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STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD
by SECRETARY OF ENERGY HAZEL R. O'LEARY
to the Committee on Science United States House of
Representatives
January 6, 1995
Impacts of Science and Technology: A Vision for the Year
2015
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I appreciate the
invitation to testify at your first hearing of the 104th Congress and regret that
a long-standing commitment prevents my personal attendance. As we agreed in
our recent conversation, Mr. Chairman, I welcome the opportunity to
appear before the Committee in the near future to present my views on the
subject of this hearing, or on any other topic involving the Department of
Energy.
You have presented a provocative and important challenge to
your witnesses in asking each of us to discuss how our Departments are
preparing to meet the revolutionary changes projected to occur in the next 20
years. During that period--as over the past 20 years--science and technology
will yield powerful, yet in many cases unpredictable, new developments that will
affect our economy, national security, environment, and quality of
life.
As one of the nation's major supporters of federal research
and development, the Department of Energy has a wide range of extremely
exciting R&D programs under way that hold the potential to contribute in
important ways to a better future. The basic framework for our investments is
established through our statutory missions in energy resources and end-
use technologies; national security, primarily as it relates to nuclear
weapons-related science and security issues; clean-up of the by products of nuclear
weapons production; and fundamental science in areas that underlie
these mission areas, including high-energy and nuclear physics.
Successful performance in each of these mission areas
depends on further advances in scientific and technological research. For
example:
- Achieving greater efficiency and diversity of energy
sources will require new innovations in both energy
production and utilization. By the year 2015, America's
demand for electricity is expected to approach 4
trillion kilowatt-hours--up from 2.6 trillion kilowatt-hours
in 1990. By this time, the fuel cell will likely have
taken its place as an environmentally viable and cost-
effective new option for generating some of this
electricity demand--in no small part because of the joint
public-private cost-shared R&D program which
the Department has been supporting. The fuel cell will emit
none of the smog-causing pollutants of
conventional power sources, and will be ideal for
distributed power sources--minimizing the need for long-
distance transmission lines.
- Further reducing the nuclear danger will require major
advances in our understanding of the fundamental
science associated with nuclear weapons. In the year 2015,
nuclear weapon stockpiles world-wide likely will
have been reduced to but a small fraction of current levels
(the Department currently is dismantling more than
2,000 nuclear weapons per year) and the safety and security
of nuclear weapons is expected to rest on an
international regime in which nuclear weapons testing has
been banned world-wide. Such accomplishments
will depend on political developments, but also to a
considerable degree on scientific and technical advances at
the Department's National Laboratories which will ensure
confidence in the safety and reliability of the U.S.
nuclear arsenal in the absence of testing and in limiting
the proliferation of nuclear materials and related
technologies.
- The production of nuclear weapons over the past 50 years
has generated a waste clean-up challenge that
cannot affordably be addressed without major advances
both in our understanding of the science of
chemical and radioactive wastes and the development of new
technologies for cleaning up contaminated sites.
In the year 2015, innovative clean-up technologies could
enable the Department to return up to 90 percent of
today's 3,700 contaminated sites to other productive uses in
society.
- By the year 2015, the private sector will have succeeded
in taking fundamental new knowledge in
molecular biology, materials science, and computational
chemistry and turned them into commercial products.
Some of this new knowledge will have emerged as a result of
pioneering research performed at major user
facilities operated at the Department's National
Laboratories--where advanced "Light Sources" (which
generate powerful beams of ultraviolet light and x-rays) are enabling academic, industrial, and
governmentresearchers to explore scientific frontiers that cannot be
reached in any other fashion.
Mr. Chairman, I could go on at considerable length in
describing ongoing R&D programs of the Department of Energy that we believe will
make substantial contributions in meeting the public missions of this agency.
To a growing extent, these programs are being performed through
partnerships including the Department and other government agencies, academia, and the
private sector. One of the great challenges facing our nation is how best to
integrate the complementary strengths and needs of R&D performers in
the public and private sectors, with the goals of furthering U.S. leadership in science and
technology, strengthening our economy and national security,
and addressing national problems for which science and technology offer
solutions. I look forward to the opportunity to testify before the Science
Committee to describe in more detail our contributions toward meeting these
goals.
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