good morning before we start the hearing ok ok probably have different names you want to call me but either congressman passed or vice chair would be or not all mr chairman i think is inappropriate because pete is still the chair but since i've been given the title when you're through with those comments may just make a very brief statement sure i just want to say i think it reflects well on chairman visclosky that he cares so deeply about the important programs funded under this bill that he didn't want any press attention focused on him to be a distraction from this subcommittee's work he there's been no legal action taken against him there's been no indictment  but i think he certainly has my respect for saying the work of this subcommittee which has a tradition work and so well on a bipartisan basis must go on and i think it reflect in his commitment to this committee i salute him for putting this committee's work above any personal interest he might have had and continued on act in this chair through this through this markup and working with you in this great staff a bipartisan basis to the work this subcommittee thank you  colonel come to order good morning we have before us today the secretary of energy dr steven chu he is here to present administration's budget request for the department of energy i am pleased th president obama has clearly age the energy challenges facing this nation and has made energy equality a top priority of his agenda i view the president's decision to ask secretary chu to lead the department of energy also as a reflection of his commitment unfortunately too often secretary positions have been a consolation prize for appointees who preferred other positions but we are very encouraged that we have before us today cabinet secretary who is truly enthusiastic about embracing the dealy portfolio of this era of energy challenges the secretary of energy features a broad portfolio of research and development efforts given the substantial short medium and long range energy challenges facing the nation we need a strong but balanced approach to energy r and d which includes both fundamental energy research and development as well as significant technology demonstration deployment and and commercialization efforts mr secretary we look forward to hearing from you today of how the fiscal year two thousand and ten budget request will help address the energy and national security challenges we face and the management plans to ensure  planning and execution we look forward to cooperate in with you on the challenges ahead ahead of us but i do not want but i do want to remind you that the cooperation and respect are two way streets while we admire your background and expertise that in no way means that we will rubber stamp the deal we budget requests for fiscal year two thousand and ten there is also relevant background knowledge and expert experience and expertise on this committee i don't expect it will always agree on everything regarding the deal we budget but i sincerely hope we can work together through those differences and cooperate in a bipartisan manner mr secretary i would also ask that you ensure that the hearing record responses to the questions for the record and any supporting information requested by the septa maybe cleared through the department your office the office of management and budget and delivered in final form to the subcommittee no later than four weeks from the time you receive them with those opening remarks i would like to yield to our ranking member and i thank you m this vice chairman let me associate myself with your remarks and as well as mr edwards and and i look forward to working with you secretary chu good morning welcome to your first appearance before this committee you bring  this administration a history of impressive accomplishment and may i add a new jersey connection to your previous employment of eighty and t bell labs how good it was in those old days i should say and to your credit that i'm sensing undercurrent of enthusiasm about the new leadership of the department of energy hope you can capitalize this and it will lead to more focused and more accountable management across your department your portfolio is daunting with roughly fourteen thousand full time employees over say ninety three thousand contractors not to mention the number of employees at the federal and state level needed to meet the requirements of the recovery act aka stimulus legislation which i may add my subcommittee never reviewed and which more than double the size of your budget to a with a infusion of about thirty eight point seven billion dollars it will come to no surprise that there are clear philosophical differences emerging between the developing pro priorities of this administration and those long supported in a by partisan way i may add by this committee in congress let me outline a few basic and applied research is indeed the core of our nation's ability to remain innovative and cutting edge but we must maintain our focus on technology development and ultimately the commercialization of revolutionary technologies to keep our nation safe and competitive fortunately this budget appears to subordinate commercial efforts and recast our partnerships with private industry in disturbing ways last year the vol volatility of gas prices jolted our country into an energy awakening leaving the american public thirsting for cheaper domestically generated environmentally clean energy supplies i believe to get there we must have diversity of energy supplies period and that nuclear power must be part of that mix nuclear power has wide acceptance these days among most of our fellow citizens yet this budget makes me question whether nuclear power is a priority in this administration your request under funds the department's commitment to the nuclear industry including the n p two thousand and ten program it appears to back off our commitment to our international partners by stalling the development of the next generation nuclear power plant both of these were at one time good news stories for the department was to secretary this budget neglects our commitments to  tested and proven private industry and to my mind to our international partners and allies and puts our nation at risk of ultimately ceding our leadership role in the clean air clean energy revolution a role that i personally strongly support be frank with you mr secretary the only point of real clarity a deliberate resolve i can glean from this request is the proposal to shutter yucca mountain that to this member is an irresponsible about face with no clear way forward you propose five million dollars for a blue ribbon panel whose charter would include a review of alternative locations for a geological repository and i may add covering old and familiar investigative territory there is a sad and very costly arnie with this proposal taxpayers have spent over ten billion dollars and countless scientific studies have been conducted over twenty six years the question of what we do with our nuclear waste had been answered awfully until this budget was submitted the terminations of yucca mountain appears to have had some confluence with a larger energy supply portfolio as well quite frankly the budget reads more like attempt to pit its unfortunate renewable and nuclear power against each other for false choice in my book no one can dispute the potential benefit in growing need for a new level energy sources indeed renewable sources will become a larger contributor though their current they currently account for just seven percent of all of the overall energy mix as i've already mentioned there is i believe a growing public consensus that nuclear power must be a major component of energy and of any energy portfolio that reduces our environmental footprint economically the nuclear power boom will continue across the globe with or without the united states china for example has one hundred twenty five nuclear power plant plants in the pipeline the united states has just twenty six in the licensing process nucular and renewable energy should be partners in the push for environmentally clean power and economic development not combatants arrivals unfortunately our budgets department's budget does not seem to a support that  approach and i quite honestly feel there is a similar bias in this budget against oil national gas production finally the weapons activities request and they are four million dollars above last year's level significantly below the rate of inflation i do not see how the president's vision and i agree with his vision of a world without nuclear weapons not to mention and n s a s nuclear obligation to our nation's security could be met with this request while the budget requests an increase for dismantlement it cuts or flatlines funding for scientific and industrial expertise that will need in the long run meanwhile the russians and chinese are continuing their aggressive nuclear development programs and the north koreans have demonstrated a degree of sophistication should that should worry all of us as i told  a straight or two weeks ago national security does not deserve a placeholder budget yet this is precisely what we have before us to my mind mr secretary as i close i want you to know that we know how this budget was drafted the needs of your department are much greater than the ceiling that ill and b has forced on you action now rests with this committee we will be rational and prudent and nonpartisan in our recommendations so as not to compromise any element of national security so i look forward as i'm sure all members of the committee due to your remarks and to our discussion during this hearing again thank you mr vice chairman thank you i want to inform the subcommittee and the secretary that we plan to call the hearing at twelve o'clock and so will have as