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It took about 3 months for DOE to get the first $1 billion into circulation in the economy and about 2.5 months for the second $2 billion (still less than 10% of the total). I guess we should all be thankful for this smallest sign of improvement, but I wonder who will still be around when the agency finally finishes spending the Recovery Act monies in 2015?

Again, I suggest that it is instructional to look at what other federal agencies are doing. This yardstick shows that the average federal agency has figured out how to pay out 35% of Recovery Act funds.

They are even slower over at the NSF.

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The DOE announced that 24 million hours of supercomputing time out of a total of 1.6 billion available at Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs have been awarded to investigate materials for developing lithium-air batteries that would be capable of powering a car for 500 miles on a single charge.

Through the Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment program, a research team including scientists from ANL, ORNL and IBM will use two of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to design new materials required for a lithium–air battery. Lithium-ion batteries, used in today’s emerging plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, currently have a maximum range of 40 to 100 miles before a recharge is necessary.

The calculations will be performed at both labs, which have two of the world’s top-ten fastest computers.

“Computation and supercomputing are critical to solving some of our greatest scientific challenges,” said DOE Secretary Chu. “This year’s INCITE awards reflect the enormous growth in demand for complex modeling and simulation capabilities, which are essential to improving our economic prosperity and global competitiveness.”

The INCITE program provides a collection of unique computational resources that enable scientists and engineers to conduct cutting-edge research in weeks or months rather than the years needed previously. The use of scientific modeling can accelerate scientific breakthroughs in areas such as climate change, alternative energy, life sciences, and materials science.

“Argonne is committed to developing lithium air technologies,” says Eric Isaacs, the lab’s director. “The obstacles to Li-air batteries becoming a viable technology are formidable, but the modeling and simulation capabilities of DOE’s supercomputers will help us accelerate the innovations required in materials science, chemistry and engineering.”

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President Obama spoke about a renewed push for nuclear-based energy solutions in his SOTU speech, and Friday DOE Secretary Chu announced the appointment of the “Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.” The misnamed commission is supposed to provide “advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.” I say misnamed because finding a solution to used fuel and waste is a big problem – but not the only big problem with the nation’s “Nuclear Future.”

To be sure, I am glad that the administration is acting quickly on its promise. But based on the commission’s makeup, I think the Obama/DOE strategy to a large extent is misdirected. The commission is being co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Other commissioners include some good people from science and academia, but it also has a lot of others who are there for window dressing.

I do get that such commissions have to be bipartisan and cover a range of science-policy/government-industry representatives. Also, I get that there are security aspects to both the inputs and wastes from reactors. But having both chairs be individuals closely tied with national security seems to me to send an odd and misguided message.

For a new generation of nuclear power facilities to be built, the biggest hurdle will be (and has been) a wide range of public fears. A recent Gallup poll showed that while support is growing, it is very tentative: 59% of Americans support nuclear power, but only 27% support it strongly. Support is also very divided by political affiliation and gender. And, despite all of the discusses over the past few years about finding new energy solutions, support for nuclear power has barely inched up from 2005 (54%). And, 63% say they oppose building a new nuclear facility in their area. In other words, the support for a nuclear resurgence could be easily shaken.

To move forward, besides a waste strategy, the administration is going to have to answer two other glaring questions for the public: Do we have the improved technology this time around? and Do we have an effective regulatory system in place given that some of the private operators proved to be unreliable or untrustworthy?

From a science and technology point of view, there are some promising developments, such as fast reactors, that need to be examined. If it turns out they are worthwhile, they need to be explained to the public by people that know what they are talking about, not government mouthpieces or PR staff. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that new commission is going to be going in that direction.

Besides Hamilton and Scowcroft, the commission has 13 other members (and you can probably tell who knows anything in particular about domestic nuclear energy generation and who doesn’t):

• Mark Ayers, President, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
• Vicky Bailey, ex-FERC commissioner and ex-DOE Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs
• Albert Carnesale, Chancellor Emeritus and professor, UCLA
• Pete V. Domenici, Bipartisan Policy Center; former U.S. Senator
• Susan Eisenhower, head of Eisenhower Group
• Chuck Hagel, former U.S. Senator
• Jonathan Lash, head of World Resources Institute
• Allison Macfarlane, associate professor of environmental science and policy, George Mason University
• Dick Meserve, ex-NRC commissioner
• Ernie Moniz, professor of physics at MIT
• Per Peterson, chair of department of nuclear engineering, University of California, Berkeley
• John Rowe,  head of Exelon Corporation
• Phil Sharp, head of Resources for the Future

The commission will produce an interim report within 18 months and a final report within 24 months.

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David Danielson

David Danielson, one of the project directors of DOE’ relatively new $400 million ARPA-E program gave today’s keynote presentation at the ACerS’ Electronic Materials and Applications conference. Danielson has a good reputation in the world of materials and venture funding, and his message was that like DARPA, its DoD counterpart, it is indeed interested in high-risk, high-reward projects, but with a strong bias toward funding efforts that can reasonably be seen as getting closer to the marketplace. In other words, they won’t be funding basic science, but if you have better piezo mousetrap, they might be interested in talking to you.

Moreover Danielson’s message is that there are plenty of opportunities for ceramists and materials scientists and engineers in general. He made a point of emphasizing that the opportunities are in funding, but also in employment: ARPA-E is still ramping up its staffing and is looking for program directors and fellows.

He says that ARPA-E is already funding many materials-oriented efforts, including ones involving planar sodium batteries, vertically aligned carbon nanotube-based ultracapacitors, CNT membranes for CO2 capture, GaN-on-SI electronics for electric vehicles, direct growth of monocrystalline equivalents and new magnetic materials 75% less rare earth elements but have twice the energy density.

Danielson also talks about specific game-changers in electronic ceramics. Besides (grid-scale) Na batteries mentioned above, he specifically mentioned solid-state capacitors, ceramic electrolytes in lithium batteries, high-energy battery cathodes, grain boundary-engineered (i.e., ‘virtual single crystals”) thin film for photovoltaic applications, high-temp superconductors and low-cost methods for growing single-crystal Si wafers and ZnO, GaN crystals for LEDs.

Danielson is also promoting participating in ARPA-E via attending their workshops and helping to develop programing and serving as a reviewer of proposals.

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Via press release, Sandia National Laboratories will use $4.2 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to modify and enhance its existing Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory (BATLab), with the goal of developing low-cost batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

The tests help to determine how much abuse lithium-ion batteries can safely handle. Sandia tests everything from regular small cells up to full-sized modules and packs for hybrid vehicles.

The DOE-funded FreedomCAR program turned to Sandia to investigate the possibility of safely using lithium-ion batteries. But before lithium-ion batteries could be placed in vehicles, extensive safety tests needed to take place. With the recent stimulus funds, the BATLab will be able to greatly increase the number of tests it does.

The $4.2 million in funding is part of a $104.7 million economic stimulus package to further develop the nation’s efforts in clean energy and efficient technologies across seven DOE national laboratories.

The $104.7 million ARRA funding is concentrated on three priorities: advancing carbon fiber manufacturing and processing technologies to help reduce the weight of vehicles; developing integrated building systems to reduce U.S. carbon emissions and expanding facilities for fabricating and testing advanced battery prototypes for fuel-efficient vehicles.

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