further increasing the level of competition in selecting contractors; developing technology roadmaps in collaboration with partners for a greater number of our programs; increasing focus on program evaluation and terminating programs that don't measure up; increasing our use of regional support offices to implement programs closer to our customers; developing both a clearer budget and a more open budgeting process; and finally, forging even stronger partnerships with our customers. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and members of the Subcommittee for the opportunity to discuss our FY 1999 budget request. I hope you agree that the investments we plan in our programs, coupled with significant private-sector investments, respond to the important energy and environmental challenges we face as a nation. RIMENTO UNTED ST Department of Energy Dan W. Reicher Dan W. Reicher is Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Prior Mr. Reicher has almost 20 years of experience with environmental and energy policy and law. He was a staff member of President Carter's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island and worked in the Hazardous Waste Section of the Justice Department. He was Assistant Attorney General in Massachusetts where he focused on environmental and energy matters and a law clerk to Federal District Court Judge David Nelson in Boston. Mr. Reicher also served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Radioactive Waste Management and an adjunct professor of environmental law at the University of Maryland Law School. At DOE, Mr. Reicher has been engaged in policy development and implementation in Mr. Reicher's work at the Natural Resources Defense Council focused primarily on the Department of Energy's environmental, energy and defense programs. He enforced federal environmental laws at the Department's facilities and worked to enact legislation to improve DOE's environmental performance and increase U.S. energy diversity. Mr. Reicher is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Dartmouth College and also studied at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Reicher's articles have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the Stanford Law Review. He co-edited a book entitled Controlling the Atom in the 21st Century (Westview Press) and wrote a chapter for the environmental law treatise Sustainable Environmental Law (West Publishing). In 1985, Mr. Reicher was a member of the first expedition on record to kayak the Yangtze Printed with soy ink on recycled paper Chairman CALVERT. Thank you, Mr. Reicher. Mr. Magwood. STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM D. MAGWOOD, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, POLICY AND ANALYSIS, OFFICE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Mr. MAGWOOD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to present our Fiscal Year 1999 budget request to you today. I would like to extend Dr. Lash's apologies for not being able to appear today, as you indicated. He is in the Ukraine meeting with Ukrainian cabinet officers for the long term-a long scheduled event. The Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology represents the core of the U.S. Government's expertise in nuclear energy research, technology, and engineering. This technology expertise enables us to play a vital role in addressing the Nation's nuclear energy issues and equips us to address the energy-related challenges of the future. As you can see from the chart I provided to your staff-I think this was passed out earlier-our office is among one of the most diverse in the Department of Energy. Our activities span all the key missions of the Department, ranging from the development of advanced energy technologies to the manufacture of special nuclear power sources for national security purposes. We provide isotopes for the Nation's medical researchers and carry out important national security-related activities in the former Soviet Union. The unifying characteristic of our activities is the application of our core expertise in nuclear technology. Despite having the smallest staff of any of the program offices appearing before you today, we are able to work flexibly and efficiently using the same federal employees for multiple purposes. We successfully apply a matrix management approach which enables us to meet both the stringent Strategic Alignment Initiative staffing reduction targets and yet take on even more responsibility. We are very proud of this accomplishment. For Fiscal Year 1999, we propose new initiatives that further represent a change in the way we manage our program activities. In particular, the nuclear energy research initiative will inaugurate a new and very different way to conduct federal and nuclear energy R&D. Unlike our past programs, this initiative will not be designed by federal staff. Instead, as recommended by the PCAST panel of federal energy R&D we are reaching out to the broad research community to assist the Department in shaping this program. For example, over the last 6 months we have met extensively with universities, industry experts, and national laboratories before we even proposed this new program activity. We established an ongoing series of meetings to enable university professors to provide us with their views on nuclear R&D issues, and last year we asked seven of the Department's national laboratories to consider what the DOE nuclear energy R&D agenda should be in the future, and the result of that effort was this report-which some of your staff already have and we will be distributing this to you over the next week-that was signed off by seven of the national laboratory directors-which is kind of an event in itself. Most recently, we have asked noted individuals including John Ahearne of Sigma Xi, who chaired the PCAST task group on fission energy, to help us hold a large workshop on April 23rd through the 24th in which we will invite experts from both inside and outside the nuclear energy arena to help us shape this initiative and guide us to how it should be implemented. This new way of managing R&D will not stop with the planning of the program. If approved by Congress, the Nuclear Energy Research initiative will apply a peer review process to competitively select from among researcher initiated proposals. The selection of ideas to be pursued under the program will be based solely on the technical excellence of the proposals and the relevance to the Department's mission. In this way we believe we will find the most innovative ideas in the country to address the long-term issues associated with nuclear energy, issues such as proliferation of nuclear wastes. We expect that concepts such as proliferation resistance reactor systems and ultra-high burnup fuel will be the type of research-advanced research-this program would support. For the Nuclear Energy Plant Optimization program we are taking a different but no less radical approach to planning and implementation. This program is based on this document which I brought as a show piece-we're not quite ready to hand this out yet, but this will show you how hefty this thing is-which is the joint DOE-EPRI Strategic R&D Plan to Optimize the Operation of Current U.S. Nuclear Power Plants. This very detailed, three-volume plan has been created by the industry and the Department to identify what R&D is being done or planned by the industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or others and what R&D remains to be done to optimize the service life and generation capability of the Nation's 105 nuclear power plants. This plan has been reviewed by many external experts in universities, national laboratories, and industry-including over 200 experts in the electric utility industry. Of the R&D work that needs to be accomplished, industry and government will share the cost of the government portion of the and the government portion of the work will be subjected to rigorous peer review. We will seek international collaboration for this activity to further leverage our limited funding and will coordinate very closely with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to be certain there's no duplication of effort. Finally, we expect that the Department's nuclear R&D programs will benefit from the independent oversight of a new Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee. This Committee is still going through the final stages of the approval process. We hope that it will soon solicit members for this Committee through a Federal Register notice. And I would, however, at this time, like to invite you to provide us with any recommendations you have as to the individuals you believe the Secretary of Energy should consider for membership on this Committee. Of course, our office covers many other areas of interests to the Committee, and our written statement provides a good overview of all our plans and goals for 1999. I ask that our statement be included in the record. I look forward to working with the Committee over the coming weeks to address any concerns or questions you 49-799 98-4 |