many questions as possible but  member member freely housing members of the committee i'm pleased to be pleased to be before you today to present president obama's fiscal year two thousand and ten budget requests to the department of energy we will be responsive to all the requests so the president's two thousand and ten budget seeks to usher in a new era of responsibility an error in which we invest to create new jobs and lift our economy out of recession while la a new foundation for a long term growth and prosperity president obama's white two thousand and ten budget invest in clean and renewable sources of energy so we can reduce our dependence on oil address the threat of a chang climate and become the world leader and in new clean energy that's why ten budget request for the department of energy is twenty six point four billion essentially flat compared to apply two thousand and nine and it compliments the significant energy investments in the american recovery and reinvestment act the budget request emphasizes science discovery and innovation to support the key missions the department my written testimony includes  breakdown of this budget and i'd like to use this time to briefly highlight a few top line numbers and areas of particular importance to look all nuclear security and the president's ambitious nonproliferation goals the budget request nine point nine billion for the national nuclear security administration to continue to accelerate legacy clean up of our nation's nuclear weapons production the budget requests five point eight billion for the office of environmental management to bolster the department's commitment to scientific discovery the budget requests four point nine billion for the office of science and to foster a revolution in energy supply and demand one position united states to lead on global economic global climate change policy the budget includes records for a range of energy investments including eight hundred eighty two million for the office of fossil energy eight hundred forty five million for the office of nuclear energy and two point three billion for the office of energy efficiency and renewable energy that clean energy funding clude several notable strategic investments even as its budget holds the line on spending overall solar power will we see three hundred twenty million an increase of eighty two percent wind energy is funded at seventy five million an increase of thirty six percent funding for clean vehicle programs is up twenty two percent to three hundred thirty three million and funding for building technologies is increased by sixty nine percent to two hundred thirty eight million another significant increase is the office of electricity delivery and energy reliability which will receive two hundred eight million fifty two percent more than and flight two thousand and nine as it works  develop a new smart grid this request also includes funding to implement the loan guarantee program and advanced technology vehicle manufacturing long program that brief overview i want to turn to one of my and one of my highest priorities in the budget and as secretary amplifying the office of science is fundamental research with innovative approaches to solving the nation's energy problems specifically this budget request includes three designed to cover the spectrum of the basic to applied science to maximize our chances of energy breakthroughs the f y two thousand and ten budget will launch a energy innovation hubs which are the while the energy front here research centers and r p were launched last month let me explain briefly the differences among these in issues and why i believe launching these hubs is so important the a d e f are sees our small scale collaboration predominantly at universities that focus on overcoming known hurdles in basic science that block energy breakthroughs not on developing energy technologies themselves are pretty easy is a highly entrepreneurial funding model  revolutionary technologies that are too risky for industry to fund the proposed energy innovation hubs will take a very different approach they will be multi disciplinary highly collaborative teams ideally working under one roof to solve party technology challenges such as artificial photosynthesis the creation of fuels from sunlight a few years ago i changed the course of my scientific work to focus on solving our energy and climate challenges because of the urgency of these issues and because i remain optimistic that science can offer better solutions and we can imagine today but those solutions will only come if we harness the creativity and ingenuity and intellectual horsepower of our best scientists in the right way i'm convinced that launching energy innovation hubs is a critical next step in this effort bringing together the best scientists from different disciplines and collaborative efforts is our best hope of achieving priority goals such as making solar energy cost competitive with fossil fuels or developing new building designs that dramatically use less energy or developing an economical battery that will take your car three hundred miles without recharging these are the breakthroughs we need and the energy innovation hubs will help us achieve them i saw the power of truly clabber science like this firsthand during my nine years at bell laboratories i believe that to solve the energy problem the energy and the department of energy must strive to be the modern version of bell labs in energy research and that's what these hubs will do they will centrally be little bell labs these investments will pay for themselves many times over and has america's competitive energize the department will partner with the national science foundation to educate thousands of students at all levels in the fields that contribute to our fundamental understanding of energy science and energy says in engineering systems it is my firm belief that the short term impact of the recovery act combined with the long term vision in president obama's f y two thousand and ten budget will lay the necessary groundwork for a clean economy both president obama and i look forward to working with the eleven eleven hundred congress to make this vision a reality i appreciate this opportunity to be pure before you i asked in my full written statement be included for the record and really happy dance to take questions at this time but objection your state will be in the record could you you finish talking about the the hub's by saying many bell labs at that time it was basically a private commercial venture designed to stand the bell labs and your vision of the hubs is a private only venture is it a public private venture could you could you expand a little bit more on how you see a hub looking like that i have a great interest in and battery development we've kind of lost that technology here's korea and japan and other countries i think are at the forefront and as we there's a great need for developing greater storage capacity and being able to  use it whenever we need it and so that's one of my interests is how we so battery development research in development something i think is very important how would you deal or how would you create and how would you develop a hub that was actually managed the science when when i was a bell laboratories for nine years and actually for about seventy five years the very best scientists were the managers that's somewhat unusual because in many instances you might have been a good scientist at one time seen better days and then you become a manager that was not true at the laboratories and so the technical decisions of how things were made how you can invest your money were made by these contributing scientists now what that did isn't allowed people to make very clear very timely decisions it wasn't decisions on what to fund were not made by peer review they were made by very intelligent people and back and forth between the people proposing and the people who had to bless the project and i'd be really mean intimate sort of way when i was a department head person would come to mean they would say i've got a great deer here let's go to war we talk about it i would say well what about this what about that i don't think this may answer back and forth that is a process which allows you to go very much more quickly when i read the history of the way lincoln labs was designed during world war two the way what sal most way the metallurgical lab was done on the manhattan project it was similar thing the very best scientists were actually in the fray discussing back and forth and and so what we want to do oh the other thing is that in these innovation hubs they can span many different areas for example in batteries and materials issue measurement issues there are structural issues there are many things they can cut across many disciplines and so what you and there could be some basic science issues but in the end you want to deliver the goods in the end link in labs had to deliver radar so so it spans this gamut seamless way and then you have these top leaders making these decisions if we did it the old fashioned way which is you may give us a proposal we decide whether it's good you go away for three years you come back and tell us what you've done and think about giving another three years worth of money that actually delays things quite a bit you can abandon things very quickly the maj min say here is a much better idea now we know enough in the first three months this doesn't look like it's in pan out you can drop it you can't drop it if you've got a proposal you've got to show some results because golden rule number two of any scientist is get refund so  you can get on the ground entombment top managers looking over what's going on i think we can go much faster that's the basic idea  thank you mr vice chairman the secretary of the new york