President's Distinguished Lecture "Science for Energy" Dr. Harriet Kung
If you're not familiar with the Office of Science that Dr. Kung has been directing for the last 20 years, it's essentially the premier research arm of the Department of Energy and beyond. Energy is obviously the big umbrella, but under that there are things like materials, AI, basic energy physics, chemistry, environmental research.
The direction that Dr. Kung sets is far-reaching in terms of the scientific community. Her vision and her ability to set the direction not only for the major research initiatives, but for every faculty member like myself, being an assistant professor back when she started in the Department of Energy 20 years ago, it really gave us the compass on which to see what is the future of science and engineering.
I will just say a few things about Dr. Kung's career. She holds her master's in PhD from Cornell University. She started at DOE, as I mentioned before, 20 years ago, and quickly rose through the ranks. I also think that having a leader who is steady within an institution in a position where you have the ability to affect lasting change is something that Dr. Kung has brought to her all.
And she has pioneered initiatives ranging from physics all the way to quantum computing. She was one of the pioneers for the Office of Science and the National Quantum Initiative. This is an area where we are investing and Dr. Choi has made a significant investment this year. We're very excited
to hear Dr. Kung's vision about that as well. She has received numerous accolades, including the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award, the Distinguished Executive Rank Award, and I'm sure a lot more is coming in the future. Today she will share with us her insights on science for energy, which is obviously a timely and important exploration of how we can tackle the energy challenges of the 21st century. Obviously here at Mizzou with the Center of Energy Innovation, it's one of our priorities as a university and we look to Dr.
Kung to hear her vision about this area today. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Kung. Thank you. -I also want to introduce Representative Kent Haden who is here with us.
He has provided so much support for the university, not only on appropriations, but also for capital projects. Thank you very much for being here. Dr. Kung. Good Morning. It's such an honor and pleasure for me to be here today. I would like to especially thank President Choi for this prestigious opportunity.
In preparing for my trip here, I had the privilege to read about what Mizzou, the really long and distinguished history, the university and the system, but I'm also really, really impressed by your distinguished academic and research programs. But probably most importantly, it's very exciting forward-leaning MizzouForward vision, and also the trajectory that President Choi has set for the school. I'm really feeling very, very privileged to be able to be here today to share with you some of our thoughts on the future of science for energy. Talking about history, I thought I'd start by sharing with you a little bit about the distinguished history and also heritage of the Department of Energy.
Many of you may know that we actually were born out of the Manhattan Project era as a all-out effort to develop the world's very first nuclear weapons. This was a project that's shrouded in secrecy. But at the same time, we needed to pull the world's best talent together, the best team of scientists to raise against the clock to accomplish this almost impossible feat. At the same time, we also need to build this massive research and development apparatus, the massive logistic and also infrastructure in order to accomplish this feat. And that essentially formed the basis of the very first national laboratories. For those of you who may have seen the movie Oppenheimer, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was actually one of the very first few laboratories that were established during the Manhattan Project era.
And Dr. Oppenheimer was indeed the very first director for Los Alamos National Laboratory. Along with Los Alamos, which is located in New Mexico, we also had two other laboratories, the Argonne National Laboratory near the suburb of Chicago, Illinois, and also Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These locations were selected due to their isolation, but also reachable. At the end of the World War II, the nation was left grappling with this massive infrastructure that was left and also the talent, the people, and the instrumentation associated with this national treasure. Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act in 1946, and created an Atomic Energy Commission.
That was actually the first time we actually transitioned the control of these national laboratories, national capabilities from military control to civilian control. In the next couple of years, we actually have seen the blossoming of transitioning from nuclear to nuclear weapons development to civilian nuclear energy development from nuclear processes, nuclear reactor technologies, and also use of nuclear materials. But something happened in 1973. Many of you may not be old enough to remember, that was when the Arab oil embargo hit. The nation was shocked by the oil embargo and the oil crisis. Congress then acted again and created the Energy Research and Development Administration, which is a new energy R&D agency, which was the predecessor of DOE.
And that is when we actually expand our mission beyond the more traditional nuclear technologies to areas such as renewable energy to synthetic fuels, to transmission, to conservation and so forth. That essentially was the basis of the Department of Energy that we have today. But looking back, if you can trace our route all the way back to the Manhattan Project, it was essentially very first big science experiment. Fortunately, it was a successful experiment with this impossible feat that we accomplished in such a record time in defeating the adversaries in developing the nuclear weapons program.
