Number 37 May 2002

Audit and Management Advisory Services Direc-tor Scott Branham continues ORNL Reporter’sseries of Leadership Team guest articles.

BY SCOTT BRANHAM

Suppose that you’ve been performing a certain part of your operations a certain way for years,

and you’ve come to realize that there are inefficien-cies in the process or even aspects of the operationthat are more trouble than they are worth. But you’renot sure that doing things differently, or to even stopdoing those things, won’t bring you afoul of someregulation or requirement. Or perhaps you’re notreally sure how things could be done more effi-ciently.

That would be a good time to call on the Lab’sAudit and Management Advisory Services Director-ate (AMAS). Believe it or not, there are times whenit’s a good idea to request management advisoryservices from AMAS.

I can forgive you for being incredulous. Auditsused to take a “black hat approach” at ORNL. They

took up time, required lots of effort and wereinvariably punitive in nature. Although we’ll alwayshave to do some compliance audits because of therequirements in our contract, we are more focusedon being management consultants when we can

be—we look for ways to addvalue to the company. That iswhy I say that we now take a“gray hat” approach.

AMAS goes into an organiza-tion with management’s objectivein mind. Ask yourself: What arethe objectives of my operation?Then ask yourself, “ What are thethings that would most likely keepme from attaining that objective?”

We call that risk assessment—we look for thefactors that would result in a high likelihood ofcausing you not to achieve your objectives.

The term “audit” normally conjures up the notionof finances, but in truth we look at just about all

facets of Lab operations. For instance, in the re-search divisions, we are assessing the adequacy ofdata backup. What’s a risk factor that would preventa researcher from meeting a scientific objective?Losing data would rank high on the list. We are alsoauditing nuclear materials operations and have been“dressing out” the past few weeks.

Finances often do play a role. We just completedan audit of the Lab’s telecommunications program.Working with that group, we discovered that the Labspent more resources maintaining a separate data-base by a subcontractor to track telephone costs thanthe benefit received. In fact, working with SAPpersonnel, it was determined that SAP could handlethe task at a fraction of the cost. In all, we supportedthe changes that organization’s management wantedto make that could save the Lab up to $300,000 inannual telecommunications costs, as well as provideto the end user a significantly increased level ofdetailed information.

Scott Branham

Jerry Atchley (left) and Bill Miller work with the Buildings Technol-ogy Center’s array of photovoltaic sensors. The experiment is one ofORNL’s research efforts with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Power partneringEast Tennessee neighbors ORNL and TVA build their list of research partnerships

Audit and Management Advisory Services prefers the advisory role

(See AUDIT, page 2)

(See TVA, page 4)

Both are in the energy business and each is a major economic player in East Tennessee. And

they are working together. ORNL and the TennesseeValley Authority are partnering on a number ofprojects that range from developing commercial-izable energy-efficient technologies to basic researchin climate change.

TVA, which is a unique utility in that it is both agovernment entity and a commercial power supplier,

became involved in promoting andsearching for cleaner and moreefficient energy technologiesfollowing the environmentalawakening and energy shocks of theseventies. During the same time,ORNL became a major national

resource for energy efficiency and environmentalresearch, becoming DOE’s largest multipurposeenergy lab.

With the University of Tennessee included in themix, these institutions are a large economic force inthe region and could have more of an impact asenergy-efficient technologies find their way into themarketplace. East Tennessee’s suite of players couldalso have a significant role in the nation’s drivetoward energy independence.

The ultimate winner in these collaborations will be

the power consumer who pays themonthly light bill and depends on thegrid to run a business or household.

“Through a series of strategic plan-ning meetings with TVA’s PublicPower Institute, we’ve identified a largeintersection of research interests.ORNL’s projects with TVA illustratethe depth and breadth of these mutualinterests and the value of ourpartnering,” says ORNL EnergyEfficiency and Renewable EnergyProgram Director Marilyn Brown.

A current ORNL-TVA-industrycollaboration with building materials isa good example of how homeowners inthe area can benefit from this partner-ships. ORNL’s Buildings TechnologyCenter has been testing a wall systemwith TVA and Babb International. Babbmanufactures autoclaved aerated concrete, alightweight concrete block composed of 70 percentflyash from TVA’s coal-fired plants. In the userfacility tests and analysis, AAC blocks were foundto be as energy efficient as a 2 x 6 wood-framehouse in climates similar to Washington, D.C., andOak Ridge.

TVA plans to use the flyash AAC wall system in aHabitat for Humanity dwelling and compare theresults with two Habitat houses built in Lenoir City.Those houses were built using efficient technologiessuggested by ORNL. If the wall system’s perfor-mance proves out, the accomplishment will be

2 May 2002

is published for the employees andretirees of Oak Ridge National Labora-tory, which is managed and operatedfor the U.S. Department of Energy byUT-Battelle.

Bill Cabage, editorPhone 574-4399E-mail cabagewh@ornl.gov

Deborah Barnes, associate editorPhone 576-0470E-mail barnesds@ornl.gov

fax: 574-1001

On the Web: www.ornl.gov/reporter

DOE Inspector General Hotline: 1-800-541-1625

That project is a good example of an organizationseeing how it could change to benefit the Lab. Inother instances it appears that the Lab practicesaccounting as an exact science and thus spends a lotof time chasing pennies. We see a lot of people“sweating the small stuff” and missing opportunitiesto increase economies and efficiencies. What I oftensee is “we had a problem, we put in a control, tookanother look or had another audit, put in anothercontrol …” and pretty soon we become overcon-trolled instead of looking at the operation’sobjective to see how we can balance risk andmanagement controls. It’s common all over—wespend more on the controls than we do on thefunction, similar to what we found when we lookedat the telecommunications operation. I’m not averseto removing controls as long as the risks are effec-tively managed.