times reported as you may have seen on the front page this morning what it would be i think were guarded as a rather important security lapse could you tell us a little bit about what you've been able to find out obviously there's some of that basic information out there but certainly appears to be i guess and two hundred sixty six pages quite a lot of information that might be considered to be sensitive can you tell us and maybe give us a level of assurance reassurance as to what's going to happen ok well i know what i know from reading the new york times articles so let me start with that my understanding is that there was someone made a mistake probably at the government printing office and released sensitive information that information includes where nuclear spent fuel is and civilian sites but as far as the department of energy's concerned it also includes some information on where some  material is kept and so that is of great concern we will be looking hard and making sure that physical security of those lab sites  lot of that money was borrowed and has to be paid back can you tell us maybe where there during this creative period where those dollars how you formulated the decision to spend those dollars to what extent money has gone out the door in other words how much of it has been obligated and  who you have been in a position of responsibility to make sure it is that close to thirty nine billion dollars goes out the door whether you're going to have what persons in charge of oversight and accountability so our goal is by labor day to obligated roughly fifty percent of the thirty eight point seven billion dollars  in if you look at the various things i'm thinking for example whether as a sion there is a concern all throughout the whole program that that we want to make sure the money is spent well and so the whether zation for example five billion indeterminate energy is split in the fine ways already all the states have ten percent of that money to stand up and organizations to make sure that as the states and the local areas begin to weather corps people that can do this in a proper way after that then we will release another forty percent and see how they are doing so we will get the remaining money will give will get forty percent to say ok let's see what you've done is this money being well spent it's one thing to stimulate jobs but overall we've got to not only stimulate jobs it has to actually save energy because it's the saving of the energy that will actually put money back in their pockets that will begin to stimulate the economy in a second way and so it's very important that you actually save in the energy bills so so it's it's going to be bullied some traumas and the energy loan parts the loan guarantee parts we have announced one loan so far from when i took over the department was it took us about fifty eight days that's a little bit ahead of the schedule i was originally told which was a year and a half we are hopeful in the next several weeks we'll be announcing another set of loans or is there a little glitches and things there's negotiations between companies things of that nature these are now thousands of conditional laws in the sense that we'll all get if they can if those companies do their part in getting the additional twenty percent of financing it's good so i just make it clear there are a number of other things that in fact at the very beginning i think the first week of my time to move energy i pointed a person who reports directly to me that oversees all the economic stimulus material and he has meetings now i believe on a daily bases with all the various people and we chat you and you and i have chatted about that you're going to make sure that that person million last year to over five billion you're confident that the through the mechanisms you set up that the states are prepared to hire people that are competent to make sure th money gets out the door well let's just say i don't know about confidence let's just say we are trying to do a lot of preventive things as much as possible to make sure that it is gone out the door  in many in many cases the programs that exist in some of our states and individual legislators can put their are in the water here that the amount of money they're getting is a huge amount compared to whatever they've traditionally gotten from the department of energy so there's a potential there for trouble if we don't set the right pretty high standards to know i agree with you absolutely even in that you mention also that the stimulus money the three point seven billion  our budget twenty six billion a year and thirty eight and most of that will be album it will essentially be obligated to years even that strains on our department are such that we we can't do things as business as into somebody in the hot salt case and how to get through government service oh it's unbelievable we know you're there grants made in chief now you've got a lot a huge portfolio and we wish you luck in that regard we'll be obviously closely monitoring what you're doing thank you and mr  chairman congratulations on your appointment and thank you for your leadership in the energy field for many years without for to working with you slow did ministration for saying we need a balanced multi prong approach toward changing our dependency upon foreign energy sources drill baby drill is a good slogan but i think we all understand it requires more than it's going to conservation alternative energy research and reliable dependence upon some traditional sources of energy and i want to ask you about that particular point nuclear power provides am i correct about twenty percent of our presidents our president electricity needs is the administration's position on the role of nuclear power play in providing energy providing energy for our homes and businesses i would actually like to see that fraction increase well our presently as i understand it natural gas and oil provides sixty five percent of america's energy and dependent natural gas and oil develop ninety percent of u s wells produce eighty two percent of u s natural gas and produce sixty eight percent of u s oil i know you aren't secretary of treasury and you're not overseeing tax policy but you are a key voice and not the key voice in the administration on energy issues can you explain to me how the administration thinks it will reduce our dependence upon either foreign oil oil or even natural gas and how it will not discourage drilling of natural gas wells in the country if we were to add billions of tax dollars for intangible drilling cost percentage depletion issues and other tax issues that were included in the president's budget it seems to me counterproductive to natural gas since that price is set on a regional or national basis based on supply and demand not on a world basis to propose taxes that would discourage independent gas producers that generally take every dollar profit they make and put back into production here in the u seems awfully counterproductive for courage and less dependence upon foreign sources of energy to be adding a massive new tax on to independent producers of natural gas as well as in the independent producers of all the united states any thoughts on that is the secretary of energy yes actually i would go with the first sentence you just said when you started that which is that's a question for the secretary of treasury but let me let me let me add to of that comprehensive plan would be increasing the domestic supplies but the other part is conservation that we use especially less in our personal vehicles and a diversity of supply and so a diversity of supply ground but we can extract half of it for all we produce lumber waste materials urban waste so that's one thing the other thing is a lecture fixation of personal vehicles if we get that we can offload a lot of and i'd like someone in the ministration explain to me had encourages natural gas production in the united states a clean fuel relatively clean fuel and by taxing it to the tune of billions of dollars of additional taxes  and i hope your voice will be heard i hope secretary doesn't come up with tax policies without input from the secretary of energy when it comes to tax proposals impacting energy production and supply in this country thank  u vice chairman to applaud you for your intellect for your willingness to serve and encourage you greatly on renewables and energy conservation have helped lead those efforts through the years here  nuclear the big question both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons that's kind of a two pronged approach here this morning talk to me please about the commitment to closing the fuel cycle since we're moving away from yucca what we're doing in your budget request to advance the research to demonstrated that can be done which we believe at the oak ridge national laboratory can be done pretty quickly i think it's got great potential and then you talk about your desire to increase to twenty percent where is the loan guarantee commitment then bills we've already seen in the upcoming bill to show that the administration wants to see more than a handful of reactors built in order to increase that twenty percent electricity from nuclear so let me take them in reverse order the longer and he there are discussions ongoing active discussions with five of the applicants for the applicants we have eighteen point five billion dollars we're seeing as fast as possible hopefully sometime this summer we can make announcements that eighteen point five billion can cover three or four and  pursuing that in future years as your bills future options yes i think that makes sense with a few other things we're doing i we this is the final year it was mentioned before  there were two reactors in twenty can the a p one thousand and in new g e reactor we are