Pacific Northwest National Laboratory celebrated the completion
of the Department of Energy national lab’s largest construction project
in its 46-year history.
About 750 staff are working today in
renovated buildings or in new state-of-the-art offices and laboratories
designed to provide space for the nation’s cutting-edge science for
decades to come. The project cost more than $300 million.
PNNL
began discussing new offices for the employees as early as 2003 as DOE
planned to speed up demolition of buildings in the Hanford 300 Area just
north of Richland as part of environmental cleanup of the Hanford
nuclear reservation. The project from planning to completion took about
six years.
It was a massive undertaking — from getting money from a collection
of federal agencies that depend on the lab to planning environmentally
friendly laboratory space flexible enough to meet future needs, to
moving all the workers and their complex research projects.
But
“we completed it on schedule and budget,” Mike Kluse, PNNL director,
told a crowd of about 300 people who gathered to celebrate Tuesday.
The
odds were unbelievable at times, with challenges including
administration budget requests not sufficient to keep the project on
schedule, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a proclamation read by her
staff at the ceremony.
A new funding model was used to pay for
the project, said Julie Erickson, acting manager of the DOE Pacific
Northwest Site Office. It required $99 million from DOE’s Office of
Science, $69 million from the National Nuclear Security Administration
and $56 million from the Department of Homeland Security. In addition,
$77 million of private money was used to build laboratories that are
leased to Battelle, which operates PNNL for DOE.
The focus of the
new laboratories is on biological, physical and computational science, a
three-pronged approach the should have an enormous impact on the
nation’s research goals, such as advancing clean energy, said William
Brinkman, director of the DOE Office of Science.
The most recently
completed was the Physical Sciences Facility, a complex of new
buildings on Horn Rapids Road that now is home to about 250 staff who
support PNNL’s energy research, and national and homeland security
research. It cost about $224 million.
It includes a Materials
Science and Technology Laboratory used to develop and test high
performance materials for new energy, construction and transportation
technologies and systems. It also includes Radiation Detection
Laboratory and Ultra-Trace Laboratory to develop radiation detection
methods needed for identifying weapons of mass destruction and terrorist
activities.
In addition, a Large Detector Laboratory and outdoor
test track are being used to develop and test radiation detection
technologies designed for U.S. border entry points. An Underground Lab
supports homeland and national security research.
“Investing in a
modern, 21st century nuclear security enterprise is essential to
preventing nuclear terrorism or nuclear proliferation, and that is why
this (project) is so important,” said Anne Harrington, deputy
administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National
Nuclear Security Administration.
James Johnson, director of the
Office of National Laboratories for the Department of Homeland Security,
had been involved in planning the facility from its start and said as
an engineer, it was hard not to be excited by its capabilities as he
toured the finished project.
Southwest of the complex is the new
Biological Sciences Facility and Computational Sciences Facility, built
at a cost of $77 million. About 300 staff there work on biological
systems science and use its computer capabilities for data-intensive
research.
In addition, four 300 Area buildings were renovated to
allow nuclear, national security, environmental and other research to
continue there.
“Central Washington is better off and the nation
is safer because of the excellent work you do at Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., in a statement
read at the celebration.
– Tri-City Herald
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