But at the same time, it's that spirit to drive innovation to, as President Choi mentioned, marshaling the talent, resources, and knowledge of the whole community to impact and solve grand science and technology challenges that continue to motivate what we have today in the Department of Energy? Essentially that is what the Department of Energy today is, is to ensure the America's security prosperity by addressing its energy environment and nuclear challenges through the transformative science and technology solutions. We cannot do it alone. We need partners.
We need partners such as Mizzou. Every single one of you, we need your support and your partnership for to really tackle some of these very ambitious but also formidable challenges in record time. Almost similar to the existential threat that we were facing as a nation in the Manhattan Project era.
Let me go through some of the challenges that we face today and some of the examples. But before that, I also wanted to share with you this very proud R&D apparatus that we started almost 70 years ago, starting from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Currently, we actually have 17 DOE natural laboratory that are spread amongst the different states. And these institutions continue to be... Some even called it the heartbeat of our DOE system, but I always called them the engine of innovation.
And I'm hoping that these institution could be a resources for every single one of you at Mizzou to partner with and utilize the resources from facilities to capability or partner with the experts at these 17 natural laboratories, which continue to drive innovation and drive discoveries. Let me then tell you a little bit about the Office of Science, which is the office that I lead. If you consider DOE as a big corporation, we will be the basic research arm of that big corporation. Our mission is to drive the discovery of scientific discoveries and also major scientific tools to transform our understanding of nature, but also advance our energy, economic, and national security mission.
The nation and the department looks to us to pave that broad knowledge foundation to not only advance the scientific frontiers, but also spurred innovation so we can generate future generation energy technologies and also to secure the national security and also ensure national economic prosperity. This is a very large program. Our annual budget is slightly over $8.2 billion. In fact, we are the nation's largest supporter of basic research and physical sciences. This is a program with very large footprint.
We have a direct support of 29,000 researchers. I hope there are some of you, and hopefully we'll grow the population in Mizzou even further across 300 institutions and all 17 DOE laboratories. We are also the proud owner of 10 of the 17 national laboratories. We also support 28 national user facilities. These are from high-performance computers to X-ray and neutron sources. In fact, we actually partnered with Merck as a really leading producer of medical isotopes, and the application could be even further expanded beyond that.
This is a very large programs that we also aim to further expand our partnerships, especially with institutions such as Mizzou because we really need all the workforce to help us really expand and address our mission. Next, let me quickly summarize some of the energy challenges that we have seen. Traditionally, we have seen that access to affordable and reliable energy sources has always been the cornerstone of the world's prosperity and also continue economic growth.
There's no surprises in the United States as well, as you can see that over the 400 years the US energy consumption has also evolved from the very early days we rely on human and animal powers to the modern day today where the high-tech economy is driven by a multiple of energy sources. But if you look across the history, you will actually see that our energy consumptions are largely driven by a few key technologies, inventions that were actually decades, if not centuries old. From the steam engines to the incandescent lamps. Fortunately, I think we are phasing out most of the incandescent lamps, which is extremely inefficient. The four-stroke combustion engine, we still have combustion engine cars, the intercontinental railroad system and the highway systems. These are essentially decades old inventions, centuries old infrastructures that are still driving the energy reliance that we have.
Even though we do have a newer inventions such as lithium-ion batteries and solid-state lighting, heat pumps and so forth. But overall, this nation is still heavily relying on fossil fuels, 85%, as of even today. To understand the energy challenges, I think it's probably important for us to understand...
Oh, sorry, I'm not advancing the... I'm so very sorry. I was advancing on my slide, but not... Very sorry. But let's look at...
Maybe I should look at the screen instead of my computer. One thing that we should... To really understand more about the energy challenges that we have, I think it's very important for us to really understand how the nation uses energy. I chose 2015, this is the year that the US has used 94.3 quads. Quads is the energy unit, stands for quadrillion BTU.
A quad is also equivalent to 293 billion kilowatt-hours. Also, 183 million barrels of petroleum, 38.5 of tons of coal or 980 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
It's a lot of energy that we use as a nation. But the sources of energy is actually represented on the left-hand side. And the width of the different sources actually represent the proportion. You can see very thick lines of petroleum, very thick lines of coal, natural gas, and some are nuclear. Some of the renewable sources, solar, hydro, wind, geothermal continues to be relatively small.
These sources, some will get directly converted to electricity and then feed into the use sector, which is shown on the right-hand side from residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation. I can see some of the sources will then produce electricity from coal, natural gas, nuclear, but then petroleum would directly feed into transportation. And on the right-hand side is the waste and the use portion. And interestingly, out of the 94 quads, we actually only use 31 of them and the other 63 quads were wasted. This is really an area that could also use some innovation.