The audit process starts—not with men in darksuits and dark glasses standing at your door withhelicopters flying overhead—but with an entrancemeeting. It helps to be able to sit down with us andtell us what your group’s objectives are. You canhelp us identify risks that would prevent you frommeeting those objectives. It’s more than adding upnumbers—we look at processes and inefficiencies.

Following that, we’ll do a preliminary survey inwhich we review documents and interview peoplewho are familiar with the processes. This is wherewe may identify risks beyond what were discussedin the initial meeting. We have also started gettingall responsible parties in a room together andrecording management’s objectives and identifyingrisks and controls as a group. This has expedited theaudit process.

During the field work, we perform tests andanalyses to determine whether objectives are being

The Business and Information Services Directorate’s C.J. Humphreys has seen more than hisshare of audits over the last 25 years—normally he’s involved in three or more audits a year.

“Seeing auditing shift from the previous use of gestapo-type tactics and our own managementcease floggings for negative audit findings are welcome changes,” he says, with maybe just a bitof hyperbole.

As one not averse to change, and recognizing a new management team with a new philosophy,C.J. decided to “test the process” by requesting an audit of the proposed backup facility for SAP atORNL. SAP is currently backed up at Y-12.

“The proposed facility will be in Building 7603 in an area not in use as an actual computer roomfor some time. Other business applications will also utilize this space. We gave Scott’s group ourobjectives, and their subsequent audit allowed us to plan, up front and in a cost effective manner,for the changes necessary to make this new facility a viable one.”

C.J. cites the telecommunications cost process as another good example where the auditor’sknowledge of SAP’s potential enabled his group to act quickly to remedy the problem.

“Scott should be commended for bringing in the technical and business resources necessary toeffect the needed changes,” C.J. says. “He has moved the audit group and function from anadversarial position to an advisory role, adding value to ORNL.”—B.C.

met and whether management controls are workingas intended. If any issues are noted, ControlImprovement Opportunity memos may be gener-ated that outline the condition, its cause and effectand suggestions for improvement. Likewise, wenote any best practices and noteworthy accomplish-ments in the final report that were identified duringthe audit.

If management chooses, we have an exit meetingto discuss what is and is not working well anddiscuss recommendations for improvement with theorganization’s management. These are normallybeing waived because of the constant communica-tion during the course of the audit. We strive toobtain management’s concurrence prior to theissuance of any type of written documents. Afterall discussions are held, the final report is presentedto ORNL and DOE management. We incorporate

management’s comments into the report, as well astheir corrective actions or action plan. We dorequire that a date be set for completion, sinceactions are tracked in the Lab’s tracking system.During followup, we verify that the correctiveactions are complete and that there is a process inplace to ensure that the corrective actions remaineffective.

Of course, we sometimes have to put on ourblack hats during an investigation. AMAS is alsoresponsible for conducting ethics investigationswhich relate to potential waste, fraud and abuse.

The Office of the Inspector General performs alimited peer review annually to look at what we’vedone and make sure that management is takingsteps to remedy issues from our suggestions forimprovement. We follow the Standards for theProfessional Practice of Internal Auditing issued bythe Institute of Internal Auditors. We also have anexternal peer review conducted every three to fiveyears to ensure we are operating the function inaccordance with industry standards. Most largecompanies and government contractors haveoperations similar to ours. My own objective is toidentify cost-saving opportunities equal to thebudget of AMAS.

Every year AMAS makes up a schedule of auditsto perform. However, we prefer to perform man-agement advisory services. These come in the formof management requests related to financial,managerial, operating, and risk management issues.We allow time in the annual planning process toperform these services. If you believe your organi-zation or operation could benefit the companythrough changes in processes, call us in on the frontend. We’ll sit in on your process change and helpyou make it a truly value-added process.

Be proactive, not reactive. It’s much more costeffective. Visit our website at http://home.ornl.gov/offices/audit_management_advisory_services/.

AuditContinued from page 1 Today’s scenario: The floggings have ceased

The Life Sciences Division’s DavidHedden demonstrates that thoughtsoften come easier under a tree on afine spring day.

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory 3

On their day, more than 300 kids experience their parents’ Lab

Beam at the end of the tunnelIt’s almost literally the light at the end of the

tunnel, but call it a beam. A ceremony at LawrenceBerkeley National Lab in California May 2 was alsobig news in Oak Ridge. Berkeley Lab, one of the sixSpallation Neutron Source partnering labs, dedicatedthe SNS front end, making Berkeley the first of thepartners to deliver on its piece of the project.

The “front end” is where the SNS’s ion beam willoriginate. The proton beam will eventually strike amercury target, “spalling” neutrons that will thenprovide researchers with the most intense pulsedbeams of neutrons available anywhere.

A key component of the front-end system is itsradio-frequency quadrupole, or RFQ, accelerator. Tosave costs, the Berkeley team built the production

RFQ without a prototype, a bold strategyin that RFQ accelerators are somethinglike a box of chocolates.

The senior team leader of Berkeley’sSNS Front-End group, Rod Keller,explained after a successful January test:“This is risky business with an RFQaccelerator because you never knowwhat you have until you test it. Either

your accelerator works or it doesn’t, and inthis case it worked extraordinarily well!”

The RFQ produced a 2.5 million electron voltbeam at a current of 24 milliamps on its first try,which was deemed already sufficient to supportSNS operation at 1.2 megawatt average power.

In other words, the plan is coming together.Following its commissioning at Berkeley, the frontend will arrive at the Chestnut Ridge site probablysometime in June. Besides ORNL, the other partnerlabs are Argonne, Brookhaven, Los Alamos andJefferson Lab.

Parking and traffic update: Humps, not bumpsThe latest on parking at ORNL is that the switch

to an open campus, in which employees would bepretty much free to drive and park inside the fences,is probably going to be delayed several months.Originally planned for this summer, the opencampus is being delayed mainly because newparking spaces inside the fence haven’t beenconstructed. “All the new planned parking lots

aren’t scheduled to be ready for about a year fromnow, and Lab management decided that without thefull complement of parking being available, wemight have a bigger parking hassle than we donow,” says Modernization coordinator Tim Myrick.

In the meantime, traffic planners are studying thebest ways to get around the Lab, and do it safely.One plan is for the installation of raised crosswalksand speed “humps” at strategic locations. Note thatwe say humps and not bumps—the traffic controlswon’t be bone rattlers, but they will be sufficient tokeep speeds at or below the 25 mph Lab limit.

As far as getting to the Lab goes, the new vehicleportals on Bethel Valley Road should be completedand open by the middle of May. The new entrancesare designed so that extra entry lanes can be estab-lished during peak times. The new portals comewith a new requirement for those passing through—when they go into operation, all passengers insidevehicles will be required to produce DOE badges oran ORNL-approved credential such as a drop-off/pick-up pass. This is a change from the one-badge-per-vehicle requirement established when BethelValley Road was first closed to the public at the endof last year.

Finally, last month’s warning that local lawenforcement officials might help calm traffic onBethel Valley Road—a response to numerousemployee concerns expressed about speeding—isnow fact. A heavy foot could be expensive.

Reported by Bill Cabage

More than 300 children, all with ORNL employees asparents, visited the Lab on April 25, the designatedTake Your Child to Work Day.

Bill Madia hosted an opening ceremony thatincluded a science quiz and a talk on safety byTim Myrick. Kids also had an opportunity to seeORNL’s supercomputing facility and do hands-on drawing with a robot at Robotics. At thecafeteria there were fun things to do with liquidnitrogen—the funnest probably being makingice cream with it, as Bill demonstrated.

A followup on the ORNL Website is planned:check the site at www.ornl.gov/cfw/tyc2002/

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4 May 2002

TVAContinued from page 1

DeathsSusan G. Winslow died on April 11. She worked

in the Metals and Ceramics Division’s Transporta-tion Technologies group. She lived in Knoxville andhad worked at Oak Ridge for 26 years.

TVA has participated in ORNL’shybrid lighting project.

ORNLpeople

twofold: a new, more energy-efficient technology forlow-cost housing and a waste product from coalburning—flyash—productively recycled.

The BTC is also working with TVA and a host ofother firms and organizations on the PhotovoltaicGreen Power Switch Project. The south face of theBTC’s Envelope Systems Roof Apparatus has beenfitted with sensors and photovoltaic solar collectors.The BTC’s Bill Miller is running the project, whichhe calls “a shady proposition” in that one of thestudy’s goals is to determine the effect of shadingfrom the photovoltaic arrays on the energy use of thebuilding. “Shading from the arrays provides anancillary benefit to the building by lessening thedemand for air conditioning,” Bill says. “Typicalroof temperatures on a hot sunny day exceed 160ºF.By shading, we are dropping that toslightly above the outdoor tempera-ture.”

Localized power generationsometimes comes with an environ-mental penalty, however.Diesel-powered generators and otherreciprocating engines emit particu-lates that have potential healtheffects. TVA has supported ORNLresearch by John Story, MengdawnChen and others to develop aportable device to investigateresponses of human lung cells toairborne particles. Tiny, ultrafineairborne particles from pollutantscan penetrate deep into lung tissue, much like a gas.As the use of on-site portable generators increases,utilities are becoming more interested in what themechanisms behind potential health effects are.

TVA has also participated in the Walker BranchWatershed area’s long-established throughfalldisplacement experiments, in which researchersmanipulate rainfall to simulate various climaticconditions. TVA has helped fund climate-changeresearch on the effects on root development inresponse to differences in moisture.

Power consumers are getting closer to havingsuper efficient appliances and lighting available

to them, thanks to the ORNL-TVA partnerships. Arecent TVA publication featured two marketableappliance technologies developed in the BTC—thefrostless heat pump and heat-pump water heaters.

The frostless heat pump, developed by a BTCteam led by Fang Chen, reduces coil frosting on theheat exchangers of outdoor units. Coil frost reduces aheat pump’s efficiency and performance. Besidesincreasing operating cost, the frost also compromisesthe comfort levels inside the building, resulting fromthe “cold blow” heat pumps are sometimes noted for.The frostless units also reduce surges in powerconsumption caused by defrosting. TVA and AmanaHeating & Air Conditioning are sponsoring tests offrostless units in homes this summer.

The heat-pump water heater, currently in theprototype stage, has shown that it can be twice asefficient as conventional water heaters by takingadvantage of heat from the air to heat water. Oneprototype model developed by ORNL and itsindustrial partners, EMI and A.D. Little, has a heatpump stationed on top of the water tank. TVA is alsointerested in a “bayonet” design that replaces theheating element in an electric water heater. Theutility plans to run a field study of heat-pump waterheaters in two Knoxville residences this year.