going to be completing the helping westinghouse finalize and hopefully it's an r c decision but we will be hoping that have been shifted and so while it's in this state we didn't think it was prudent to be going ahead because g e has temporarily put it on hold so we're we're on whole and now when if they want to go forward we will we will try to help them in terms of closing the fuel cycle that's something which i personally think is has great opportunity if nuclear energy is going to be a viable form of carbon free energy now in this century the next century we have to look towards recycling the fuel we have to be looking towards developing a new generation of reactors in particular a generation of reactors that have a high energy neutron flux that can burn down the actinides long live back not components that we could actually harness much more of the few the energy in a clear fuel we're using less than ten percent today and  and that's it and so i think that the the possibility is very real now having said that i would have to say that the current technology that's being used today for so what we want to do so there are two problems three problems we want to spend research and developing a plan for ration resistant method of recycling the fuel and if we get that method looks economic surveyed said before we're investing in advance reactors and advanced reactor designs that go beyond things like the white house reactor and so that's something that we feel very positive  about now the good news is for the next couple of decades we have enough reactor fuel and so we need not rush in to starting to pilot something prematurely there was a national county science report on on this issue in fact the whole gene up issue came out very positively on everything except piloting a fuel recycling plant at this time certainly the international cooperation in trying to make sure that these the resurgence of nuclear power in the world civilian nuclear power is done correctly and the international cooperation all these things came out very positively but that one thing they said wait let's let's do some more work let's remember that the first hundred reactors were built in twenty years in this country we know a whole lot more about it now than we did then and we can build another hundred years and next twenty years as senator alexander said last week a whole lot easier  built the first hundred reactors and never been an accident i mean ever been a death associated with nuclear energy in this country so i think time is of the essence i hope that the research that you're talking about doesn't slow the process of bringing new electricity on line if we're going to be competitive renewable fronter is great but we're not where we need to be right now and we all know that so just one encourage you to push second thing on this new york times story the d b t the design basis threat moos since september the eleventh in an essay is part of v o a but it's separate and i frankly think it's worked pretty well so you're going to have to maybe following this story i hope move a little bit into that national security piece of your responsibility to get to the bottom of this i hope you'll come to oakridge i hope you'll go to ninety two twelve which is a building there twelve that you won't like you'll say this is not adequate it would be replaced by the uranium processing facility which is on the drawing board so to speak but the budget request is not sufficient to maintain the level of talent that we have designing the u p a but this may cause you to take a harder look at this even this story so i'm always looking for the silver lining the d v d design basis threat could very well be modified just as a result of this story on what kind of security precautions you need to protect our stockpile highly enriched uranium so i would encourage you to come take a second look i understand that the administration is under funded p f design we've made a pretty strong case that this committee needs to be funded fifteen member show up today though it's the volumes about  their interest in what you're doing and the energy piece of this and i know that you definitely have got a signature issue on the energy sad but the weapons side here is going to need your attention obviously from this story and more and then finally on pensions i read where you are looking at trying to supplement some of the loss of pension revenue i think for the people who work for the part of marriage and i want to ask on behalf of the whole slew of retirees that are out there that haven't had any update in their pension benefits in a long long time will you consider looking at that while you're looking at the pension scheme of the pension funds of existing how do they how will that be done well the well be putting out a call for proposals there are topics that have been announced and we would review those with both  i hope to assemble again going back to what i said before some very some of the very best people that we have to look at those proposals a critical part of that would be the leadership of those hubs because th is is a critical part of that i don't just want people to cluster together in some virtual thing it has to be a really coherent thing ideally under one roof i believe it was in zero seven but are many many patents that have come out of all of those they are largely highly coordinated research efforts that do go across the gamut between the solving some basic research needs but really focused on delivering some goods actually developing technique that will be picked up by the private sector so in fact those biology energy energy biology centers were the precursor for the expanding into of the concern that's been mentioned i know you've got i guess it's i think have been dollars in the loan guarantee program at present and you've already said i think you intend i asked for more if it's needed it seems to me that that's just not but i think it's i think it's something and i and i also share with you my concern that we're going to go back and reinvent the wheel with yucca mountain not we've got a mighty expensive dinosaur out there if we pages of things that i'd like to go through but let me talk first about something come out and i'm not going to criticize your decision on that it is what it is and i've learned in politics it doesn't do a lot of good to how the moon very long  but let's talk about what we're going forward on that you said when apparently that yucca mountain is not a viable option is that in the apartment and the administration's view is you have come out as a permanent geological repository dead yet you're going to establish a blue ribbon panel how will that be different from the nuclear waste policy technical review committee or whatever they call it  now thank you for that question we do know a lot more than we did twenty five thirty years ago when this first started in fact what i just said about the potential for recycling would mean that it would make sense i don't want to prejudge what this program powell is going to do but given where we are given the the very good hope that we could get different set of reactors generation four reactors that could and given that they hope that remember before that there was a national policy was months through fuel use so if there is a real technological and economic possibility that we could be fuel recycling to fuel that you would want to then have storage for a couple hundred years because this would be storage that would say as you get better better fuel recycling you would you argue cycle it and you continue to use those assets then there will become a time when you don't want to do it any more it's not going to be viable we have once the fuel is vitrified as an example or largely depleted there's no call for it and so then the requirements of storage would be you don't need have access to an anymore so so just getting those two things would suggest that you can step back take another look at it and have classes of  storage it probably might have to be distributed for a lot of reasons including transportation so it could be just one site so these are some of the things that i would hope the blue and panel would look at again stepping back and then coming back to us coming back to congress saying you might need a revision of the nuclear waste act based on what we know today relative to where we knew twenty five years ago will your instructions to this blue ribbon panel be to also look at the alternatives of a permanent geological repository yes it's going to be pretty wide open how do you will go beyond as you said it is what it is how do you go beyond a situation and and give us give us a better future based on what you know today and also based on what we think will be happy and next fifty years if a permanent deal logical repository will be part of what they look at the most studied piece of verse in the world is jumping around will they have the option to make a recommendation on the uk a mountain or will that be off the table as far as this palace i'm sure think the mountain as a long term repositories is definitely off the table i should say that based on what we know today there are geological sites if you don't want to have access to it any material any more hundreds of years in the future there are actually better geological sites so this potentially opens up of the sites that were looked at before before yucca mountain was chosen as well as many others as potential permanent repositories for their waste but there requirement if again i don't want to prejudge what the but if you but if they say there's going to be a certain class it's material that you don't want to have access to it's ok to put it in there seal it up close the door then other sides become actually more desirable sites that  have been there for hundreds of millions of years that we know it's going nowhere changes in rainfall patterns and things like that won't disturb these things so it becomes a different question it becomes a different question but it's interesting that we would say this one piece of earth we're not going to look at everything else we will look at when this one piece of earth is the most diverse in the world i mean you might as well take disneyland off the potential sites also you know there are certain places we could take off and i and i find it amazing that we that we would say we're not going to we are going to the committee is that route blue ribbon committee is going to look at geological repository but the one geological repository we're not going to look at that said fifty five national science cademy studies done on it as well as multiple other things the one we're not going to look at is the mountain which indicates to me that that's more politics than it is science quite frankly which disappoints me but it is as i said what it is and probably before we find a permanent repository there be a new ministration we'll find something else that we decide to do and that's been one of my concerns with the department of energy as well as other areas of government all along is that we keep changing directions every everytime we have a new secretary a new president a new secretary or whatever they all have a different vision we all come to our positions with  our histories and our prejudices and our biases and everything else you mention that you would like to see an increase in the percentage of nuclear power you come from a science background much of your budget you said in your testimony is your emphasis is science discovery and innovation the one word you seem to have left out to me is deployment because ultimately all of this only means anything if it's used by the private sector in producing electricity or other things that we're doing what is your vision of how we how we get these things you talked about the many bell labs and all that that type of thing we have to get this stuff out into the field to be working when i look at your any budget  any portfolio backs out seventy million dollars for two of your energy hubs so the any budget is actually a decrease of  hundred mil in dollars that doesn't really even take into account the fact that much of our some of the budget is used to address the pension shortfalls so we're going to have substantial decrease in actually getting and deploying the technologies out in the field what's your reaction that as i said before the n p two thousand and ten budget is work that it's essentially up so we thought it prudent to not allocate money for that so that's why that's why you see the budget decrease that you say it's not it's the work is going to be done  ten and the authorization is for it and b twenty twenty ten anyway the i agree with you deployment is the key picking up in the private sector is absolutely key and so we are changing the way things are being done in department of energy there has been in the past and i think all the members of this committee know about this is that there's an office of science that does a perp support of basic science  d then we have technologies and there's a big gap between those and there's a gap between some of the things that the technologies support and actually get out in the private sector so many of the programs we're doing are are designed to bridge that gap number one the r p e is designed primarily to to sponsor that research that will be before industry before venture capital picks it up so it's a very short term three or maybe we know will to five years after that it's zero that that project will have to find private sector support so it's the seed money the free for pretty venture capital pretty commercial  many of the other things the the two undersecretaries one for the technologies and the other for the science have agreed before they were signed on that they would work very very closely together that you're going to be helping redoing everybody say we're part of building up the team under under them and in very intimate way again we're trying to break this still piping and knowing full well that at the end of the day you want  to use our intellectual horsepower to get something out into the private sector that is the goal just as it was as i said before with los alamos and lincoln that you're actually trying to get someone to produce or deliver the goods so so i think  if i looked at the department of energy's history before there were these so called values that there was just not one there are a few they still exist they do and so you'll have to come in you've created some of just i think i think there is no agreement in philosophically where we both want to go let me just say that now be glad to work talk to you about some details on europe and find out your opinions if you think fuel cells i remember seeing the president visit the jay leno show when jay leno had a show late in the evening and talked about his affinity for hydrogen fuel cells and i'm concerned that the budget numbers doesn't match that affinity at all i recently visited a g m facility in one way false in upstate new york with one of our colleagues congressman eric massa they are doing extraordinary work on research and development of hydrogen fuel cells i drove on a car that they had deployed i understand in your testimony to the senate use you said that this is a very tough call and explain that you need  refueling capability and we don't have that right now it seems to me as a matter of logic that this is a chicken and egg issue that you're not going to have a fueling capability if you don't have hydrogen fuel cells you're not going to have hydrogen fuel cells if you're cutting the budget  one hundred forty million dollars your hydrogen technical and fuel cell advisory committee i understand did not recommend these cuts and so i'd like to give you an opportunity to explain why those cuts were made and appeal to you to work with the members deployment thank you so let me first start saying that it's not only the refueling stations that are an issue i think the fuel cells themselves have come a long way they've made great progress there's still some issues about the longevity and cost of feel sounds if i were to plot the best course for developing this cell that would be significant deployment i would probably go with infrastructure that has to be as extensive as the infrastructure for gasoline and diesel and so that's hundreds of billions of dollars of this so that doesn't come overnight so one could imagine starting this you know warehouse for forklifts especially indoor for us where you want to be because there are air pollution problems and so i gin fuel cells in that water makes perfect sense there centrally located you can have a real foreman station in one place and refuel there also an energy storage problem right now the best storage we currently have today is high pressure sores five thousand ten thousand pounds per square inch pretty dangerous stuff very high pressure tank and not that much range  us it's a huge tank so so we have a storage problem we have an infrastructure problem you start by looking at local areas like forklifts or postal service trucks as things like that to get it going to prove the technology in the meantime we will be investing investing money in energy storage of hydrogen so that we can get for example develop matter better methods to hydrogen can be absorbed on surfaces have these four concurrent technologies the stores the infrastructure the generation of hydrogen and the fuel cells and the cost of the fuel cells themselves and once you work on station one liter waiting doesn't matter the temperature doesn't matter as much so so i think we will be continuing on the stationary storage the also science will be continuing to invest in solving these other problems and we'll be looking at trying to develop graduate so that you prove the technology in a more local setting which where the infrastructure doesn't make sense but we'll be glad to work with you this committee and the senate committee on this issue well i appreciate that and intend to work very closely with you i recognize that there are all sorts of problems with the technology but i don't believe we're going to solve those problems by slashing budgets one hundred forty million dollars you know there were not to be too pedestrian but there were plenty of people who said that there were all sorts of reasons not to do the mercury project not to do the apollo program all sorts of technical hurdles we didn't take no for an answer we accelerated budgets we made those investments and we solve those problems so again in the spirit of friendship and cooperation i look forward to working hard for me to zero in because of any congressional district i literally have every form you can think of whether the nuclear wind solar geothermal biomass a little gas coal but it's interesting to hear you say that about yucca mountain because where i want to go moved off into the regional partnerships the seven projects but could you talk a little bit about the quest ration its opportunities the technology available is mattoon still a viable site is it going to be the place  demonstration plants going to be and a little bit about the partners i spent a lot of time dealing with those from governments from india companies within india china south korea to try and get them to be a partner and when the rug was pulled out from  under us it is not only embarrassing it's very costly it's time consuming and the project back a ways so if you could just talk a little bit about the thought process within department of energy on seaquest ration thought process is pretty reserves no matter what happens in the united states india and china will not straley and probably would not turn their