oak Ridge for national purposes. We have an opportunity toleverage those investments as an important economic driver forour region and, in fact, our country. Creating new companies basedon ORNL technologies and transferring these technologies to com-panies are encouraged and supported by DOE, and are a key partof the UT-Battelle culture and philosophy. It also makes greatbusiness sense for the Lab’s research and development agenda.

ORNL has added anew priority to the

Laboratory agenda:Moving technology

from the benchtop tothe marketplace.


A:

21Vol.36, No.2, 2003

Q: How does technology transferhelp the Lab?

It helps us bring more work into theLaboratory, and income created through the

licensing of ORNL technologiesis reinvested in R&D activities.Much of our commercializationwork has a direct relationship tocooperative research and devel-opment agreements (CRADAs)and work-for-others projects. Inthe history of tech transfer atORNL, almost $1.4 billion hasbeen brought in throughCRADAs and work-for-otherscontract mechanisms—that’s ahuge economic driver.

Q: How are technologytransfer efforts affected byORNL’s relationship withthe Battelle Memorial In-stitute in Columbus, Ohio,and the University of Ten-nessee?

Battelle was set up as anonprofit charitable trust byGordon Battelle to “furthermankind through science andtechnology.” It has a strongcommercialization legacy, in-cluding the development and li-censing of the office copier andcompact disc technologies. Bycombining Battelle with thestate’s flagship land-grant insti-tution, we have created an or-ganization with a culture verydifferent from that of previousORNL contractors. Previouscontractors did technology

transfer because it was in the contract.UT-Battelle does it because we feel it’s theright thing to do, offering a tremendousopportunity for growing the Laboratory.

It’s part of the Battelle legacy, and it’s in-creasingly part of the UT mindset. Dr. JohnShumaker, UT’s new president, is creatinga private research foundation that will ag-gressively take advantage of theuniversity’s technology portfolio. The UT-Battelle combination creates a great envi-ronment for tech transfer at the Lab.

Q: Do Battelle and UT benefit fi-nancially from ORNL inventions?

Not individually, but I hope that the50/50 partnership of UT-Battelle, LLC,does. Profit is a good word, and I hope wemake lots of it. When we do, all profitsare reinvested back into furthering theLaboratory agenda. That’s good for theLab, DOE, UT, Battelle and the economy—everyone wins. We need to think more likea business and not be afraid to say profit.Profit isn’t a dirty word.

Q: How is this money used?

Some of it is put into a technologymaturation fund. We have a great oppor-tunity to plow money back into the fur-ther development of ORNL technologiesthat we believe have the best chance ofbeing commercialized. Targeted reinvest-ments could get these technologies to themarketplace more quickly and further theLab’s R&D agenda. We’re currently design-ing a process to prioritize our activitiesand investment in these areas.

Q: Does this mean your officei n f l u e n c e sORNL’s R&Dagenda?

We nevershould drive theresearch agendaat the Lab.That’s not ourjob. ORNL’s

managers and funding sources, spon-sors, and customers direct the research.We do, however, want to share informa-tion with researchers about our market

21Vol.36, No.2, 2003

A:

A:

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analysis that provides good information on what the privatemarketplace says about the alignment between customer needsand our R&D. Our research community deserves to know howmuch demand exists for different technologies. Our scientistsand engineers certainly are smart enough to know what to dowith that information.

Q: How does your office do market analysis?

My goal is to improve our market analysis capabilities.Our staff has been reorganized to put a heavier emphasis onbusiness analysis. We have a new partnership with UT’s masterof business administration program. We will sponsor four MBAstudents each year to do early-stage market analysis of inven-tion disclosures that come to our office. I have asked MarkReeves and Margaret Spurlin to head an in-house intelligenceteam devoted to market analysis. They will supervise our MBAteams. When we need more sophisticated analysis, we will lookto outside consultants. We have a great resource at Battelle inColumbus, where staff have years of expertise in this area. Weneed to tap our partners’ capabilities to further our work in Oak

Ridge. We will share this market intelligence with our research-ers as an additional data point.

Q: How can you do market analysis in a falter-ing economy?

If ever there was a time to do it, now is that time. I thinkour economy is poised for a great rebound and I want ORNL to bepart of it. Innovation historically drives great gains in the economy.As we deploy world-class technology, and ORNL technology isworld-class and second to none, I want to ensure that we deployworld-class market analysis. That should enhance our chancesfor success in commercializing ORNL technologies.

Q: How are the 30 companies faring in today’seconomy?

Our companies are doing remarkably well. What a toughtime for UT-Battelle to come in three years ago. Around that time,the dot-com and technology bubbles burst and venture capitalevaporated. The national and local economies in the past three

Alex Fischer’s technology transfer program is aggressively developing a commer-cialization plan for the licensing of ORNL’s hybrid solar lighting technology

(using device shown at left), now being demonstrated at the NationalTransportation Research Center. The hybrid lighting process, devel-

oped under the leadership of Jeff Muhs of the Engineering Sci-ence and Technology Division, allows the sun’s rays to light a

room directly by using optical fibers to bring sunlight inside,and in the future, indirectly by harnessing the remaining

portion of sunlight (mainly infrared energy) to generateelectricity that can power the room’s light bulbs. ORNLand 10 companies have formed the Hybrid Lighting Part-nership to develop hybrid solar lighting systems.Fischer would like to see an integrated system com-mercialized for use in schools, offices, and major re-tail outlets where studies show that natural sunlighthas an advantage over traditional lighting. “Electriclighting is the single largest consumer of electricityin commercial buildings,” Muhs says. “If we can re-place electricity with energy from the sun as effi-

ciently as possible using hybrid lighting, our nationwill be less dependent on imported energy sources,

we’ll have cleaner air, and businesses will have betterlighting and save money.”


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years have not been favorable for technol-ogy companies. But we made a commit-ment to create 10 companies a year to pro-mote local and regional economic devel-opment. We have created 30 in three years,and the success rate has been good de-spite the economy. This year we are gradu-ating a couple of companies from the Cen-ter for Entrepreneurial Growth, which ispart of Tech 2020 located in CommercePark in Oak Ridge. Through our partner-ship with the CEG, we create the rightenvironment and infrastructure and poola variety of resources—advice, businessplanning, counseling, funding, and physi-cal space—to help each company succeed.The challenge is not just to create a com-pany but to help it grow and mature. Ifinvestors think it is smart to support anORNL technology-based spin-off com-pany, there is access through Tech 2020to more than $60 million in capitalthrough the TenneSeed family of funds.We must use this great asset at ORNL forthe economic benefit of the region.

Q:What are your office’sother activities?

We try to have a diversified portfo-lio. We don’t just do small start-ups. Weare working to license our technologiesto mid-size companies and Fortune 500companies like GM. Recent examples arethe lab-on-a-chip device licensed to Cali-per Technologies and graphite foam li-censed to Poco Graphite. We also are in-volved in protection of our intellectualproperty, which includes invention disclo-sures and patented, copyrighted, andtrademarked technologies. Historically,our patent attorneys and agents have donea good job on the legal analysis and pro-tection of our intellectual property. Forthe future we are looking at “bundling”technologies—offering a company a suiteof patents covering similar technologiesfrom ORNL, UT, Battelle, and any of ourcore universities. Another concept beingpursued is contractor-funded technologytransfer in which UT-Battelle funds tech-nology transfer efforts in exchange forcertain rights to the intellectual property.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand pictures that look alikecan make a semiconductor yield engineer say one word—“Eureka.”

Ken Tobin, Regina Ferrell, Shaun Gleason, and Tom Karnowski, all of ORNL’sEngineering Science and Technology Division, have developed an automatedimage search engine that reduces the time yield engineers spend sifting throughnumerous microscope images looking for the source of a manufacturing prob-lem. This award-winning automated image retrieval (AIR) system helps engi-neers quickly find images showing defects similar in size, color, texture, or shapein layers of computer and cell-phone chips during their manufacture. One suchdefect could be a short or break in a transistor wire caused by particles acciden-tally released by a robot handler or scanning electron microscope.

AIR helps engineers learn more quickly how to ramp up yield so their compa-nies can ship a higher percentage of their chips to customers, increasing theirprofits and reducing waste. A yield improvement of only 0.1% can save theindustry $150 million annually.

“We demonstrated in a manufacturing environment that we can search 80,000images and find 128 similar defect images in 7 seconds,” Tobin says. “Our en-gine should retrieve similar images in less than 20 seconds from a database ofone million images.”

AIR started as an ORNL seed money project proposed by Tobin’s team in 1998. In1999 the team applied for two patents onAIR. In 2000, the first tests of AIR wereperformed on semiconductor image dataat two leading semiconductor companiesthrough a contract with InternationalSEMATECH in Austin, Texas.

Applied Materials, Inc., of Santa Clara, Cali-fornia, which makes chip manufacturingand inspection equipment, entered into amulti-year cooperative research and devel-opment agreement with Tobin’s group. Af-ter a successful proof of concept, the AIRtechnology was licensed to AppliedMaterials. The ORNL software product wasintegrated into the company’s DefectSource Identifier product (DSITM-AIR).

The DSITM -AIR product received an R&D100 Award from R&D magazine in 2002as one of the 100 top innovations of theyear. For this work, Tobin’s team also re-ceived the ORNL Director’s Award, and in2003, a Federal Laboratory ConsortiumSoutheast Region and National award.

The AIR project has brought to ORNL $2.6million from International SEMATECH andApplied Materials. Negotiations are underway with several companies interested inlicensing AIR. The royalty stream to ORNLfor AIR could exceed $1.5 million.

Ken Tobin shows images of similar chipdefects captured by scanning electronmicroscopes and retrieved by the AIRsoftware engine for yield analysis.

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A dvanced overhead cables strung between transmission towers making up

the U.S. power grid could carry up to three timesthe electrical current of today’s power lines.What’s more, they will not sag like conventionalconductors when heated by excess currentloads on hot days, as happened in the majorpower outage in August 1996 in the northwest-ern United States.

Advanced transmission lines will beneeded because the U.S. demand for power isexpected to rise by 25% in the next 10 years,when environmental and aesthetic concernsmay delay further construction of towers andtransmission right of ways (ROWs). Usingavailable technology to build new ROWs andtower systems will cost well over $1 mil-lion per mile. Upgrading lines in today’sROWs with advanced conductors will sig-nificantly reduce the overloaded electricalinfrastructure at a fraction of the cost.

ORNL and the Tennessee Valley Au-thority are working together to test ad-vanced cables, developed jointly by 3M andORNL, that could replace conventionalaluminum-conductor, steel-reinforced(ACSR) power lines. A memorandum ofunderstanding between ORNL, the De-partment of Energy, and TVA was signedat the March 25, 2003, dedication of theNational Transmission Technology Re-search Center at ORNL. This facility willtest advanced powerlines strung betweenTVA poles alongOld Bethel ValleyRoad, aswell as

other advanced transmission technologies at ORNLand East Tennessee Technology Park.

At the dedication, TVA Chairman GlennMcCullough noted that transmission-line conges-tion threatens U.S. energy security and raises con-sumer electric bills unnecessarily. “We have a prob-lem that we can—that we must—solve,” McCulloughsaid. Gerald Boyd, manager of DOE’s Oak Ridge Op-erations, added, “Never before has there been suchan important need for transmission research.”

Today’s overhead ACSR transmission lines con-sist of aluminum conductor strands wrapped arounda steel core, which tends to corrode in air. Becausethe weight and properties of the steel make these cablesvulnerable to stretching when overheated, 3M and ORNLinvestigated alternative materials. As part of a coopera-tive research and development agreement with ORNL,3M developed a composite consisting of a core of 3MNextel 650 ceramic fibers embedded in an alloy of alu-minum and zirconium (added to make the matrix lesslikely to deform at higher temperatures). Vinod Sikkaand Evan Ohriner, both of ORNL’s Metals and Ceram-ics Division, helped 3M improve the quality and pro-duction of the composite material.

John Stovall, Tom Rizy, and Roger Kisner, allof ORNL’s Engineering Science and Technology Di-vision, have been testing 3M’s advanced cable ma-terial to determine how well it holds up over timeand through many thermal cycles of current flow.They seek to determine whether the new conduc-tor can handle higher temperatures of up to240oC for emergencies and 210oC for normaloperation without sagging more than ACSRcables at 100oC. A few months of testing is de-signed to simulate the stresses of years ofnormal operation. The ORNL and 3M teamsare working to develop algorithms that willpredict how much sag will result from spe-cific temperature changes in the new cable.

Advanced composite conductor linescan be kept in inventory and put up fasterthan conventional lines to replace anACSR line that has been knocked down.Power can be restored quickly in an emer-gency by stringing the new, lighter linesbetween temporary towers that are far-ther apart than regular towers.

Advanced cables can provide alifeline for our nation’s aging powergrid, boosting our energy security.

In cooperation with 3M and TVA,ORNL has helped develop

advanced power transmissioncables that could improve the

nation’s electricity distribution.


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An array of DNA-modified carbonnanofibers couldprompt cells toproduce a neededprotein.

Living cells impaled on carbon nanofibers. In background a colony of cellspenetrated earlier by DNA-modified nanofibers express green fluorescent protein.

An ORNL group is finding a way to get under your skin and coax your cells into pumping

out a gene product that’s good for you. The researchershope to make a tiny patch dotted with painlessnanofibers that would needle your cells into becom-ing a specialized protein factory.

Imagine you are diagnosed with an acute bac-terial infection that, if left untreated, could cause asevere peptic ulcer and ultimately gastric cancer. Youmight be prescribed a course of antibiotics and toldthat if you miss even one dose, the treatment wouldbe useless. What if you could simply wear a patchthat coaxed your own cells, already intimatelycoupled with your circulatory system, to producea blood-borne peptide that destroys the invadingmicrobe? Ideally, you could wear the patch dur-ing treatment and remove it when the infection iseradicated, thus eliminating pills and the poten-tial for missed doses.

This mode of gene therapy might be possibleusing a recently demonstrated drug and DNA deliv-ery technique. Harnessing vertically aligned arraysof carbon nanofibers as parallel injectors, research-ers in ORNL’s Molecular Scale Engineering andNanoscale Technologies (MENT) Group and Life Sci-ences Division have demonstrated massively paralleldelivery of macromolecules to groups of mammalian cells.They have shown that living cells impaled by the nanofiberstake up the small molecules of a fluorescent dye, propidiumiodide, from the surrounding solution. Shortly after fiber pen-etration, however, the cells can reseal and exclude the dye.Larger molecules, such as gene-containing DNA, may be deliveredby physically impaling cells upon DNA-modified nanofibers.

“The DNA can either be adsorbed onto the nanofiber tips orlinked by covalent bonding,” says Tim McKnight, a researcher inthe MENT Group in the Engineering Scienceand Technology Division. “In both cases, whenfibers are introduced into cells, the deliveredDNA can be expressed, even when it remainstethered to the nanofiber scaffold.” In an ORNLseed-money-funded demonstration, expres-sion resulted in the production of a green fluo-rescent protein within targeted cells.

With this technique, the introducedgenes can be tethered to the nanofiber scaf-fold, potentially allowing them to be with-drawn from the manipulated cells when thegene products are no longer required. Uponremoval, the cells would revert to their nor-mal behavior, and the temporary geneticchange imparted to those cells could not be inherited.

“We are seeking funding to explore the use of this tech-nique for controlled delivery of genes to tissue, including poten-

tial delivery through skin,” says McKnight. “It could provide awhole new approach to gene therapy.”

The aim of gene therapy has been permanent gene inser-tion to provide missing genetic machinery to cure a patient of a

specific disease or deficiency. However, per-manent insertion can cause undesired sideeffects, as recently reported for retroviral-based gene therapy patients in France. Prob-lems arise when delivered genes insert intoand disrupt other necessary genetic ele-ments within the cell. As such, gene therapynormally is limited to patients with life-threatening conditions.

“The use of scaffolded genes might re-duce the potential for unwanted insertion andprovide a potential control mechanism to re-turn patients to their original condition if nec-essary,” McKnight says. Although this ap-proach will not achieve permanent changes

sought through conventional gene therapy, the controllable natureof fiber-mediated delivery may increase the safety and potential useof gene-based therapies to treat non-life-threatening conditions.

25Vol.36, No.2, 2003


A radiation source the size of a ballpoint-pen clip has been shrunk to the diameter of a ballpoint-pen tip, a

feat of miniaturization that could mark a major step in combat-ing cancerous tumors previously deemed untreatable. This en-capsulated wire-like source containing ORNL-produced cali-fornium-252 (252Cf) was developed by researchers from the Labo-ratory and Isotron, Inc., of Alpharetta, Georgia, under a coopera-tive research and development agreement.

252Cf, a neutron-emitting radioisotope produced at ORNL’sHigh Flux Isotope Reactor by neutron bombardment of curium,is the heart of Isotron’s neutron brachytherapy system. This treat-ment regimen permits physicians to deliver a highly concentrateddose of neutrons directly to the tumor. Neutron brachytherapyhas proved particularly useful against cancers that are resistantto treatments with photons and gamma rays, which do not killcancer cells as effectively as do neutrons.

Cancers most resistant to the conventional treatments in-clude brain tumors, melanoma, sarcoma, certain types of pros-tate and cervical cancer, locally advanced breast cancer, and can-cer of the head, neck, and mouth. Since 1969 252Cf has beenused to treat more than 5500 patients with cervical, mouth, esoph-ageal, head, and neck cancers from the United States, Japan,England, Russia, Czechoslovakia, China, and Lithuania. A recent

The radioisotope californium-252 in a miniature source designed at ORNL may someday helpdestroy often-fatal brain tumors and other cancers, too.

study in the Czech Republic showed that the survival rate afterfive years for cervical cancer patients treated with 252Cf was sig-nificantly higher than it was for patients treated with gamma ra-diation only.

“We are particularly hopeful that this miniature cali-fornium source can greatly prolong the lives of patients suffer-ing from glioblastoma multiforme, the most common primarybrain tumor that is often fatal within six months after diagno-sis,” says co-developer Rodger Martin of ORNL’s Nuclear Sci-ence and Technology Division. “This tumor is extremely resis-tant to conventional forms of treatment. Less than 1% of pa-tients having this tumor survive five years. Our advance in neu-tron brachytherapy will enable unprecedented treatment of thisand almost 20 other types of cancer.”

ORNL’s main contribution was the miniaturization of theneutron source. After three years of effort, Martin and his col-leagues shrank the source diameter by more than half, to a littleover a millimeter. The source is actually a palladium wire con-taining a few percent 252Cf. A barely visible piece of the wire iswelded into a cylindrical metal alloy capsule less than a centi-meter long. The capsule can be inserted into a catheter, a hol-low tube inserted into the tumor or residual tumor cells aftersurgery. Because of this development, tumors that previously

Saed Mirzadeh says that part of his job at ORNL involves“milking a cow.” The “milk” is radioactive actinium-

225 (225Ac) extracted from thorium-229 (229Th), a decay productof uranium-233 (233U). The actinium decays to bismuth-213 (213Bi),which appears to be prolonging human lives as part of a “lastresort” experimental blood cancer therapy.

The “cow” is a stock of 229Th taken from ORNL’s 233U stock-pile in the center of its old campus. The fissionable 233U wasproduced at a Hanford, Washington, reactor using natural 232Thas neutron targets as early as the 1950s. Back then, when nuclearpower was being developed, it was thought that natural uraniumcontaining 235U was scarce. So, researchers developed thoriumtargets for the production of 233U fuel. Large uranium depositswere later discovered in New Mexico, so the concern about a ura-nium shortage evaporated. In the 1960s some of Hanford’s 233Uwas shipped to ORNL for nuclear fuel breeding experiments atthe Molten Salt Reactor.