Hybrid lighting is a technology that uses optical-fiber technology to help illuminate the interiors ofbuildings with light from the sun. There’s no betterenergy deal going than sunlight, obviously, if youcan use it. According to Jeff Muhs, the principalinvestigator in the Engineering S&T Division, TVAhas helped fund the fabrication of the luminaires, orlight fixtures, used in the experiments.

The reliability of thepower grid is an area ofmutual interest for TVA andORNL. The utility will beworking with ORNL to fieldtest new composite conduc-tors that promise toeliminate transmissionbottlenecks in East Tennes-see and across the nation.High-capacity advancedconductors for electricitytransmission will be de-ployed on a transmission testfacility that ORNL’s

Engineering S&T Division will set up this summer.The facility, on Old Bethel Valley Road, will subjectthe advanced materials to an accelerated regime ofhigh temperatures, sag and tension. “TVA is amongmany utilities that stand to gain with power consum-ers if the improved transmission lines prove out andtransmission capacity can be expanded on existinglines,” says ESTD’s Brendan Kirby, who is workingwith John Stovall, Tom Rizy, Roger Kisner andMike Karnitz on the project.

Finally, ORNL is TVA’s first industrial “greenpower” customer, an agreement they reached in2000. The wind turbines whirring atop a ridge visiblefrom parts of Oak Ridge generate some of TVA’s“green” power; the remainder comes from photovol-taic systems (like the one at the BTC) and trappedlandfill gas. Although the amount of “green power”provided by TVA serves only a small fraction of theLab’s demand, the arrangement sets an importantprecedent for alternative energy technologies.

Lab Director Bill Madia noted the example the twoinstitutions were setting when the agreement wasinked two years ago. “This is a great example ofusing leading-edge technologies from ORNL thatcan improve our environment for our children’sfuture,” he said.

“I’m really pleased with the partnerships we’veforged since that agreement was signed,” he says,two years later.—B.C., with Marilyn Brown

The Physics Division’s Terry Clayton Awes hasbeen elected a fellow of the American PhysicalSociety, “for his leadership in the discovery ofdirect-photon emission in relativistic heavy-ioncollisions as a way to search for the quark-gluonplasma, and for his leadership as spokesman ofCERN heavy-ion experiment WA98.”

The National Urban League has honored EllaDubose of the Staffing Management and DiversityPrograms Division for her work in its Black Execu-tive Exchange program. Ella’s Five-Year MilestoneAward “recognizes her efforts on behalf of theeducational advancement of college students whohave participated in the exchange program.”

Yoon-Ho Kim, a Wigner fellow in the ComputerScience and Mathematics Division, has receivedhonorable mention in the Association of KoreanPhysicists in America’s Outstanding Young Re-searcher awards. Yoon-Ho, one of only fourhonorees in the 2002 program, was cited for hiswork in the field of quantum optics, especially inquantum computing and information science andtechnology.

Glen Harrison of the Engineering Science andTechnology Division has been appointed to theInternational Advisory Board of the Korean Federa-tion for Environmental Movement, in recognition ofhis years of service as an advisor and editor withapplications for research grants, and especially forhis contributions to the implementation of KFEM’ssmall grant program. KFEM is the largest nongov-ernmental environmental organization in Korea.

The Metals and Ceramics Division’s LanceSnead has been awarded the first Miya-Abdouaward “in recognition of outstanding technicalcontribution to the field of fusion nuclear technol-ogy.”

ORNL publications and art won a number ofawards at the East Tennessee Chapter of the Societyfor Technical Communications award ceremony,including both best-of-show awards: For publica-tions, Genomes to Life: Accelerating BiologicalDiscoveries, by Judith Wyrick, Elizabeth Martin,Denise Casey and others; for art, From Science toMarket, by Tina Curry, LeJean Hardin andWalter Koncinski.

The Spallation Neutron Source’s Kathy F.Rosenbalm is the 2002 Administrative Professionalof the Year, awarded by the International Associa-tion of Administrative Professionals. Kathy wasnominated by SNS Associate Laboratory DirectorThom Mason.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory 5

Things tend to get busy in the spring, and TeamUT-Battelle is no exception. Here’s a sampler of

ORNL staff members’ involvement in volunteerprojects, including what’s been going on and what’sahead.

Good times for March of DimesTeam UT-Battelle collected more than $1,500 for

the March of Dimes Anderson CountyWalkAmerica on April 13 at the Oak Ridge Marina.Thirteen Team UT-Battelle members donned theirgreen T-shirts and walked the five-mile distancealong Melton Hill Lake. Twenty Team UT-Battellemembers raised money for the cause, tripling lastyear’s contribution. The Atomic Trades and LaborCouncil raised more than $6,200 for the effort—theleading collecting organization for the walk. Overall,the walk raised more than $38,000.

Taking out after trashTeam UT-Battelle volunteers gathered to pick up

trash along Highway 95 near the intersection ofBethel Valley Road on Thursday evening, May 2.Participants received Team UT-Battelle and KeepRoane Beautiful T-shirts, gloves and orange vests.Volunteers were also treated to a short safety sessionbefore work began and a light dinner after the event.

RFL volunteers use feet … and heartMany ORNL employees have volunteered for the

Anderson County Relay for Life on Friday, May 10,starting at 6 p.m. and running through 10 a.m.Saturday, May 11, at the Anderson County HighSchool track and football field.Team captains are EvelynAngel, Faye Brewer, RobertaGrafton, Jim Hackworth, CarolLeffew, Kaye Johnson, MaryKiser, Claudette McKamey andKathie Shearer.

Straight arrowsA group of ORNL volunteers

put together a “shoot team” toassist with the ArcheryShooter’s Association NationalPro-Am Tournament, held inOak Ridge April 12–14, at theOak Ridge Sportsman’sAssociation grounds. The eventdrew archers from all over thecountry and about 3,000visitors, says organizer Pat Parr.Volunteers helped by setting upranges and targets, directing parking and providingother logistics.

Clear focusSheri Coffey, Team UT-Battelle project director

for Recycle Your Vision, reports ORNL employeesdonated 240 pairs of eyeglasses to the Oak Ridge

Lions Club in April. This bringsa total of 12,467 pairs ofeyeglasses recycled by ORNLsince this effort began in 1994.

Walk to Cure DiabetesOn Saturday, May 11, Team

UT-Battelle volunteers gather atVolunteer Landing in Knoxvillefor the 2002 Walk to CureDiabetes, sponsored by theJuvenile Diabetes ResearchFoundation. Walkers have askedrelatives, friends, neighbors andco-workers to sponsor them inthe walk by making a contribu-tion to the Juvenile DiabetesResearch Foundation for vitalresearch to find a cure fordiabetes and its complications.

Play ball!In a prelude to the JDRF walk,

a Leadership Team squad led by Lee Riedinger wasset to go up against a collection of alleged ringerscalled “The Other Guys,” coached by FrankKornegay, in the second annual JDRF baseball gameat Clark Center Park on May 6. The ’Guys won lastyear’s contest against the “Suits” 15–10, a margincharacterized at the time as “unexpectedly close” and“largely due to the umpiring.” No score to this year’scontest was available at press time, which is prob-ably just as well.

Melton Hill’s bonny banksTen Team UT-Battelle volun-

teers, captained by Judy Benton,set sail at Clark Center Park onApril 6 to clean up Melton HillLake shoreline. It was part of theannual River Rescue sponsored byTVA and Ijams Nature Center.F&O’s Steve Lewis is an annualorganizer for the Melton Hillrescue. Fort Loudon Marinadonated the boat; Team UT-Bdonated lunch. By day’s end thecrew had pulled a heaping moundof garbage off the banks, includ-ing enough old tires to make a set.

Red Cross Van drive rollsThe week of April 22 was Red

Cross Disaster Relief Van Cam-paign Week (see the April Reporter). ORNL staffcame through—they always do—with more than$10,000 toward the $65,000 it will require to pur-chase the van for the local Appalachian Chapter.Organizer Tim Myrick, a veteran of many volunteerrelief efforts, will match the employees’ contribu-tion; he’s also receiving support from UT-Battelle,

Some of the donors for the Red Cross disaster recovery van posed infront of a similar van that was on view at the Lab during the cam-paign. Employees donated more than $10,000.

BWXT/Y-12, Bechtel Jacobs, SAIC and DukeEngineering and Services.

Bluebirds’ buddiesTeam UT-Battelle supported the annual Wildlife

Habitat Building event at the American Museum forScience and Energy. John Jordan and Wayne Parkerhelped visitors put together bluebird houses. Thisyear, more than 230 kits were sold to providehousing for our eastern bluebirds, which are perma-nent residents in Tennessee. Since AMSE has beenhaving this annual event, more than 12,000 bluebirdhouses have been sold.

Pinewood pacersTwenty-eight Cub Scouts from the Pellissippi

District of the Great Smoky Mountain Boy ScoutCouncil gathered at the American Museum ofScience and Energy on Saturday, April 13, tocompete for the 2002 Pinewood Derby Champion-ship. The race was sponsored by the AmericanSociety of Mechanical Engineers, Team UT-Battelleand the American Museum for Science and Energy.Pinewood Derby winners were Tim Geist, firstplace, and Max Perry, second place, both from Pack123; and Dakota Roach, third place, from Pack 120.

Help for the SmokiesFinally, Team UT-Battelle is joining with BWXT/

Y-12 to resume one of the more popular volunteerefforts in past years—Help the Smokies. This yearvolunteers will work on rehabilitating parts of theCades Cove picnic area, a popular Great SmokyMountains National Park spot that takes a poundingfrom tourists each year. The first work day is May18. Contact Kim McMahan, 576-1566, if you’d liketo participate.—B.C., with Brenda Hackworth

Spring is the busy season for Team UT-Battelle volunteers

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6 May 2002

If you lived in the middle part of the 20th century, you witnessed one of the most incred-

ible periods of human technical advancement,particularly in terms of the production and uses ofenergy. Former ORNL associate director DonTrauger’s just-published book of life experiencesspans a period of history in which technologyprogressed with head-spinning rapidity.

It’s the sort of story many people currently in their80s can tell—for instance, my Camry-driving mom,who is the same age as Dr. Trauger, spent part of herchildhood in a logging camp near what’s now theCitico wilderness, accessible only by horse or steam

locomotive. Trauger offers a bonus: His workincludes sagacious views on the important energychoices the nation and world must make toward asecure future.

Horsepower to Nuclear Power: Memoir of anEnergy Pioneer (Providence House Publishers,$28.95) covers the mid-1800s to the present with anenergy theme packaged inside a fascinating personalmemoir. Trauger comes from the Midwest, frompioneer agrarian stock—his forebears migrated tothe Great Plains in covered wagons and livedinitially in sod houses. They watched the railroadcome through and the towns rise alongside. Theybuilt real houses and farmed. It was a hard, happylife.