But I chose 2015 to show as the baseline because this is a very important year. This is the year the US started to actually produce more oil and gas and becoming less reliant on foreign sources. And I think, thanks to a large part, to fracking unconventional oil shale and so forth. This is a very important source of diversifying the domestic sources. In addition to expanding the renewable sources, the domestic production oil and gas also allowing the US to really change the dynamics of relying heavily on foreign sources of fossil fuels to developing local domestic sources.
But at the same time we are also seeing the petroleum. Even though we have a population growth, we have even more cars on the road. The petroleum consumption is actually slightly declining as to a large degree to car efficiency as you're driving down the over total petroleum consumption and the electricity is also relatively steady. This is really a very important direction through decades of investment through the Department of Energy and other federal agencies and also partnering with private sectors, we're slowly but surely driving innovations not only expanding on the renewable solar, nuclear, hydro, but also through a certain degree the domestic production of fossil fuels.
If we can advance that to 2022... yeah, maybe you can go back to 2022. I do want to note several things. One is that in 2022, we actually only saw a very slight increase in total energy consumption, even though the population continues to grow in the United States. But we're also starting to see the expansion of renewable sources. Solar actually was four times higher than in 2015, and similar growth in wind and geothermal as well.
And we're starting to see the swapping in lower reliance on coal and being offset by the growth in natural gas. And since natural gas is cleaner than coal, it is actually overall producing less CO2 emissions as a whole for the whole nation. This is overall a very encouraging trend. But, however, if you compare what we are today versus in 1950, if we go on to the next slide, this actually shows in 1950 the US population in 2022 compared to 50 were about twice as many people in 1950. However, the total energy consumption is three times than in 1950.
Despite all the energy efficiencies that we have gained, we'll actually use more energy per person than in 1950. The primary energy for transportation is four times that of 1950. And what's really stunning is the electricity generation, and that's in large part driven by a lot of the electrification that we're seeing.
Also, what's very concerning is, if you have read, all the AI data centers going to even drive our electricity demand further in the future. There's little to no imported petroleum then. Also, there's the used and wasted energy about the same.
All in all, this really paints a rather alarming picture for the US. How do we really keep energy sources as reliable, affordable, and also efficient so we can ensure the prosperity and also national security for us as a nation? Really continues to be a major driver to drive our mission in the Department of Energy. The next slide, please. I want to give two example to illustrate how scientific discoveries, innovation are really the key to a vibrant and affordable secure energy future. The first example I would like to give is actually in energy storage.
I know that that's one of the emphasis of the MizzouForward related initiatives. We as an agency continue to support really a broad range of energy technologies in the Office of Science are emphasis in basic research. However, I would like to choose energy storage because it really is a weak link to the whole energy system as shown in the next slide. If you consider several aspects of energy storage, take grid as an example. We need grid to be resilient, especially when you are hit with power outages, whether it's from natural disaster or for whatever reasons. But the current grid is actually not very resilient, unless we can really have the energy storage that can tie you over not just hours, but potentially days.
Also, there's the need to really... Especially you have peak demands when you are hit either by a extreme cold events or extreme hot events. How do we really use energy storage as a way to even the load for low peak leveling and so forth? And another very major driver for energy storage is that we all know a lot of these renewable energies are not constant sources. We don't always have sun shining or wind blowing. And how do we really capture these excess electricity being generated by renewable sources? The opposite problem is in nuclear where it's a constant source, but the demand is not constant so we ended up wasting a lot of electricity. How do we capture the electricity under a longer term duration is really a major driver for grid and not to mention transportation.
Many of you, if you owned electric vehicles, the range anxiety, how to really produce EV with batteries that not only last longer, not just a couple of years, but also can allow you to drive hundreds of miles without worrying about running out of the battery charge? Safety is another big concern. Also, how do we power your power electronics instead of losing, changing your phone every couple years when you have longer lasting batteries? Next slide, please. The current dominant choice is lithium-ion batteries. That's in your Tesla.
That's in many of the transportation. The batteries seemingly very simple operation only has three components. You have the two electrodes, the anode and the cathode, and also the electrolyte.
Batteries store the energy in the electrodes. When the battery is discharged, essentially convert the chemical energy into electricity going through the outside circle. It's seemingly a very simple operation, but when you charge and discharge a battery, actually literally change the lateral structures and that leads to premature failure. That could also lead to safety issues and also degrading. How do we really understand at the molecular level, atomic level, the materials and chemistry that underpin the lithium-ion batteries is a very fruitful areas of research. But in addition to looking at improving lithium-ion batteries, there's also other technologies.
Next slide, please. We're also working on lithium-sulfur batteries. Sulfur is definitely a lot cheaper and more abundant than lithium-ion batteries where the cathodes normally are containing rare earths such as cobalt and other critical materials and minerals.