back on and actually neither will russia talking to some russian representatives so it's very important that we develop the technology that captures and also that safely sequesters carbon from coal plants because of this huge asset so we  longevity stories and things like that the people i've spoken to over the years not just since coming to but over the last couple of years tell me that these are surmountable issues there's no show name here there would be no doubt that the decisions that were made over the last three years delayed the project or projects does your budget reflect trying to catch up can it will it accomplish what we hope to accomplish and that's to solve this issue as quickly as possible so we can get on with building coal fired generating plants if if if seen in the light of also the economic reinvestment recovery and reinvestment act absolutely there's and i'm hopeful we can come to some agreement but we're in the process of negotiations open is going forward optimistic i look forward to working with the on of the piece need some help and in trying to push that forward with the alliance or with the appropriations that we're kind of at a stalemate montana it's always interesting when somebody says you know i'm all for coal fired generating plants however not until we have sequenced ration what they're really saying is they're not for coal fired generating what kind of it at an environmental stalemate i appreciate mr edwards comments because i was going to talk a little bit about oil and mr simpson's as well because you can see that we need you to be stronger than some of the secretaries in the other departments our problem is you know it's it's great to talk and theri about things like bio mass but we can't have access to our forests because people are standing in the way of the department of interior it serves no purpose so i guess my my charge to you or m is be tougher than them and convince them that you cannot move to alternatives until they're in place and my fear is much of what happened to montana's economy we gave up on natural resource development because we were all sucked into believing the next generation was fiber and telecommunications we forgot to build the bridge between the two economies and it's taken us a while to overcome that and i fear that nobody's paying attention to the global perspective of if we jump right in and only focus on alternatives without a recognition that we're not there yet technologically we as a country are going to be real sorry when the lights do go out in arkansas or in california because we haven't done what's necessary to build the bridge to the next next technology by taking advantage of the resources we've got in place now so look forward to working with you and thank you john  over i'm just following orders to get less in order than a book came in or something like that yes or no i thank you very much and thank you very much mr secretary for being here for taking this job i hope in this process you will have some patience with those of us who who have to show results and take our exams every two years and most of what you're doing in the science area looks like it's pretty long range  stuff and at the point here i would like to ask a couple questions about the how you give exams for what it is that is being done how you do the oversight and evaluation and so forth for for that i would like to comment to friends mr simpson that i was i was wondering exactly where he was going on the yucca mountain and it seems one of your orders to your blue ribbon commission should be that the site needs to be off shore or off planet l c each one of us might begin to worry about where it was going to be in our district and a bite of course being the lava flows of oregon or or idaho or something as opposed to the ark a mountain coming out somewhere farther down the road you don't need to answer to that at all i want to i want to explore with you you your science programs i got up to ask a question about where in the budget where the various hubs and i understand that they're pretty well spread around a couple of them must be in erie a couple of them must be in  nuclear somewhere in the nuclear energy program which ones would be in here it could you tell me what a list of eight eight topics i think that's where the hubs are going to be one in each of those topics i take it that's the intent right that doesn't ok where is what which ones are going to be in erie and which ones are going to be in nuclear energy well there's two that relate to nuclear energy one is materials extreme conditions  i don't see which which one of the the phrases that would be covered by the design well i'm just saying there they're looking to which ones would be an eerie systems design i guess those correctly ok there must be some others but now though i was very curious what would be and i'm still not sure which ones are in nuclear energy i'll find them now i have it here extreme materials modeling simulation the energy centers the bio energy centers is a group of seven of them that were authorized in the legislation in zero seven relating to the the previous authorizations you know five the genome to life program in zero five and the energy bio energy centers were had three three major purposes they were for for facilitating bio energy production for environmental remediation and for c c s carbon capture and sequestration now only three of those were ever started and i don't know are  know the authorization was you know nine in that case yes i believe that was the case i don't know i think that authorization terminates ok not well do you intend to do others of the seven seven work  finally is being done under your hub i drive the hub idea is a bit different intelligence no actually they're not that much different well but you're you've got them laid out in a much longer term  essence the three that are there are sort of mini hubs of a series of universities doing university research you're thinking in through your hubs of bringing in a whole bunch of other entities into the into the hub not just universities subcommittee there was some question about how we were going to decide what each of the national labs was doing and and so there was some question about whether we were doing the things that were most appropriately to to be done or what should be done in the future solid most once livermore are gone so any brockton oakridge and so forth are the hubs is it possible that that those science labs will be a that the these hubs the template of the hub is actually very very close to those bio energy institutes two of the bio energy institutes are led by national labs  lawrence berkeley national id other one is led by university of wisconsin and so we're throwing this out open to both national labs and universities the ideally under one roof still applies meaning that ideally you get these people together and so what what these three in cities have done is they've said where are the assets in the country the one i know best is the one i now start which is lawrence berkeley national we hook on me and very shortly here but the the hubs look as if they're pretty long range there's a five year you're contemplating the possibility that if they do good work they are and a hub could be made out of three to three universities that were ever otherwise doing work in that area and might end up answering your r f p when they go when they go out it's a collaboration of some group of people who think they're working in those areas and have something big to offer to the r f these are going to be are going to be available to groups that are collaborate in an area that they think they have something to offer they take collaboration well alright are you are you likely to do the bio via remediation kind of a that was one of those original centers one of the goals in the original centers was there seems to me to be lots of waste being produced and potentially be need to be produced by either bio energy or nuclear or the use of coal of that could could take need we would certainly fund it but we we managed station not to make that a major hub there are only eight of these hubs and so there again in our judgment there are many more things that we think are ripe for rapid research that could lead to rapid deployment and if you look at the areas in these houses that's the decision we made by a remediation will still be supported in for example you mr chairman the secretary good morning it is morning in your budget request the r day for solar power energy has almost doubled in fact it grew a lot more than the others what justifies that do you have that much confidence in that form of energy what justifies it is actually again looking forward first there's a tremendous potential right now if you look in the short term this year next year if you look at the price cost competitiveness of photovoltaic example relative to other renewables relative to fossil of the world's deserts can supply all the electricity if we could transport it we could storage and that's not that much of the world's desert the if i s let's say twenty percent so what i see is i see some rapid developments in now technologies that could create a new generation of photovoltaics that can go beyond silicon either single crystal silicon there are already some sense on technologies like the one cylinder is developing that show promise but in the research labs there are many other things are being looked at they can even have greater problems across the united states and some marginal lands a short or very little purpose except to hold the world together do you not believe that there's a potential there for now there is  for algae and we will be finding out how are our funding algae projects so that's part of our biofuels portfolio the companies out there today that exist that are using some natural