After joining ORNL’s Nuclear Medicine Group in 1989,Mirzadeh looked for opportunities to develop sources of alphaparticles for cancer therapy. An alpha particle, which consists oftwo protons and two neutrons, penetrates only a few cell diam-eters in tissue.

In 1995 Brad Patton received an inquiry from a private Dutchcompany about purchasing 2 kilograms of ORNL waste left from

An ORNL hot cellwhere actinium-225 is extracted

from thorium-229,a decay productof uranium-233.


27Vol.36, No.2, 2003

could be treated only with conventional pho-ton and gamma brachytherapy or with exter-nal beam treatments can now be bombardedwith neutrons.

Martin’s ORNL co-workers devised amethod of attaching the capsule to a position-ing cable that would allow medical personnel to de-liver the radiation dose to the target, avoiding healthytissue. The ORNL team modified a commercial weldingsystem for miniature capsules and overcame several otherfabrication challenges that ultimately allowed productionof the miniature sources in hot cells that shield operatorsfrom the radiation.

Isotron researchers also developed a remote, automatedstorage and delivery system that uses images of the tumor toguide the insertion of the catheter and then the neutron sourceto ensure patient safety and the best medical results. Accordingto Steve Jacobs, acting chief executive officer of Isotron, clinicaltrials using the miniature 252Cf source will begin after Isotronreceives Food and Drug Administration approval.

Although the new source is smaller, the probability thatpatients with often-fatal brain cancers will live longer is becom-ing larger.

233U processing about 30 years ago. Patton asked Mirzadeh todetermine if the waste material might have economic value. In1996, Mirzadeh, Patton, Ken Given, and Steve Kennel receivedinternal funding from the Laboratory Directed Research and De-velopment (LDRD) Program to study the 233U waste.

“Our LDRD mission included extracting 229Th from the 233Uwaste material and residual uranium,” he says. “Our second goalwas to develop actinium-bismuth (225Ac-213Bi) generators for inter-nal use (229Th decays to 225Ac), and our third objective was to showthat alpha particles from 213Bi could be used to treat cancer in mice.

Rose Boll, a postdoctoral scientist, developed the processingchemistry for the project. Mirzadeh modified a radium-lead-bismuthgenerator developed at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, pro-ducing a hand-held 225Ac-213Bi generator. Working with Mirzadeh,Kennel attached 213Bi to antibodies he made that target blood ves-sels in lung tumors in mice. The injected bismuth’s alpha particlesdamaged the blood vessels, possibly reducing the tumor’s nutrientsupply. Kennel found he could prolong the lives of mice with im-planted lung tumors using 213Bi-antibody complexes.

David Scheinberg, who heads leukemia research at the Me-morial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, gave a talk atORNL. In discussions with Mirzadeh, Scheinberg indicated hisinterest in a source of 213Bi for attachment to antibodies he wasdeveloping for human patients.

By 1997 Sloan-Kettering had started clinical trials for 10patients dying of acute myeloid leukemia despite radiation andchemotherapy treatments. Their white blood cells were prolifer-ating uncontrollably. Mirzadeh supplied Scheinberg with an ac-tinium-bismuth generator and a few millicuries of 225Ac, shippedby an overnight express service. At Sloan-Kettering, the 225Ac,which has a half-life of 10 days, is loaded into the top of thegenerator. A dilute acid solution is forced through it every threehours, selectively removing the decay product, 213Bi, which loseshalf its radioactivity in 46 minutes.

The 213Bi is attached to an antibody that targets the misbe-having white blood cells after the 213Bi-antibody complex is in-jected in the patients. Recently, Sloan Kettering began the PhaseII clinical trial, and so far two patients have gone into completeremission.

In 2002 ORNL’s largest shipment of 225Ac was made. Fromthe last campaign in 2002, about 60% of the 100 millicuriesshipped was delivered to Sloan-Kettering for patient studies. Therest went to a number of other facilities for animal studies.

At $1500 per millicurie, the therapeutic isotope programat ORNL is now self-supporting. “We expect to sell $1 millionworth of actinium in 2003,” Mirzadeh says. For dangerously illpatients, ORNL’s “milk” is worth a million.