But lithium-sulfur battery also has its own challenge. Another option that we're working on is the multivalent battery. For every single ions [inaudible 00:24:57] can carry two or more electrons, so you can actually double or triple the energy or power density, which is also a very desirable alternative to lithium-ion batteries. But both technologies also have their shortcomings and that's when we think AI could really come to an aid. Let's turn to the next slide. This is a very...
No, actually... Sorry, let me say something about the flow battery. This is another option that we're working on.
This is instead of storing the energy in the electrodes, we can actually store the energy in the electrolyte. Essentially you can separate the power and the energy. By increasing the electrolyte you can then increase the energy. Also, if you increase the size, you can actually increase the power density as well. This is yet another very promising concept we're investing in. But all of these are still very, very early stage in development and also will require additional investment.
But this is the slide that I really want to focus on. This is a very exciting development that our recent partnership one of our labs had was Microsoft. As we may know, these battery materials, the electrodes could have multiple combinations. If you look at the periodic table, essentially you could have millions or billions combination of different elements. Choosing the one key element composition could be a needle in the haystack, and that's when AI technology could really come to your aid.
This is a partnership that in only two weeks time Microsoft's Azure Quantum Elements platform coupled with the AI technologies, actually has screened out out of 32.6 million candidates. Out of those, they identify 23 promising candidates for them to then synthesize the electrolytes and electrodes that can actually reduce the consumptions of lithium in this sodium-based electrolytes. This is really a very impressive advancement and shows tremendous promise to scientific discovery. If we can apply this similar type approaches to other fields, just imagine the kind of time saving.
Normally new technologies, new materials would take at least a decades for discovery to the upscales in manufacturing and entering into applications. If AI could come to our aid and really accelerating and shortening that innovation cycle, it's really a very important investment that we should all be paying attention to. And that is a very important development, which I'll come back to the AI topic later. Let's move on quickly.
I think we're probably running out of time. Yeah, okay. Next slide, I already talked about the aqueous flow batteries. Fundamental research is just the first step. We need to...
Can you advance to the next slide, please? Along the same flow battery concept, having breakthroughs at the bench scale is not enough. You need to be able to upscale them to the miss scale and then being able to demonstrate that at a commercial scale. That is what this slide is about. We have worked with this team at Argonne National Laboratory to try to identify ultra low-cost flow batteries made from earth abundant material from water, oxygen, and sulfur. That also will then ensure that we have a domestic vibrant supply chain, low materials cost. That’s really
the only chance that we can beat some of the lower cost production from abroad, including China. With that kind of design criteria in mind, we actually designed this iron-air flow batteries and it was tested at a bench scale supported by our office. But then through additional funding, they actually spin off into a company called Form Energy.
And in September 2024, a partnership with the State of West Virginia, Form Energy actually will be constructing a 1.5 megawatt iron-air battery pilot for the Great River Energy program. I think this is really a good success story and institutions such as Mizzou could be that translator because we support the fundamental research here. But your connection to industry, to your local community, could be that translational vehicle to translate low TRL, technology readiness advances upscale to eventually develop into application. But probably most importantly, you would then have a knowledgeable workforce to be able to support the future of these technologies as they are being deployed and continue to innovate as needed. Let me then move on to the second part of my talk example, which is on AI.
Next slide, please. Thank you. AI has already been mentioned earlier and it's throughout the conversation, but AI does not exist alone. AI and microelectronics computing are really the confluence of these advances could really drive the future of science, energy, and including national security.
And that is what I'm going to share with you in the next couple of slides. Next slide, please. Computing essentially is the middle name of our office science because we rely so much on computing in driving the scientific innovation. But computing is not just a scientific adventure, it's also all around us. What we're using to powering your personal devices, computers, even driving the Uber and all these Internet of Things. Computing is really all around us, but the energy use of computing is growing.
As I've shown earlier compared to 1950, our electricity is already 14 times higher than then, and it's projected to grow even further with the new technologies because we essentially are needing computing for communications for the infrastructure. And this is really unsustainable if we do not really get the energy demand under control. We also have a very selfish or parochial view, because our high-performance computing is extremely energy-hungry.
And in order for us to keep pace with the scientific competition from around the globe, we need to be able to support scientific computing that is also energy-efficient. That is really a major driver for us to really consider microelectronics AI high-performance computing in one integrated system. The next slide, please. The reason that I mentioned that we are very interested in the energy efficiency is because we own the world's two fastest computer. They are called the exascale computer. It operates 10 to the 18 floating point operations per second.
