BUDGET REQUEST Dr. TEEM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you and the committee today to discuss our fiscal year 1974 budget request for the physical research program. This is the first year that I have had this privilege. For the past 12 years you have heard very able testimony in support of this program from Dr. Paul W. McDaniel, former Director of the Division of Physical Research. I am pleased to testify in defense of the AEC budget requested for this program, because the visits I have made recently to most of the Commission's major laboratories. have convinced me that the combination of research facilities and scientific competence supported under this program constitutes a unique national resource for addressing many of the important and urgent technological and scientific problems confronting the Nation today. There are many exciting scientific prospects ahead in the coming year, and I am confident that the budget which we are recommending to you is well balanced and will provide the necessary funds toward realizing these prospects. FUNDING SUMMARY If I may show the first chart, which summarizes our program. Our total request for operating expenses is $250 million, which represents an increase of $9.2 million over the current fiscal year 1973 estimate of $240.8 million. A comparison of fiscal year 1973 and fiscal 1974 funding by major budget category is also shown in the first chart. [The chart follows:] PLANT AND CAPITAL EQUIPMENT OBLIGATIONS Our request for capital equipment funds, as shown on chart II, totals $35.4 million. This represents a decrease of $20.2 million from the current fiscal year 1973 estimate of $55.6 million. Included in the request is $9.3 million for computers, of which $8.7 million is for procurement of a major central scientific computer system for the Brookhaven National Laboratory; $15 million is to assist in providing the initial complement of experimental equipment required for research utilization of the National Accelerator Laboratory, at Batavia, Ill. The remaining $11.1 million of capital equipment funds is to provide our scientists with the tools necessary to carry out the planned research program. [The chart follows:] As is also shown on the second chart, our request for construction obligations amounts to $18.3 million, of which $10.2 million is required to complete construction of the 200 GeV accelerator facility at the National Accelerator Laboratory. Specifically, these funds will assure completion and availability of planned experimental areas which will determine the ultimate productivity of the Laboratory. I am pleased to report to you that the 200-GeV accelerator is now operating regularly at 300 billion electron volts and the plan is to make this the normal operating energy in the future. On December 14, 1972, a beam energy of 400 GeV was achieved and some preliminary experiments performed. Within the next few days the Laboratory will undertake a more extended run at 400 billion volts. This will allow checking on power system loading and performance of some more definitive experiments at this energy. While most of the operating time is still devoted to increasing beam intensity, and to improving reliability and extraction efficiency, an average of about 50 to 60 hours per week of beam time is now being utilized for initial high-energy physics experiments. We remain confident that the project will be completed on schedule and within the original cost estimate of $250 million; $2.9 million is requested for a computer building at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. This will provide adequate housing and fire protection for the laboratory's central scientific computer system, which will be valued at about $18 million by the end of fiscal year 1974. The remaining $5.2 million includes $2.3 million for accelerator improvement projects and $2.9 million for general plant projects. At this time, I would like to discuss each of our budget categories in some detail, starting with high-energy physics program. Senator MONTOYA. Would you stop right there so I can ask you this question. Dr. TEEM. Yes, sir. Senator MONTOYA. Now the physical research program is extremely technical. Would you explain what it involves so we laymen can understand it as you go along with your testimony? Dr. TEEM. Right. The program is involved with a broad spectrum of research in the physical sciences, including high-energy physics, the exploration of the basic structure of the particles of matter. The high energy physics program is defined in terms of the energy with which we probe the structure of matter or the structure of the basic particles the protons, the neutrons, the other particles of nature. For energies above a billion volts we have the high energy physics program, and this represents the largest single component in the physical research program. We also have medium energy physics in which the energy of the probing particle varies from approximately 50 million volts up to a billion volts. That includes the work such as we are doing with the Clinton P. Anderson Meson Physics Facility. The low energy physics program includes nuclear physics at energies below 50 million volts. That includes a broad range of activities in atomic and classical physics, including some limited work in geophysics and the production of separated stable isotopes that we can use in physics research programs. There is also a program on mathematics and computer sciences, which is part of the program. The chemistry program is divided between nuclear chemistry, radiation chemistry, and a number of other activities in physical chemistry, in engineering-type chemistry activities, and also a program of providing the research community with radioactive isotopes, particularly the heavy elements-the transplutonium elements-and then there is a very important program on metallurgical and material sciences. PROGRAM BENEFITS Senator MONTOYA. Would you give me a few examples of benefits which we have derived from this program and what kinds of benefits do you anticipate from this program in the future? Dr. TEEM. The benefits are very considerable, in my opinion, Mr. Chairman, and they range the full spectrum of providing the Nation with new options, new opportunities, to fulfill the technological needs of the Nation. One of the most recent of such things that has come out is the controlled thermonuclear research program which Dr. Hirsch will be discussing with you later this afternoon. This is, you might say, a graduate of the physical research program about this time last year. The program is a basic research program, as I said, and the work has provided the underlying knowledge upon which many of the advances in fission power and in materials are based, for example, and from which new chemistry techniques related to that have come. There have been a number of other benefits that have come from the program that are not so directly in the line of the immediate uses of the AEC because like any basic research program one cannot anticipate at the time the work is done where the use will be, and we are finding a number of applications of the information and the techniques developed in the medical sciences area. We hope there will be a growing use of some of the particles that our accelerators can provide for treatment of malignancy, for exploring biological phenomena, particularly with radiation. From the chemistry program, which has supported the Nation's effort in radiation chemistry, there have over the past 10 or 15 years been some very important technological spinoffs that have been outside of the immediate application areas of the Atomic Energy Commission, such as cross-linked polymer materials that have been put to use. A rather substantial part of the electrical insulation is now produced in industry by this radiation treated cross-linking technique, because it has better properties than the other insulation. It has been used for curing paint on automobiles. Whether this would become a substantial part of the industry the future will show us, we don't know at this point. The whole nuclear science, of which this program has been the primary support, has been useful in providing the detailed information upon which some of the reactor developments have been based. Now, it is very difficult to trace back and say precisely that this was the research that made it possible. But I think that what we know today about the cross sections or the probable interactions of neutron from reactors, and what we will know in the future about solutions to the material problems of a controlled thermonuclear reactor, will be based substantially upon what we have learned today. In my prepared testimony I have called on a number of other examples which we will come to at that time. SPINOFF BENEFITS Senator MONTOYA. Can you submit for the record the spinoff benefits we have derived from this type of research? Dr. TEEM. I would be very happy to provide a list for each of our program areas, Mr. Chairman. Senator MONTOYA. And separate them into two categories, the peacetime use and for other uses not related to peacetime. Dr. TEEM. Yes, sir. In many instances, spinoff benefits resulting from research conducted under this program have both civilian and military applications. For example, the chemical processes used in the nuclear power industry to separate plutonium from fission products and contaminants are also used for military purposes; and nuclear methods for detecting defects in structural materials are utilized in both areas. [The information follows:] HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS High energy physics is a field of basic research whose primary goal is knowledge and an understanding of the nature and behavior of the fundamental elements of all matter and energy. As with all basic research, progress in the field requires continually pushing the investigative techniques beyond the stateof-the-art. Thus, an integral part of the high energy physics enterprise is the continuing development of new or improved techniques and devices, many of which soon find application in order fields. DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING DEVICES (CIVILIAN) The development of superconducting magnets occupies a unique position in the High Energy Physics Program. While this effort is aimed at the needs of high energy physics (i.e. cheaper and more powerful accelerators and improved beam transport magnets) the techniques and conductors developed have much broader application. Conventional resistive, room temperature electromagnets are limited to a maximum magnetic field of 15-20 kilogauss, whereas superconducting magnets can generate fields in the 40-70 kilogauss and higher range. In a conventional electromagnet, heat is produced because of the resistivity of the current-carrying conductor and thus power is wasted. Since there is essentially no resistance to current flow in a super-conducting magnet, there is essentially no power lost in this form. After the initial charging, the only electric power needed to keep a superconducting magnet in operation is that consumed by its liquid helium refrigerator. A superconducting magnet is in routine operation with the ANL 12′ bubble chamber and the superconducting magnet for the BNL 7' chamber has been successfully tested. A new superconducting magnet, designed to control the paths of high energy particles passing through the world's largest bubble chamber, has operated successfully at NAL. This magnet produced a field of 30 kilogauss (about 50,000 times the strength of the Earth's magnetic field). The success of these new magnets demonstrates that the techniques needed to build large superconducting magnets have been mastered and represents a significant technological advance which helps pave the way for future usage of large superconducting magnets in a wide range of applications. In particular, it seems likely that these superconducting magnets will be of vital importance to many of the programs seeking to develop practical new sources of energy. Other applications now under study range from magnetically levitated trains to superconducting generators for electical energy production and superconducting power transmission lines. In cooperation with industy, Brookhaven has played a major role in the development of superconducting materials for magnet applications. A new generation of stable conductors is being developed exploiting higher temperature superconducting compounds V.Ga and Nb,Sn. Another aspect of this program has been the development of "double composite" or metal-filled braid conductors. This is a technique of forming high current elements with many thousands of filaments by braiding many small wires (each containing several hundred filaments) into a larger configuration which retains the exceptionally stable behavior of the original wires. In related work practical designs for superconducting magnets have been perfected which are extremely compact and efficient in their use of superconduct |