The History of EMSL
Birth of a National User Facility
The genesis for the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory can be traced to 1986. Dr. William R. Wiley, director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and a handful of his senior managers met to discuss how the Laboratory could respond to scientific challenges facing the nation, as identified in the National Academy of Sciences report entitled "Opportunities in Chemistry." This document, often referred to as the Pimentel Report, identified several scientific challenges relating to energy and the environment that depended on fundamental research in chemistry. The report went so far as to suggest that the missions of some of the national laboratories be reshaped to focus on these challenges.
The concept that resulted from Wiley's meeting was for a center for molecular science research that would bring together theoreticians with expertise in computer modeling of molecular processes and experimentalists from the physical and life sciences. Wiley and others at the Laboratory, knowing of tremendous advances in scientists' abilities to characterize, manipulate, and create molecules, believed molecular-level research would be required to solve problems associated with environmental cleanup, energy efficiency, health, and other fields.
Besides the NAS report, Wiley and his team had something else going for them. DOE, in cooperation with the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, believed each of its five multiprogram national Energy Research laboratories--Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest--should develop national scientific user facilities. While many of the other laboratories were envisioning large projects associated with high energy physics or synchrotron radiation, Wiley saw a need for a user facility dedicated to small science that would group together the most advanced equipment for molecular-level chemistry.
Moving Along
To start the process moving, Wiley assigned Dr. B. Ray Stults to develop a project team. Stults' first order of business was to write a proposal that demonstrated the scientific quality necessary to justify DOE's capital investment in such a facility and its equipment. Members of the proposal team were recruited from Battelle staff in Richland and in Columbus, Ohio. During the height of the proposal activities, more than 50 Battelle staff members were involved.
Dr. Adrian Roberts became acting director of the Molecular Science Research Center, a concept that evolved into the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Roberts and his staff produced a videotape and brochure, which were distributed extensively, and a series of progress reports, which were mailed to research universities and community and industry leaders. Then Roberts began traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest, creating a presence and visibility for Wiley's vision as an investment in education and economic diversification for the region and the Tri-Cities.
Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, which operates Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shared Wiley's enthusiasm for the project and gave the go-ahead to invest $8.5 million in discretionary resources in the EMSL over a four-year period. With these funds, the Laboratory made plans for state-of-the-art research programs in molecular science and for bringing the equipment, facilities, and, most of all, people to support these programs.
It was a gamble. What scientist in his or her right mind would come to work on a nonexistent program, in a nonexistent facility, with nonexistent equipment, in Richland, Washington?
"If the scientific challenge is of such a nature to make it highly attractive, people will come," said Wiley at the time. "Nonexistent programs, facilities, and equipment can be sold to scientists of national and international repute, if they're driven by the nature of the challenge."
In 1988, Wiley hired Charles Duke, one of the nation's leading physicists and a senior research fellow with Xerox Corporation. Duke's one-year contract called for him to develop the EMSL's initial research portfolio and to recruit critical scientific staff. Next, an advisory panel of prominent scientists from research universities, industry, and other national laboratories was organized to help shape the EMSL.
In 1989 Duke returned to Xerox and Michael L. Knotek, chairman of the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, was hired to manage the EMSL project, along with Thom Dunning from Argonne National Laboratory and Steve Colson from Yale. Other leading scientists followed. Together they put the project on a much more aggressive scientific track. They believed the EMSL would need to define the leading edge in lab design, high-performance computing, and world-class instrumentation. They reconfigured the design to provide flexible lab space, free of vibrations and electrical interference. They also sharpened the environmental focus, adding programs in environmental dynamics and simulation and processing.
Slowly, DOE and the Congress saw the benefits of the proposed laboratory. Concerns that it was "pork" or a "make-work" project for unemployed DOE scientists gave way to a realization that the nation faced a daunting environmental problem, and that EMSL capabilities and scientific expertise could contribute to the solution of several environmental restoration challenges.
DOE and Congress took note of peer reviews that supported the new laboratory and its likely contributions. "This research will increase our basic understanding of complex environmental systems leading to reduced costs, increased effectiveness, and decreased uncertainty in remedial actions," concluded a 1990 peer review report.
Many people within DOE and Congress came to agree with the 1990 report, which concluded, "The intellectual challenge of the EMSL's mission is staggering. However, the practical payoff of success in this mission is immense, on the level of or perhaps beyond that of the Manhattan Project."
Why at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory?
Once there was agreement on the need for this new capability, there also was strong agreement that a new facility had to be built. Available facilities at DOE sites were either decades old or too expensive to retrofit for the EMSL's advanced equipment and laboratories.
But where to build it? Some questioned whether PNNL-- located in the sagebrush-covered Columbia Basin of eastern Washington State--was the best place. But many leaders saw PNNL's location as an asset. The national laboratory sits next to DOE's Hanford Site, which now stores the largest portion of the nation's toxic wastes generated over nearly 50 years of nuclear weapons production.
DOE also saw the EMSL as a natural extension of PNNL's mission. The national laboratory spends about one half of its $550 million annual budget on environmental research and development. With its location and environmental mission on its side, PNNL was authorized by DOE in October 1993 to proceed with the project. Construction began in July 1994. The facility was dedicated in Bill Wiley's honor in October 1996, a few months after he unexpectedly passed away. Construction was completed in August 1997, and the EMSL opened for full operations as DOE's newest national scientific user facility on October 1, 1997.
Taking a leading role
The intellectual challenge presented by environmental stewardship is at least as great as that presented by the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and the space race in the 1960s and 1970s--and so is the potential payoff.
EMSL provides advanced and one-of-a-kind experimental and computational resources to scientists engaged in fundamental research at the interface of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that underpin environmental and other critical scientific issues facing the Department of Energy and the Nation.
The Birth of a National User Facility (pdf 152kb)