Don’s own beginnings were precarious: He was apremature baby who had to be revived at birth. Hisboyhood, though sometimes sickly, seems placidenough (although he had several narrow escapes

from farm accidents and a pet rooster that attackedhapless strangers). Exeter, Nebraska, was the kind oftown where a Protestant’s volunteering to fix aCatholic church’s storm-damaged spire, as his fatherdid, would raise eyebrows. His mother was a “studyin energy” who smashed bootleggers’ stashes whenshe found them on their farmland. He recalls anuncle’s gift of a “thorium-mantle-type lantern.”

The Trauger extended family apparently fed Don’sinquisitiveness. He twiddled his mother’s sewingmachine to dysfunction until she scared him away bytying a feather to it; a phobia that endures, he says, tothis day. Later, Don observed how the plowhorses

toiled to till the earth and later noted thedifference motorized farm tools andother conveyances made in hiscommunity.

The Great Depression was, as it wasfor most of that generation, a formativeevent for Trauger. As a midwesterner,he also had to contend with the drought-stricken ’30s and the period’s duststorms (see excerpt), an ecologicaldisaster that he blames on poor farmingpractices. Trauger’s own great depres-sion came at graduation from high

school at age 15 with the realization, for all he knew,that the end of his formal education had arrived.

The good student nevertheless eventually enrolledin Nebraska Wesleyan College, where he wasblessed with a plethora of inspiring and influentialinstructors. He was drawn toward physics and,remarkably for the late ’30s, dwelled upon thegrowing use of fossil fuels, which seemed in finitesupply even then. It was his/our great fortune that hewas in the middle of an atomic physics course whenthe news of the discovery of uranium fission came in1939. He read an article about it in Physical Reviewauthored by Herbert Anderson, E.T. Booth, JohnDunning (a Wesleyan alumnus), Enrico Fermi, G.N.Glassoe and F.G. Slack, all of whom he would meetin the near future.

Trauger says that, at the time, even then, thoughtsin the popular science press turned to its potential asa source of energy. He thought so too, but recog-

nized the problems that radiation posed. At any rate,his enthusiasm for the new science marked his finalmonths as an undergraduate.

War’s outbreak and Germany’s perceived headstart in atomic science turned thoughts towardnuclear weapons. Don, meanwhile, had gone back tothe farm for the summer of 1942. One day, in mid-August, his mother called him to the phone. Sohere’s the scene: A gangly farm boy in sweat-stained clothes approaches the mouthpiece of ahand-cranked telephone to receive, apparently out ofthe blue, Dunning’s invitation to Columbia Univer-sity to work on a “secret project” that would be“challenging, interesting, and important to the wareffort.” Someone must have noticed him at Ne-braska Wesleyan.

It is difficult to envision history being made thatway—the melding of two ages, horse and nuclear—ever again. Perspectives from people with that rangeof experience are also becoming hard to come by.It’s fortunate that Don Trauger’s story and his viewshave been set into print. —B.C.

Don Trauger’s time at ORNL has been a stop along a waythat ranges from the pioneer era to the nuclear age.

Pioneer stockDon Trauger’s memoir offers a perspective on the transition from a horse-drawn age to the nuclear era

Nebraska dust storm

As the great cloud reached a neighbor’s farmstead, I realized with horror that the storm was not rain but dust. Massive black turbulent clouds became laced with lightning and the increasing

roll of thunder intensified my fear. I pressed my heels into Molly’s side, and she galloped to the farm-stead, leaving the cattle to fend for themselves. We reached the barnyard gate just as the swirling dustencompassed us, and I abandoned poor Molly at the gatepost.

It mattered not that it was suddenly dark as night, for I could not open my eyes to the strong winds thatcarried biting dust that pelted face and hands. Like early pioneers during blizzards, I groped my way alongthe fence for orientation, and while passing a straw pile from an earlier year’s thrashing of grain, the stemends of straw pricked my face and were even painful through a denim shirt. The fence led to the stockwatering trough from which an overhead pipe guided me to the water storage tank. From there, aftertaking careful bearings, I reached the house.

Don Trauger

Glenn Seaborg, the Nobel Prize-winning discov- erer of plutonium and once chairman of the

U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, was probably theforemost chemist of the 20th century. But did hehave a big ego?

His son Eric, who spoke at the Friends of ORNL’sApril 25 community lecture, says he did have an egobut his six children kept it under control by pokingfun at him. For example, when he learned in 1951 hehad won the Nobel Prize, he immediately told hisfamily. His oldest son, then six years old, asked,“Has anyone ever won two?” Seaborg pondered thequestion, at first said no, and then corrected himself.

“Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes, ” he said.Replied his son: “A girl?”Eric, who is a freelance science writer, offered to

help his father write a popularized autobiographyafter his father dashed off the first draft in two weeksand sent it to Eric. Eric interviewed his father,reviewed his books and 40 volumes of diaries(started when Glenn was 14), and finished hisautobiography after Glenn died in 1999.

Eric said that Glenn never forgot his Swedish-American roots in a Michigan mining town and wasamazed that he had become a world-renownedfigure who ran the University of California atBerkeley, revised the periodic table and advised nineU.S. presidents. Several lucky breaks helped hiscareer, Eric said, but Glenn also surrounded himselfwith people he considered smarter than himself andworked harder than they did.