ORNL is the only major source of the radioisotope bismuth-213, used to extend the lives of leukemia patients.

If inserted in abrain tumor,ORNL's miniaturecalifornium-252neutron source shouldshrink the cancer andspare healthy cells.

27Vol.36, No.2, 2003


ORNL’s most recent recipients of Presidential Early CareerAwards for Scientists and Engineers are Ian M. Anderson, forhis leading-edge research in the development of electron beammicrocharacterization techniques and their application to mate-rials research and development; Thomas V. Cianciolo, for inno-vative definition of a unique measurement program for an ex-periment on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (at BrookhavenNational Laboratory) and leadership in organizing and designinga principal detector that has been implemented at the facility;and Jizhong Zhou, for pioneering research and leadership infunctional genomics and microbial ecology through applicationof genomic technologies to address complex environmental prob-lems.

Carlos Reinhold, Thomas Thundat, and Mohana Yethirajhave been elected fellows of the American Physical Society.

ORNL received two of five excellence awards and an honor-able mention award from the nine-state Southeast Region Fed-eral Laboratory Consortium, which represents 40 federal labora-tories. Winners of Excellence in Technology Transfer awards were“Automated Image Retrieval System for Semiconductor Yield Im-provement,” by Regina Ferrell, Shaun Gleason, Bruce Jatko,Tom Karnowski, Ken Tobin, and Bobby Whitus, and “CarbonComposite Bipolar Plate,” by Ted Besmann, Tim Burchell, JohnHenry Jr., and James Klett. Honorable mention went to “Ex-pression Data Clustering Analysis and Visualization Resource(EXCAVATOR),” by Dong Xu, Ying Xu, and Victor Olman.

Because of the effectiveness of their protein structure pre-diction software, Ying Xu, Dongsup Kim, Dong Xu, Juntao Guo,Manesh Shah, Sergei Passovets, and Kyle Ellrott placed 5th ina field of 150 in the fifth Critical Assessment of Techniques forProtein Structure Prediction Experiment, called CASP5. ORNLwas the top-placing Department of Energy national laboratory inthis international competition.

Robert J. Harrison, the principal architect of the North-west Computational Chemistry Software (NWChem), received theIEEE Computer Society’s 2002 Sidney Fernbach Award.

Man H. Yoo and Chong Fu have received the Minerals,Metals & Materials Society’s Champion H. Mathewson Award.

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center atORNL recently received an appreciation award from Ray Orbach,director of DOE’s Office of Science, congratulating DOE’s “pre-mier center for global change data and information” on its 20thyear. The inscription says that CDIAC “set the standard for qual-ity-assuring and documenting key global-change data bases andprovided this information to a diverse user community of research-ers, educators, students, government and corporate officials, themedia, and the interested lay public.”

Sergei Kalinin and Maria Varela del Arco have been namedEugene P. Wigner Fellows. Kalinin also received the Ross CoffinPurdy Award from the American Ceramic Society for making avaluable contribution to ceramic technical literature.

ORNL Corporate Fellow David Greene has received a life-time appointment as a National Associate of the National Acad-emies (the National Academy of Science, National Academy ofEngineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Coun-cil). This appointment recognizes his “extraordinary work andservice to the National Academies in advising the governmentand the public on matters of science, technology, and health.”

Ian M. Anderson hasreceived two major awards

recently. He was a recipient of aPresidential Early Career Award for Scientists

and Engineers for his development of electronbeam microcharacterization techniques and theiruse in understanding and improving materials.He also received the 1998 Burton Medal from theMicroscopy Society of America, which goesannually to a young scientist who has made“distinguished contributions to the field of micro-scopy and microanalysis.” Anderson is a worldleader in the development of electron beam micro-analysis, including spectrum imaging methodsand techniques for the statistical analysis ofresulting large data sets. His advancement of the“atomic location by channeling enhancedmicroanalysis” (ALCHEMI) technique has helpedscientists explain how elemental additions tointermetallic alloys partition among crystallattice sites, thereby improving alloy propertiessuch as strength and ductility.


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