washington

A prominent Republican Congressman says that management of the US Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is “in turmoil”. He wants construction of the $1.4 billion facility to be halted until the management problems are fixed.

James Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), chairman of the Science Committee in the House of Representatives, visited the project last month before publishing a blistering critique of the Department of Energy's management of it. The SNS is the largest scientific user facility that the department has attempted to build since the Superconducting Super Collider project, abandoned in Texas in 1993.

“SNS project management is in turmoil, spending is lagging, and project cost and schedule estimates have not been fully developed,” says Sensenbrenner. He adds that the energy department's effort to share responsibility for the project among five laboratories requires simplification.

Sensenbrenner's attack on the project — which he says he still supports — follows a difficult winter for the spallation source. Events culminated in the replacement in February of the project director, Bill Appleton of the Oak Ridge laboratory, by David Moncton of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

It was not immediately clear if Sensenbrenner means to try to cut off the $214 million that the energy department has requested for SNS construction in the 2000 financial year, which starts in October, or if he just wants to ensure that project management is quickly improved.

“When the chairman of a congressional committee makes a statement like that, you have to take it seriously,” says Martha Krebs, head of the department's science office. “It could mean that there is a real problem [with funding], or it could mean that there is room for discussion.”

Krebs says that Moncton will present a full technical review of the project to senior department officials this week. She warns that it could be “almost impossible” to continue if construction funds were halted and money only appropriated for research next year, as Sensenbrenner suggests.

Tennessee is the home state of Vice-President Al Gore, and Sensenbrenner's critics believe he wants to make trouble as Gore prepares to run for the presidency in 2000. But the project also has powerful Republican supporters, including Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee.