Llewellyn King: Electric cars would be a very minor matter for secretary running ‘the Little Pentagon’
The Brutalist Forrestal Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has a very heavy portfolio of functions.
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to nominate Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan, lawyer, politician and television host, to be the next secretary of energy is curious.
The idea circulating is that her primary assignment, in Biden’s mind, will be to speed Detroit’s development of electric vehicles.
That is hardly the job that Granholm will find confronting her when she heads to the 7th floor of the Forrestal Building, a bare-and-square, concrete structure across from the romantic Smithsonian Castle on Independence Avenue in Washington.
Secretary of energy is one of the most demanding assignments in the government. The Department of Energy is a vast archipelago of scientific, defense, diplomatic and cybersecurity responsibilities. Granholm’s biggest concern, in fact, won’t be energy but defense.
The DOE, nicknamed the Little Pentagon, is responsible for maintaining, upgrading and ensuring the working order of the nation’s nuclear weapons. A critical launch telephone will go with her everywhere. That is where much of the department’s $30 billion or so budget goes.
The energy secretary is responsible for the largest scientific organization on Earth: the 17 national laboratories operated by the department. They aren’t only responsible for the nuclear-weapons program, but also for a huge, disparate portfolio of scientific inquiry, from better materials to fill potholes to carbon capture, storage and utilization; and from small modular reactors for electricity to nuclear power for space exploration.
The national labs are vital in cybersecurity, particularly to assure the integrity of the electric grid and the security of things like Chinese-made transformers and other heavy equipment.
The DOE has the responsibility for detecting nuclear explosions abroad, measuring carbon in the atmosphere, making wind turbines more efficient, and developing the nuclear power plants that drive aircraft carriers and submarines. The department makes weapons materials, like tritium, and supervises the enrichment of uranium.
DOE scientists are looking into very nature of physical matter. They have worked on mapping the human genome and aided nano-engineering development.
Wise secretaries of energy have realized that not only are the national laboratories a tremendous national asset, but they can also be the secretary’s shock troops, ready to do what they are asked -- not always the way with career bureaucrats. Their directors are wired into congressional delegations, including California with Lawrence Livermore, Illinois with Argonne, New Mexico with Los Alamos and Sandia, Tennessee with Oak Ridge, South Carolina with Savannah River.
Verifying compliance with the START nuclear-weapons treaty with Russia falls to the DOE as will, possibly, renegotiating it. Another job would be being part of any future negotiations with Iran over their nuclear materials. Likewise, the energy secretary would be involved if serious negotiations are started with North Korea.
An ever-present headache for Granholm will be the long-term management of nuclear waste from the civilian program as public opposition to the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada is adamant. Also, she will be responsible for vast quantities of weapons-grade plutonium in various sites, but notably at the Pantex site, in Texas, and the Savannah River site in, South Carolina, before it is mixed with an inert substance for burial in Carlsbad, N.M.
Then there are such little things as the strategic petroleum reserve, the future of fracking, reducing methane emissions throughout the natural-gas system, and bringing on hydrogen as a utility and transportation fuel.
DOE has been charged with facilitating natural-gas and oil exports. Now those are subject to the objections of environmentalists.
Smart secretaries have built good relationships early with various Senate and House committees which have oversight of DOE.
James Schlesinger, the first secretary of energy, led the new department with a knowledge of energy from his time as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, a knowledge of diplomatic nuclear strategy from his time as director of the CIA, and a knowledge of defense from his time as secretary of defense.
The only other star that has shone as brightly from the 7th floor of the Forrestal Building was President Obama’s energy secretary, Ernie Moniz, a nuclear scientist from MIT who essentially took over the nuclear negotiations with Iran: He and Iranian negotiator Ali Akbar Salehi, a fellow MIT graduate, hammered out the agreement, which was a work of art, a pas de deux, by two truly informed nuclear aficionados.
Compared to the awesome reach of the DOE in other vital areas, electric cars seem of little consequence, especially as Elon Musk with Tesla already has scaled that mountain, and all the car companies are scrambling up behind him.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com and he’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Web site: whchronicle.com
Llewellyn King: U.S. funds for medical research falling dangerously
Two seemingly unrelated items of medical news: Ebola is devastating West Africa, and may spread around the world, and the entertaining ice bucket challenge has raised $115 million for ALS research.
The linkage is that both diseases have needed and still need medical research. So do hundreds of other diseases and conditions.
The truth is that the amount of money the United States spends on medical research is falling precipitously. It has been hit by budget worries in Congress, sequestration and the decline in research funding by corporations.
Leo Chalupa, vice president for research at The George Washington University, said on our TV show, ''White House Chronicle,'' last weekend that the National Institutes of Health budget for research grants has decreased by 20 percent since 2004. He said that five out of six research applications are now rejected by the NIH, the principal conduit for federal funding of biomedical research.
The George Washington University is a member of the Science Coalition, a group of more than 60 of the nation's leading public and private research universities. Since its establishment in 1994, the coalition has advocated for sustained federal investment in basic scientific research as a means to stimulate the economy, spur innovation and drive America's global competitiveness.”
The late David Fishlock, science editor of the Financial Times, wrote and spoke elegantly about the problem democracies have in sustaining scientific funding; how they tend to be heavy on the gas, and then heavy on the brakes.
The government funds research through its own network of institutes and laboratories, and through grants to universities and corporations. When it comes to capturing the energy and flair of young researchers, the universities are vital.
Jennifer Reed, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said on ''White House Chronicle'' that universities contract with graduate students for five years, but the federal grants for research, when they get them, can be for less time. Reed said this is devastating to the research and the lives of the young researchers. Her funding comes from the Department of Energy and is aimed at using renewable materials to make alternatives to fossil-based plastics; also energy storage.
The problem is acute in medical research, most of which has its genesis in grants made by the NIH. Contrary to popular belief that medical funding is shouldered in the private sector, Chalupa said pharmaceutical companies often have narrow interests in particular drugs for particular conditions. “They have shareholders to answer to,” he said.
But it is not just funding that bedevils research, it is politics as well. Good projects are canceled and bad ones are incubated, depending on their appeal to particular constituencies. For example, fusion research has been lavished with money compared to other nuclear research needs, including the increased use of nuclear medicine to save lives and suffering
Also the government funds research through many agencies, and this often reflects local or political pressure. Some researchers have found that they have to shop for funding, from NIH to the Pentagon to the National Science Foundation. Others have turned to crowd-funding, including the famed virus hunter Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, who directs the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Lipkin is now in high demand because of the Ebola crisis. But if there had been more work on viruses since the discovery of Ebola in 1976, there might now be a vaccine or other therapy to deal with the epidemic.
The United States is still the creative engine of the world. But without steady expenditure, it won't be firing on all cylinders. Chalupa and Reed warned that China is increasing its funding for research rapidly, and is set to overtake the United States.
One (or more) patient launched the iced water caper that has been so successful out of frustration with the ALS research effort. It has been creative, but it will not keep the United States as the preeminent home of brave discoveries. Or to help the sick.
Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublishing.com) is host and executive producer of "White House Chronicle,'' on PBS.