It's very, very, very, very fast. And we need this very fast computer so we can secure whether it's nuclear weapon design or design the next generation of energy batteries or fuel cells or biofuels. These are the two system. One, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory called Frontier, and the one at Argonne's called Aurora.
The next slide, please. Achieving these exascale computers, the most challenging part is actually the energy consumption part. When we're trying to build the exascale computers, people are saying that, "You will likely need a nuclear power plant to power these computers." Because the energy consumption
is just projected to be unsustainable using the existing technologies. We actually beat the expectations in driving the energy efficiency to be 200 times more efficient than the previous innovation. This is really a combination of new materials, new algorithms, and also partnership with vendors.
We believe this is kind of direction that we need to go as a nation. We cannot just use today's technology in driving the next generation of AI data centers. We need to infuse energy efficiency, new material, new chips design in order to drive AI, because AI is just going to change not just my life, your life, everybody's lives. AI is going to change almost as significant as industrial revolutions. I was just giving an example earlier looking at our cell phones. Most of the time they're sitting in your pocket idle, right? If you have an active AI algorithm while they're sitting idle, they can actually do a lot of work sitting idle.
They can answer your email. Well, you'll ultimately be the one sending the email, but they can in the background doing a lot of work if you really train these AI models and having the computing powers to be able to support that. That would mean tremendous increase in productivity, innovation and discoveries. You can really harvest that innovation. Let's go on to the next slide. AI is actually not new to DOE.
We actually started to invest in AI adjacent science and technology in the 1960s. But then what DOE has done is that these exascale computers are really designed to harvest these AI powers and AI training. What's so important is these large language model to be able to harvest all these data and being able to train and have them do work that a regular computer will not be able to do. What DOE is investing is the hardware design and also basic research to innovate AI techniques and applications. Next slide, please.
I'm really excited to share with you, we have initiative called FASST, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for science, security and technology. FASST will build on the world's most powerful supercomputers and also the integrated AI system. People may ask why DOE? We are working with NSF, Panch is a good collaborator, but there are some unique strengths in DOE. We have tons of AI ready data.
Our 17 laboratories, our 28 user facility are generating terabytes of data every day. These are a treasure trove information that we can harvest and then generate new knowledge, new innovation, and new discoveries. We also have the infrastructure and the platform. We have ability to safeguard these very precious resources and data.
Safe, secure, trustworthy, privacy preserving AI modeling system. We also have a ton of use cases. This is an area that we really would like to partner with institutions such as Mizzou.
You bring use applications to us for us to then collectively use these large language model to drive innovation. I will give you some examples that we're already doing, but let me just quickly run through... I know that timing is running short. The next slide, please.
We will be using FASST to advance national security, scientific discovery, energy challenges, to develop technical expertise necessary for AI governance. We have to be able to know how do we protect, how do we then democratize the access to the community. We also need to attract and build a talented workforce. Let me just skip the next slide and then go to some examples. This is the example I would like to share with you. Very exciting, actually won the 2022 Gordon Bell Prize in computing.
I don't know many of you... Gordon Bell Prize is like the Oscar of supercomputing. We won the number one in this Gordon Bell Prize. What has Gordon Bell recognized is that Argonne researchers actually are able to train a lot of large language models, the genomic data. They actually train and develop a genome, large language model, so they can not only analyze the genomes of different variants of COVID, but identify these variants of concern. This is a very important part.
Once you understand what kind of variants could actually be even more transmissive or harder to tackle, then they actually provide some paths for us to then devise countermeasures, vaccines, therapeutics to counter that. This is actually a very important step but also have broad and wide implication. The next slide, please. This is the one that I already talked about. Identifying some electrode is just the first step. There's the whole battery system, the anode, the electrodes, the electrolytes, but there are also many, many other energy technologies.
Materials are the linchpin underpinning a lot of the advances, but also prohibiting many other advances as well. Partnering with Microsoft, one of our labs, actually allowing us to use AI to discover new material, new chemistry, hopefully to leapfrog the current generation of energy technologies. And the next slide. It's actually a very important partnership between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and BridgeBio. I don't know how many of you actually are involved in cancer research. We know that RAS and RAF are these mutating genes often found in cancers such as colon cancer, thyroid cancer, and some well-known very hard-to-treat cancers even.
What the partnership between Lawrence Livermore and BridgeBio did is that they actually are able to identify these mutating genes and then devise cancerous drugs to then counter these mutations, and as a very effective treatment. This is actually a very exciting development because it's already entering into clinical trial. Hopefully, we'll see some promising results soon. And with the last example, which is related to a lot of conversation about deregulation but also permitting. Many of you know that NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, demand that federal agencies over 50 years will have to document all these environmental studies and also results. We have 50 years across multiple federal agencies.