products  needs and maybe creating some materials internally that might have been wasted one time and they're now using that to fuel their generators and they enjoy a tax credit do you think there are those tax credits might be in jeopardy which would lead to an increase in cost for these companies well actually well i don't i don't know but i mean big fan for using weights and using that waste and using it to create energy i think it makes it much more efficient economy where there are there are some compass enjoying those tax credits now that are afraid that for instance there are natural products that they're using to fire their bowlers and the government creates a program over here that would encourage another individual to take those products and convert them to an energy and then sell them back to the plant for fuel sources when the plants been using the overall materials as of supply of fuel and if we take that credit away from then that indeed is going to lead to a tax increase for the well i don't know the details generating power is something that works it's very effective and so on the face of it i would have to look more into it but it seems to me that that's certainly a suitable way of using waste products like you german thank you secretary appreciate you being here and i know that but i look at your background that is great to have a scientist that will be that is our secretary of energy i live in a rural area and i  we have a terminology that we use is you don't you never eat the seed corn you always keep it for the next year and the next season the next season i think of the last several years we have been applying that to research and development when we talk about energy in this country because back in the late seventies when carter talked about an energy policy that would make us energy independent or close to energy independence and self sustainable we kind of forgot that and so we started consuming the seed corn so to say in some other area we stopped the research and about with it i think we should have been doing the last thirty years and my hope is that we don't miss this opportunity so in doing that and saying this and kind of setting the mold of what i want to ask i look at all of the proposed sources of energy that we will have in the future nuclear solar windmills biomass coal natural gas how droll all of the different areas that we're talking about and i find i find here seems we just were just talking about climate change instead of energy becoming energy independent in essence i think that we should look at an energy policy based upon it being economic security and national security  that i think that has to be a part of any energy policy that was stablished certainly climate change we need to realize that that's occurring and that if we don't do something we will not worry about national security economic security we want exist anymore so i do believe that climate change is occurring couple questions i've now if we how large of an area and have quick could we produce a soul reform that would produce that type of energy how long would it take us to do that and do we have t scale of the ones that i've seen are unscalable hundred two hundred megawatts instead of a thousand and how long would it take us to actually do we have the technology they've actually put those in place and how long will it take us to actually build that far mor that facility that would produce those hundred megawatts well there are a couple of projects that i know of but a cleese solar thermal that the timescale would be a couple of years i'm actually more concerned about the non carbon based produced electricity in this country and for me looking at a doubling or tripling the number of nuclear facilities that we have maybe we need to start the process expedite the process your department section thoughts and three percent we have hydro it's six percent it's going to take a while to grow that two point eight percent and these sources are variable and so although there is you know i'm a big believer in renewable energy you also have to recognize where we are today and it's going to take a while to make this transition so as i look at the enriched uranium that we have and different labs we can convert it into nuclear energy for a long long time for this country it depends on what we're going to do with the fuel cycle largely the way we do it now where you only using less than ten percent of the energy content of the fuel and so that's why that's why we're putting money into research for closing fuel cycle we're having some success at that at our labs as well special oakridge finding ways perhaps where we can maybe reuse eighty nine ninety five percent the some folks refer to it as the as the stimulus package i referred to those americans they cannot recover investment that because that's what we hope will happen a lot of dollars that we have many of the labs today about seventeen of those some of the contracts are coming up for for renewal or for competition and you know what i'm finding is that with all these dollars that we have that we're going to be spending and then a competitive bidding process in many cases only one which is basically the incumbent lab are the contractors one who would only be out on those would you consider looking at maybe extended those contracts for year two years five years as we go through this process today of research and development that we're doing to try to to refine the potential energy sources we have for our country well there are two parts of that i think certainly i don't know what the statute limitations are regarding the rebuilding a lot of money was spent a lot of time and energy was spent and that was one better so i share yours so i would look at it but i'd again don't i don't know what the standards are so bad certainly be willing to work obviously the law but at least but i'm just saying i think resources in coal in my district and i think and probably every member here and we really you don't hear that got me from the administration really cared for me yes  i say that the world is not going to turn back on coal if we don't fix this problem no matter what so so we are very committed every time i talk to my counterparts in foreign countries i say let's get serious and also let's work very closely together because this is a huge undertaking is huge cost the pilot these things and so can we and this is something where let's forget about competitive  advantage because most of the investments of a power plant will be made in that country so let's develop together these methods but we're very committed to doing this but if we lead the world in technology development we can actually help solve that technology i comments are your thoughts yes very important issue i think because this is the power of the country as we go into a new distribution system that we will definitely need going forward in the  future because we're going to be anticipating there will be more renewables which have variable sources of power which means you will have to be switching around power it has to be done in an automatic bases you can use the old technology which is called the next power station say send me some power because when a cloud rose by the wind stop blowing it's got to be done automatically we're going to have to manage to a flows that more and more buildings will will have  will be generating their own energy that will be putting back on to the grid i do think in in five or ten years we'll have substantial introduction of plug in hybrid vehicles again to have flaws and so you need all these things which means you need an automatic system also by the way it will it will help us deploy and use our energy resources better because you can reach in and you can in those one or two percent of the days you can actually throttle back the use so that you can because there are a lot of energy assets that are sitting there only for that one or two percent of the days and the rest the time you're seeing idle and when you're sitting idle it means that you're getting no return on your investment so all the grid will allow all these things to happen much better then having said that you know there hackers all the place that would just love to have incredible mistress and bringing down something except now this is different is our electricity this  so it's a very very big deal that we we develop methods secretary of commerce and i are first where we're pushing very hard on developing communications standards which of course deeply embedded in them are the security issues as we go forward in the smart grid how how the company's going to develop standards that they can do and security protocols standards and so we've been pushing this it was authorized two years ago what we found since we took over is gone very little centrally know where i found this personally because we organized a series of means i send the second one where there were scenarios and the people in these companies who were presented scenarios ok what do you have to think about in order to develop the standards to be more than one hundred new standards that have to be developed and listening to them talk about the scenarios that says this is the first time they thought about it after two years so so we're pushing as hard as we can to get these things it is of great concern now the good news is that because of the between the department of defense and say and department of energy there is a lot of expertise out there and  security cyber security i mean because we've had to protect nuclear secrets for so long there's a lot of expertise and so that expertise will have to be kept in but this is this is pretty serious thank you mission thank chairman i want to go back to the secretary thank you i was glad to see your appointment and i'm glad you're helping us a couple of questions one i want