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closeTuesday, Mar. 24, 2009
PNNL expects to receive $124M from DOE in stimulus funds
By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer
HANFORD -- The Department of Energy Office of Science plans to send $124 million in stimulus money to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced Monday.
Much of the money will be used to buy scientific equipment for complex research projects. In addition some will be spent on contracts to prepare buildings for the equipment and to make three PNNL buildings more energy efficient.
"Leadership in science remains vital to America's economic prosperity, energy security and global security," Chu said Monday during a visit to Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
While there he announced that $1.2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would be disbursed to science projects, including $830 million for projects at national labs.
The money allocated to PNNL and eight other national labs "should help aggressively move forward projects that will be critical to the country's energy security and global competitiveness," said PNNL director Mike Kluse in a message to employees.
The new equipment will help cement PNNL's reputation in certain fields and bring research work to the Tri-Cities that otherwise would go elsewhere, said Greg Koller, PNNL spokesman.
PNNL plans to spend $60 million at its Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, or EMSL. It's a national scientific user facility that has allowed scientists from all 50 states and 30 countries to use its equipment and resources to work on complex environmental and other scientific challenges.
The money will be used to buy high-end scientific equipment such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers, mass spectrometers and high-power microscopes. The equipment was planned to be purchased through 2013, but now can be bought sooner.
It will be used to further fundamental research in the fields of biology, subsurface science and interfacial science, which is the study of fibers, thin films and other boundaries strongly influenced by the properties of their interfaces. The interfaces control many chemical and physical properties of materials critical to environmental and energy research and technology.
Some construction will need to be done at EMSL to prepare for the new equipment.
Another $60 million will be spent at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility.
PNNL plans to improve capabilities for observing cloud and aerosol properties to better understand the role aerosols, which can include smoke, dust and pollution, have in affecting regional climate and atmospheric circulation.
Some of the equipment will be mobile and other equipment will be installed in remote locations in Oklahoma, Alaska and the tropical Pacific Ocean.
The remaining $4 million will be spent on contracts to make EMSL and two buildings in the Hanford 300 Area -- the 331 Building and the Radiochemical Processing Laboratory -- more energy efficient.
The $124 million announced Monday is the first of the stimulus money the lab expects, "but we don't believe it is the end," Koller said.
The lab also is submitting proposals for stimulus money to other DOE program offices and other federal agencies that have research done at PNNL.
"Because we don't know exactly how much funding we ultimately may receive or the nature of this work, it's hard to estimate how many new jobs will result from this influx of money," Kluse said in his employee message.
Now the lab has 325 open positions, Koller said. PNNL employs 4,000 people in the Tri-Cities.
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