These are captured in independent, separated, unrelated databases. Whenever we have to do a permitting, a siting decisions, huge work, time, and effort has to go into these permitting studies. AI could really come to your aid. You can actually have AI read all the literatures you can find in Web of Science and maybe that would be a way to advise you not to pursue certain things. That's the similar things with this permitting.
How do we really streamlining the environmental review? A lot of data already exist. How do we then empowering AI to read using these large language model to process information and devise the tools for subject matter experts, for federal agencies, for users, to then streamlining the review and permitting process. I think this is really a very different world from the world that we are currently living in, but also a very promising future where we see AI could really drive innovations for the future. Let me conclude with the last slide. Size innovation is really the foundation for the nation's future in economy and its security.
A hallmark of DOE's energy portfolio is the successful coupling of basic research and also the applied research, along with technology transfer. And we in DOE's Office of Science will need to do our part to continue to expand that knowledge base so we can spur additional innovation for the future. This vision is only possible through continued investment in basic research to address current technological bottlenecks. But at the bottom of this is really the partnerships. This is a huge challenge. We're racing against the clock to address some of the most significant climate changes.
I really struggle some as to how we balance this message about continuing investment in renewable while also increase our domestic fossil investment with an eye towards maintaining a manageable footprint, not to further degrade the climate impact due to decades, centuries of fossil fuel use. This is not a simple challenge and we're sitting at a very important time in human history to be able to advance our knowledge and hopefully the energy technologies that go with it. With that, I would like to thank all of you for coming here today. I hope that this provides some useful information for you. I'll be happy to answer any questions if there's time.
Thank you. [Applause] -Dr. Kung, thank you so much for that wonderful talk that laid out the history of DOE, but also the challenges that we face as a society and how DOE Office of Science will meet those challenges. I know that some of you may have class at eleven o'clock, so I understand if you have to leave. We don't normally get the director of the Office of Basic Sciences in Columbia, Missouri.
I want to really use this time to have interactions with members of the audience and dig into some of the information that you shared. I'll begin, but please, if you have a question, you'll see Brandyce who's going to stand right in the middle, and Kelly, please ask for the mic. When I saw your presentation, I was really struck by how many times you mentioned AI and the tremendous energy consumption that will resolve from it.
And we saw that Microsoft just recently entered into a contract to restart Three Mile Island, which, I think, is a great idea. But we're also going to need new nuclear research reactors. And one of the challenges that I see even with proven technologies with these small-module reactors is the time that it takes for NRC approval. Is there a plan at the federal government to help streamline that process without cutting corners, but ensuring that we can meet the energy demands that we know we're going to have to face? -Thank you for that question. We in the department have seen these so-called nuclear renaissance come and go a few times, having been in the department for about 20 years now.
But I do think that, especially with AI, the example I gave about the streamlining the permitting process, we can actually utilize technologies to help us streamlining some of these permitting regulation related vetting work. We don't have to start from ground zero if there's a lot of information already existing. I also think that, for nuclear energy, if we can stop building first of a kind, if we can really scale up the production building 100 them. That would also make sure the supply chain of building such reactors are robust in the United States. We have a reliable affordable supply chain in the United States. I think these are some of the things that I'm hoping, speaking as a private citizen, that the new administration may be able to help the nation in tackling.
But I think the fact that if we can use technology to help, not cut corners, because safety is of utmost importance to every single citizen. But really use technology to help us streamline the process, accelerating some of the permitting, siting, reviewing process hopefully, and also working with vendors on supply chain. I think, hopefully, that will really bring the nuclear renaissance to reality this time. -Very good. I look forward to that. Let me ask if there's a question from the member of the audience. Yes. Please
state your name and if you can stand. -Yes, my name is Pankaj Srivastava and my question is related to this nuclear energy landscape, specifically SMRs, that is small modular reactor. I want to just understand whether there is any breakthrough in this TerraPower initiative of Bill Gates, number one.
Number two is that there has been some breakthrough in University of Oxford. Can you please reflect on this? -I'm actually not familiar with the specific breakthroughs that you may be referencing. I know that our sister program in nuclear energy are exploring different concepts including molten salt reactors and other technologies. I know that TerraPower is probably more on the traditional concept.
But I think speaking from Office of Science point of view, we are addressing more of the fundamental materials to be more resistant to radiation. Also, chemistry for the fuel development. And we stand ready to partner with our nuclear energy partners as they develop additional concepts in addition to the more traditional concepts. But I think nuclear energy will have to be a major part of the energy solution for the future and we look forward to that. -We have a question from Dr. Paul Miceli, who's going to ask about neutron scattering.
