National Labs -- radiological connection

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

Having thought some about Melissa's comment:

A good deal of research into radioactive materials is done at the national
laboratories.  In particular, almost all plutonium chemistry, and a good
deal of other actinide chemistry, is done at national laboratories, in part
because many of these laboratories are already equipped to handle these
materials and because they have attracted many actinide chemists as staff
members.  Perhaps this should be done in the private sector, but most such
research does not yield an immediate usable (let alone profitable) result,
and private sector companies are reluctant to spend money on risky ventures,
for good reason.

Over the years, government-funded laboratories have produced a lot of good
research which has eventually found both use and salability (e.g., DARPANET,
exhaust emission controls on cars).  Even the work I do, and did at
Sandia -- assessing risk of transporting radioactive materials -- uses a
program and code developed at a national laboratory, with DOE funding, that
is now heavily used in the civilian nuclear power reactor world.

In 1960, as a graduate assistant, I set up one of the first radiochemistry
teaching laboratories in the U. S.  It was funded entirely by the federal
government.  My postdoctoral fellowship (1963-64) was funded by the AEC.
Finally, working at Sandia I have been able to learn an enormous amount
about radioactive materials that would have been unavailable to me as a
professor at a second-string university scraping for grant money.

Where is this leading?  The national lab system is, as has been pointed out,
dying, and with it go a very large number of careers in science, both
existing and potential, and particularly in the science of radioactive
materials.  My own suggestion (but who am I?  nobody) would be to separate
the national labs from DOE funding and oversight, and make them an
independent consortium that acts as the first line of scientific support for
the entire U. S. government.   OK there are problems and this is a
complicated business, but the suggestion is no more facile than "let the
private sector do it."

Thanks for the soapbox, and Melissa, I tried to make it relevant.

Ruth F. Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com




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