Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
3/27/2015
New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall (D) and Martin Heinrich (D) introduced a bill this week to boost Laboratory Directed Research and Development programs at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. The “LDRD Enhancement Act of 2015” would increase the percentage of lab funding that can be set aside for special projects from 6 percent to 10 percent. “This bill supports the national security missions at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, while allowing scientists and engineers to pursue solutions to some of our nation’s most pressing energy, security, and environmental challenges,” Heinrich said in a statement. “The LDRD program is a powerful recruitment tool that attracts and retains some of the brightest minds from across the country. The program also fosters collaboration between our labs and small businesses that often results in innovative products, spinoff ideas, and new jobs.”
LDRD funding has gradually decreased for the nation’s nuclear weapons laboratories in recent years over concerns from Congressional appropriators, first taking a hit in Fiscal Year 2006 when appropriators required LDRD work to pay overhead rates, or be “burdened,” like other lab programs. That lessened the buying power of the funding, and in the FY 2014 omnibus appropriations act, Congress decreased LDRD funding from 8 percent to 6 percent. Lab officials have complained that has considerably decreased the amount of work that can be performed on LDRD, forcing them to cut back on post-doctoral scientists and researchers that are often lured to the labs by the promise of LDRD’s flexibility. The LDRD program cost $527 million in FY 2014 across all DOE laboratories, representing about 4.2 percent of the total budgets for the labs.
The Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories last month noted that LDRD is a “crucial resource in supporting cutting edge exploratory research prior to the time that a research program is identified and developed by DOE,” and NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz emphasized the importance of LDRD funding in an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee earlier this month. “It has payoffs both in terms of the basic research that’s necessary to maintain the stockpile, but more importantly, to recruit and retain the best and the brightest out of STEM programs at our leading colleges and universities by giving them the opportunity to work on leading-edge scientific and engineering work to establish their bona fides with their colleagues around the country,” Klotz said during an exchange with Heinrich. “And once we allow them to do that, we find they get very intrigued by the other things that are going on in the laboratory and we can hold them.”