-Thank you for a very nice presentation today. We really appreciate your being here. We have a wonderful research reactor, which you're going to see today. We would really like to see a strong engagement with DOE and the capabilities that we have at this university and, of course, other universities across the nation. What type of vision do you have for engaging the resources that exist at other places beyond DOE Labs? -Right. Thank you for that question.
Neutron scattering is a key part of our portfolio. The most of the facility that we support are resided at DOE laboratories. We are looking for opportunities that we could partner with universities primarily for workforce development, but also utilizing neutron scattering for research. As I was discussing this morning with other leaders at Mizzou, there may be additional considerations given that there is already an existing partnership through the isotope programs that could be put into consideration as to expanding that partnership. My proposal to the leadership team was to take the idea back to our teams and further exploring that. Ultimately, neutron scattering I know it's really neutron hungry.
The capacity is very limited and that has also been on our radar in terms of expanding capacity. -Yes. -Hi, good morning. I'm Robin Rotman from the School of Natural Resources. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here. My question relates to hydrogen. That's one technology you could argue it's a storage technology of sorts that you didn't discuss at length in your presentation.
Just wanted to see if you'd like to comment on that. I know the change in administration may change your focus on that, but just wanted to hear your thoughts. -I actually had hydrogen in my master DAC. Because this talk is only for 30 minutes, I decided to focus on NAS storage and AI. Hydrogen continued to be a very attractive option.
Not only as energy storage medium, but also hydrogen is used in so many industrial products, as you may know. In steel production. Even fertilizer require hydrogen.
How do we produce hydrogen in a sustainable way that limit the climate footprint or the environmental footprint is something that will continue to be of interest, at least to the Office of Science, which is really focusing on the basic research. I don't think the science challenges related to hydrogen use, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage have been solved yet. I think there's still a lot of room for research in my view. -Yeah, it's a fantastic presentation. My name is Susie Dai.
I'm a new MizzouForward hire. My lab is on the first floor of this building. Mizzou has a lot of portfolio of plant science study and we have a lot of faculty members here study biomass, power energy. What's your view of that percentage of 6.3% of biomass in the 5th slide of your presentation? And what's your future perspective of DOE Office of Science investment in this perspective? Thank you.
-We have a vibrant basic research biofuels program. The centerpiece is this four bio research centers, which have been supported almost up to 20 years now. We considered biofuels especially how do we reduce the resistance of lignin to produce really high fuel content from a system perspective, will be a very important new direction. The bio research centers have been in existence for a long time and we're actually in the process of scoping new directions. I know that someone has just mentioned that some of the Mizzou researchers that led one of the research workshops for us.
I think this continued to be an area that will receive a lot of support, especially, I think, in growing crops that would not compete with food crops. I think there is a serious consideration, especially resources, whether it's land or water and crops that can withstand harsher environment, whether it's drought or flood. These are areas I think continue to well receive a lot of support in our program. -You already know me. Since we brought up the topic of food, as you know, Missouri is an agricultural state and I also know we have a few of our legislators here. They will tell you that there is a lot of concern about rural areas, about access to energy, to data.
Basically, the resources that other places don't have and the focus on AI and data centers that are energy hungry may move the focus away from this type of needs. Is there any thought or joint programs perhaps with the USDA or other things that you are thinking about for rural energy and the needs? -I now remember, I think, earlier the pennycress example, I actually used that in my congressional testimony to show a partnership with USDA. That was indeed the partnership between Office of Science and USDA that resulted in that significant breakthrough. I forgot who I was talking to earlier today.
I think continual coordination... One of the hearings that I participated in was hosted by the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee looking at collaborations between DOE's Office of Science and other agencies. USDA was one of the focus of that hearings. After passing the bioeconomy and bioenergy executive order, there're actually a lot of very promising directions for us to pursue with USDA, especially in biofuels and bio crops and feedstock. Rural areas, one of our major emphasis in 25 request is less so of fuels in the rural area, but more on climate resilience for the rural area.
Rural area continues to be a very important focus for us because if we look at our investment across United States, it's largely concentrated on the coast for sure. We lack investments in obscure states, which we're paying attention to, but also the rural area. We notice that if we put our performers on the map, the rural areas are really not very well represented.
If you have ideas on how we can partner with the rural area better, I'm really interested in hearing from you. -Thank you. We have time for one or two questions. Yes, please.
As he's getting the microphone, let me share with you. As I look in the room, I see many people here who are from the social sciences and the humanities. I think they're here because energy is so important for our future development. But also energy has created situations where there are disparities between rural and urban and also created geopolitical strains. What is a message that you can share with the members that are here that are studying these disciplines about how they can contribute to policies and other areas that your office can benefit from? -One example that we really partner with social scientists and especially is in the techno-economic analysis and also resources, because for us to cite certain activities we really need to understand whether the resources are even available to support it.