The book is titled Adventure in the Atomic Age:From Watts to Washington. —Carolyn Krause

Seaborg’s son describes dadas a humble, hard worker

Cur

tis B

oles

Oak Ridge National Laboratory 7

UT-Battelle has named three new corporatefellows. They are Dick Haire of the Chemical

Sciences Division, Virginia Dale of the Environmen-tal Sciences Division and Al Geist of the ComputerScience and Mathematics Division.

Corporate fellowships recognize exceptionallygifted individuals throughout the organization fortheir technical achievements in science or engineer-ing. A UT-Battelle Senior Corporate Fellowship isthe highest ranking research position at ORNL.

Dick Haire has had a long and productive career ininvestigating the fundamental chemistry oftransplutonium elements. He’s recognized as apioneer and leader in his field. He has publishedmore than 300 papers. Those who have cited Dick’swork include the late Glenn Seaborg, the discovererof plutonium.

Dick’s entire professional career has been spent atORNL, beginning in 1965. His work has beenespecially notable for pioneering studies withtransplutonium elements from americium throughmendelevium. More recently his collaborations inthe study of high-pressure behavior of the actinides,

the family of elements 89 through 103, are havingprofound impact on the field of heavy-elementchemistry.

Virginia Dale has been at the cutting edge ofdisturbance ecology, landscape ecology and environ-mental decisionmaking. Her research has influencedsome of the largest land holders in the world,including the U.S. Forest Service and the Depart-ment of Defense, and she has helped form theEnvironmental Protection Agency’s landscapeecology research program.

Virginia was one of the first to investigate theaftermath of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helensin Washington, producing a major contribution tothe understanding of disturbance ecology that isongoing. She was one of the first scientists toundertake quantitative analysis of land-use changeand its implications to global change, and herapproaches to modeling land-use change has beenapplied in Brazil, Guatemala and Panama.

Virginia has served on numerous environmentalscience-related panels and committees and haswritten three books and more than 140 journalarticles and has given 118 invited scientific presenta-tions. Her work since 1992 has been cited at least565 times in scientific literature.

Al Geist is an internationally recognized computerscientist, particularly in the areas of distributed andcluster computing. His fame stems from the devel-opment of the Parallel Virtual Machine, whichpermits a cluster of computers to be used as a singlelarge parallel computer. PVM users can solve bigger

computing problems using available hardware.Al joined the Lab in 1983 and quickly made

significant contributions in the area of nonlinearphenomena in laser ablation. Later, he wrote thefirst parallel version of the High Tc code for theSuperconductivity Grand Challenge, which led tothe prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in 1990. He alsosingle-handedly won two of the ten Energy 100Awards—the top 100 discoveries and innovationsfrom DOE that have benefited consumers—thatORNL received last year. They were the PVM andthe Electronic Notebook.

He has authored more than 150 scientific papers,one book and six chapters in others and has beencited in scientific literature more than 1,000 times inthe last five years.—B.C.

Dale Geist

ServiceAnniversariesMay35 years: Jimbeau Gardner, Networking & Com-puting Technologies; Kenneth E. Parks, CraftResources30 years: Jerry A. Klein, Energy & EngineeringSciences Dir.; Mary R. Lay, Physics; M. E. Lyonsand Kathy S. Shelton, Craft Resources; S. W.Schwenterly, Fusion Energy; Beverly G. Stanford,Life Sciences; Michael C. Willard, HR & DiversityPrograms Dir.25 years: Van D. Baxter, Engineering Science &Technology; Becky Bolling, Business & Informa-tion Services Dir.; Johnny C. Brown, Stephen K.Ellis, Lewis F. Futrell, Jr., and Kenneth R. Rogers,Craft Resources; Suzanne A. Herron, SNS DeputyProject Director’s Office; Wayne A. Houlberg,Fusion Energy; John K. Jordan, Communications &Community Outreach Dir.; Julia T. Luck, SolidState; Sherrian A. McNeese, Health Services;Timothy R. Oldham, Operational Safety Services;John-Paul Renier, Nuclear Science & Technology;Becky J. Verastegui, Networking & ComputingTechnologies20 years: Stephen T. Baker and David K. Felde,Nuclear Science & Technology

Haire

Haire, Dale, Geist named UT-Battelle corporate fellows

Service award programeligibility includes part-timers

ORNL Employee Benefits has extended em-ployee eligibility for the service award program toinclude all part-time employees. This change will beeffective for company service award anniversariesbeginning April 1, 2002, says Benefits Communica-tions Coordinator Kathryn Cogar. As before,regular full-time employees are also eligible toreceive service awards. For more information aboutthe Service Award program, go to the “New ServiceAward Program” Web page (home.ornl.gov/~bnp/newServAward.htm) or call 574-7474.

Here’s a current list of UT-Battelle corporatefellows, with the divisions they represent.