to go back to the hubs you were starting to say that there was going to be a regional flavor and you were going to do hubs are going to hopefully tap into regional assets can you just talk a little bit more about regional assets in the sense  that i don't i don't mean we're going to we're going to make a hub in this part of that part of the country overall that the major selection criteria will be how good a scientific team can be put together and and high in that list is how good are the managers of that team going to be but regional in the sense that ideally under one roof it's my been my experience in my career that if you're under one roof and you eat lunch every day and all the people in that building are marching towards a goal whether it be figuring out inventing new building systems technology that industry can use to make our billions eighty percent more energy efficient and an economically pay for themselves in ten years if you everybody in that building working towards that goal and they're eating lunch together every day the and it's well managed the probability of remarkable progress will be higher than if there's just one z here they're separate so that in my experience and what i saw at the laboratories when they got serious about something like the invention of the transistor you can go much faster and how do you in your remarks in your written remarks you talk about commercialization and how to how do you as you organize the hubs what is the approach to commercialization what is the role i think the vice chair asked early on about private sector engagement so can you talk a little bit about commercialization and we're expecting these hubs to have partners in and strong connections with industry to then i know best on the biology they they made a decision to just bypass hats and all that they made in the first six months they've been able to reprogram yeast and bacteria to make diesel and gasoline and jet like fuel from sugar and because of the technology that they've developed they are now talking with automobile manufacturers and saying precisely what type of fuel would be ideal for the engines and going for it so so that's just one example of how we want these hubs to be talking to their customers as an integral part of what their research is this is not academic stuff fire at their you know putting stuff between journals it's it's general motors or a car manufacturer put money into the lab as well put resources into the lab as well or is it more the people working at the hub calling them saying hey what do you need you know that's that's a very good question i think in the energy efficient building systems there are there are companies out there that that are building controlled companies when i was a director of large brick lab last year and a half i was director we were talking with with the likes of for example you know i take knowledge that makes building control systems that makes air conditioning carrier can assure all these things so what one would want ideally is and they were willing to put in money three five million a year the game the very least it would be lovely if they would say let's send their scientists over there and put them under that same this this is part of th his extraordinary work even in his absence and and i hope that at some point soon he's returned to the committee but i want to thank the vice chairman for recognizing me mr secretary it's good to see you again the president has indicated his seriousness about this question of energy and energy independence for the country by his appointment of you and i think that's been well recognized by everyone has commented who are very happy that you are leading a  part meant i'm sure you gonna love science even more the closer you get to politics in this political environment but i have about three issues that i want to raise and to the degree that you can't get to them today you can supply them for the record but i'm very interested on one level about the energy efficiency block grant and i'm very pleased that what we've seen thus far and local communities across the country as the in terms of having local governments and city at the county levels be able to work to have a more energy efficient environment in there and locales secondly i'm interested in the lo  i think we need to be very aggressive i also think that in many instances the licensing process itself is more more challenging than the financing that it's not so much just you know you may be headed to new clear w but i'm also interested on the renewable side and that when a number of entrepreneurs who are very concerned about the and i've spoken to about this before about the passive of the if you would of the department over these a number of years israel's dollars on the street and i'm interested in how we can make that work even more efficiently and whether it could be the marriages which states like my own that have been aggressive in terms of creating their own programs see whoever's x e n charge of this reenergize effort this education effort one hundred fifteen million dollars i'm very interested in how that's going to be worked through because i think that that's where the the rubber really does meet the road that we need to be training more people like yourself at the country actually is going to meet its scientific challenges going forward and we have a dearth of of americans of any stripe proceeding and things there's a twenty percent requirement that these companies come up with an additional twenty percent given today's tight credit markets are we willing to work with the states some states are already trying to finance the other twenty percent  and the extent is permissible and statute we would be willing to work with the states and reenergize a very very important you know i was a member of that from k through twelve all the way up you know putting tax credits that allow companies to invest in research so that you can they can properly use that intellectual capital we train all the way up and down that's the simple answer  i'm now glad that i'm in a position to try to carry out some of that stuff was part of that in that as well and i was went before i think two congressional committees saying you know what a good thing r p was because it will help us get know there's a lot of excitement you've gotten a great deal of money and of the recovery act and i'm sure we'll be watching to see how you spend that but it's unfortunate we didn't really have an opportunity to concentrate on your responsibility our responsibility that issues that relate to the nuclear protection and reliability of our nuclear stockpile i know there's a lot of excitement on the renewable energy side of things but to me through this committee and through my work on the defense  subcommittee and appropriations i'm concerned if i say for the record whether you have the money and we are making substantial enough investments in those who are keen movers  and understand years of that the reliability of the stockpile and our ability to deliver to our military customers you know we're liable basis i don't need to have you respond to it but i do i think it's unfortunate since that is historically really the main responsibility of the secretary of energy that we really haven't had a chance to sort of discuss that and get the level of reassurance that i think we deserve read on page five of your testimony you describe it and it goes from k to twenty plus and you talk about grants masters degrees higher except but you and with and  think even when you deal with community colleges you're talking at the higher and higher levels but since you start from k to the say cade ace and increased public awareness particularly among young people about the role of science technology can play in responsible environmental stewardship i would tell you that the problem is bigger than that and my concern is that many of these  young students still do not have he knowledge working knowledge comprehension and science and math and so  the awareness can be developed i think if they have teachers that can teach science if they have teachers that can teach math effectively and i would suggest to you that probably the national science foundation may not be the only federal agency to work with but i know that in the department of education they have a stamp program that is trying to encourage young men and women to look at math and science and so i would encourage you to  plug in wherever you can so that the young people can get that basic education of math and science and with that to become more aware of that relationship to our environment so i wouldn't strongly encourage you to get to the root problem that our kids are good enough math and science and and their education and with that you can close the hearing mr secretary if you have a response i'd be happy to take it if not teachers scientists years high school junior high school even elementary school teachers during the summer time those programs actually showed remarkable improvement particularly in the math  scores you help the teachers and the students show the improvement over a couple of years so that's a that's a very big deal and so we're going to be doing things of that nature this is our seat stock of tomorrow and so it does begin in k through twelve and so will be tens of millions of dollars and as we figure out better ways of putting the money we would look towards increasing i thank you for this morning and yes and i  secretary one last comment or ranking member feeling has and i when the n s a was first formed there was an advisory committee i was on that visor committee so actually the role in nuclear security goes way back in my history and i do think we did although we did not talk about this that much it is a very important part of of of what i have to do and what i do do and let me just