Not just from a single stage of research, but really looking at the life cycle process from the very beginning of citing some activities to potential local communities and then having a supply chain that you can then push for some applications. All of that, and also the acceptance of new products, new technologies, whether the consumers will be able to be receptive to certain breakthroughs. A lot of this should really fold into the policy guidance that we receive as an agency, because choosing research topics is one thing. Being able to see that research all the way to be translated into impactful technologies. There are multiple aspects going into that. I'm just using one example.
We were recently talking to a colleague in UK where there's a strong partnership in pushing fusion energy to be a viable technology. The UK approach is actually quite... In my view, has a lot of merit. Before they decide to cite a fusion reactor, they actually invest tremendous amount of energy and also community outreach to make sure that the community first know about what fusion is and then be able to provide input whether the community would be interested in partnering with the government in developing fusion technologies.
I think those kind of strategy would hugely be beneficial to involve the social economic sector of the community to get informed, and we want the expert to help us with the resources they can seek and advise us on the policy level and then incorporate that into designing a research program. -Thank you for your fascinating presentation. I'm Sarah Humfeld from the Office of Undergraduate Research.
We had the pleasure of having a representative from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education a few weeks ago chatting with our undergraduates and our graduates about internships. But I wondered if you had any additional advice for our young scholars about training and skills that they should develop while they're here and maybe opportunities through the Department of Energy. -I really thank you for that question. I myself have really benefited from these hands-on experience when I joined one of the national laboratory. In fact, I was at Los Alamos Natural Laboratory for about 10 years. The students that we mentor there, it's very different and hopefully complement the academic training at our research education institutions because they're tackling real world problems with certain time sensitivity and also some deliverables. That really give them a real sense of how conquering a real challenge that could impact the humanity in a very real sense.
And I really encourage Mizzou students to get in touch. We have a program called Workforce for Teacher and Scientists. It supports undergraduate internship, also graduate internship associated with our national laboratories. Just last year we started a pilot to have short-term exchange with international partners.
The first pilot is actually with CERN. This is the world's center of particle physics. We’re exploring that with Japan and Germany. These internship would then have a four or five weeks of summer exchange program building so they can actually further broaden their perspective by interfacing with international students and colleagues. And hopefully the network will last through the lifetime of their STEM career or what other career they will have. I'm really glad that you have a chance to talk to ORISE. But if Mizzou students will be interested in partnering with and joining our internship, please do let me know.
I really would like to put you in touch with our WDTS program lead. -Time for one last question. -Hi, good morning. My name is Kamal. I'm from Mizzou Chemistry Department.
Thank you for the nice presentation. I've seen that you have talked about the collaboration of AI with science, and I believe that, yes, AI will greatly influenced the upcoming research in the future. But in my personal experience, I've seen whenever I ask some question to the AI regarding the literature, it shows some suggestions, but when I ask the AI about the reference, then it shows a very, very vague references without any base about the research work. I think if we heavily rely on the AI without looking back what reference it's choosing, it may give the false result in the research. What do you think about that? And do you think that AI would need...
still need some advancement to give accurate results about the literature and the research? -Thank you. -Thank you for that question. I think that is really what you described. And not to mention the hallucination. They even could imagine some things that don't even exist in real world. It really speaks to the weaknesses of these vendor-supported platform, right? You really need reliable structured data to train from. Without the reliable data, your model doesn't mean anything.
Also, not only you have to benchmark these models, you have to constantly make sure that the whole life cycle of these modeling... A lot of work needs to be done. AI so far is such an important buzzword, but what's underneath that buzzword is a lot of hard work that different agency need to partner with industry. Currently, government's spending was dwarfed by industry investment. And without that countering of industry, there's really no way for the government to really be able to hold these industry developer accountable for what they do. We have to make sure that we have the resources and the subject matter expertise to not only check the work that the industry partners are doing, but then also make sure that AI can then be used not just for the industrial benefit, but also for every taxpayers.
Especially for us, speaking for the science and technology domain. We want to make sure that AI can really be applicable to advance our science and technology mission. -Dr. Kung, thank you so much for being here. Let's give her another big round of applause. We have a special gift for you. We're going to pick that back up.
There's a condition, and the condition is we want you to wear this to the next university that you visit and talk about how great it is at the University of Missouri. Thank you so much. We wish you continued success. -Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. [Applause] -Dr. Kung will be here. If you do want to speak with her, please come on up.
2024-11-22 05:50