Thomas J. Wilbanks, Environmental SciencesDivision

Paul F. Becher, Metals and Ceramics DivisionLynn A. Boatner, Solid State DivisionBenjamin A. Carreras, Fusion Energy DivisionJim Corum, Metals and Ceramics DivisionStan David, Metals and Ceramics DivisionElias Greenbaum, Chemical Sciences DivisionDouglas Lowndes, Solid State DivisionStephen J. Pennycook, Solid State DivisionJ. Michael Ramsey, Chemical Sciences DivisionMalcolm Stocks, Metals and Ceramics DivisionTuan Vo Dinh, Life Sciences DivisionRichard F. Wood, Solid State DivisionC.T. Liu, Metals and Ceramics DivisionHerbert A. Mook, Solid State DivisionRuss F. Knapp Jr., Nuclear S&T DivisionJohn Mihalczo, Nuclear S&T DivisionJacob Barhen, Computer Science and

Mathematics DivisionDavid L. Greene, Engineering S&T DivisionSteve Lindberg, Environmental Sciences

DivisionFrançois Pin, Engineering S&T DivisionVinod K. Sikka, Metals and Ceramics DivisionTony A. Gabriel, Spallation Neutron SourceVirginia H. Dale, Environmental Sciences

DivisionRichard G. Haire, Chemical Sciences DivisionAl Geist II, Computer Science and Mathematics

Division

Corporate fellows

One way to show your patriotism is to buy U.S.Savings Bonds. ORNL’s annual savings bond

drive runs through Friday, May 17. This year’stheme is “Save for your future.” Savings bonds are asafe and convenient way to save money, and theyhelp the country because they directly help financethe nation’s borrowing needs.

Co-chairs for this year’s campaign are JamieJohnson and Danny Cantrell; Terry Jackson, ATLCchairman; and Linda Moyer, ATLC coordinator.

Volunteer canvassers and coordinators will becontacting employees on their U.S. Savings Bondsparticipation. Information on U.S. Savings Bonds isavailable on the Web at www.savingsbonds.gov.

U.S. Savings Bonds:Save patriotically in May

PRSRT STDU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #37Powell, TN

P.O. Box 2008Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6146

Inside

Number 37, May 2002

Partnering with TVA, page 1

Audit’s advisory role, page 1

Lab Notes: Our kids, SNSmilestone, traffic, page 3

Busy time for volunteers, page 5

Don Trauger’s memoir, page 6

Corporate fellows, page 7

ORNL’s Wigner Fellowship program has namedfour new postdoctoral researchers; three of them

are already doing research at the Lab. The Eugene P.Wigner Fellowship program was established in 1975to honor the Nobel Prize winner and first director ofresearch at ORNL. This year marks the 100thanniversary of his birth.

The two-year fellowships have attracted excep-tional young scientists to ORNL over the years. Theprogram makes it possible for outstanding scientistsand engineers to continue on the developmental path.Over the years, many of these young researchershave remained at ORNL.

At a reception for new, current and past Wignerfellows on April 23, Bill Madia noted the program’svalue to the fellows and Lab alike. The fellowships,he says, are an opportunity for Wigner fellows towork with some of the world’s best scientists on themost complex and challenging problems and to workin one of the world’s best facilities. Attracting theyoung researchers “is of great benefit to the Labora-tory—a wonderful and enriching experience forORNL.”

Bill recognized Brookhaven National Laboratory’sRalph James at the reception. Ralph was a Wignerfellow who was recently named an associate labdirector at Brookhaven.

Also recognized at the reception were LianeRussell, a Wigner Fellowship committee memberand Fermi Award winning researcher at ORNL whoretired late last year, and the late Sheldon Datz, theformer committee chairman and longtime supporterof the Wigner Fellowship program, who received theFermi Award in early 2001. He died in August oflast year. His widow, Jonna Datz, accepted theplaque.

The four new Wigner fellows areAdam Rondinone, who received his doctorate in

chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technologyin May 2001 following undergraduate work atAppalachian State University. His dissertationresearch on the synthesis and behavior of magneticnanoparticles led to nine journal publications and abook chapter before completing his Ph.D. work.During his time at Georgia Tech, he was a WilliamHenry Emerson Fellow, a Molecular Design InstituteFellow and had a guest appointment for neutronresearch at ORNL. Adam’s research includes thesynthesis, characterization and applications of novelnanostructured materials. He is working with DavidBeach in the Chemical Sciences Division.

Robert Grzywacz most recently completed atwo-year teaching and research position at theInstitute of Experimental Physics at Warsaw Univer-sity, Poland, where he received his doctorate inphysics. He previously served in a two-yearpostdoctoral assignment at the University of Tennes-see, where he worked in the radioactive ion beamresearch program and conducted supporting re-search at ORNL’s Holifield Facility. In 1995 he was

awarded a prestigious scholarship for young re-searchers by the Foundation for Polish Science.Robert is now working with Cyrus Baktash in thePhysics Division, where he will continue to work onstudies of the nuclear structure of unstable nuclei.

Yoon-Ho Kim received his Ph.D. in physics fromthe University of Maryland in May 2001. Hispublications as a graduate student (12 journal articlesas lead author, including three in Physical ReviewLetters) were primarily within the field of experi-mental quantum optics, with a focus on quantuminformation science. At ORNL, he is working in theComputing and Computational Sciences Directoratewith Jacob Barhen.

Maria Varela, who will soon arrive at ORNL(thus we have no photo), received her Ph.D. in solidstate physics from the Complutense University,Madrid, in July 2001, where she excelled in the fieldof materials science. She has experience in thegrowth, physical properties measurements andstructural characterization of thin films, in particularhigh-temperature superconducting thin films andsuperlattices. Maria will be working with StephenPennycook’s group in the Solid State Division,where she will be applying scanning transmissionelectron microscopy to cutting-edge materialsresearch to determine atomic and electronic structureof interfaces in materials.—B.C.

Wigner’s legacy continues; ORNL greets new postdoctoral fellows

Grzywacz KimRondinone

Got a story?Research, opinions, activities—do you have a

story that you would like to share with your co-workers? Let ORNL Reporter know. Call or e-mailBill Cabage (574-4399, cabagewh) or DeborahBarnes (576-0470, barnesds).