[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 17, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9527-S9528]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  POWER OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS

 Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I want to share with you and my 
colleagues an interesting experience from the last recess. It's a great 
example of the power of public-private partnerships. Improved mining 
tools, detection of land mines, public-private partnerships, and 
Cooperative Threat Reduction programs may not seem to be closely 
related, but I visited with a small business that is demonstrating the 
power of integrating several different national programs into a focused 
approach to some of our most challenging technical problems. And the 
fact that this small business is located in a remote corner of New 
Mexico, far from major population centers, is testimony to the ability 
of our nation's small business to compete in the most complex business 
arenas by carefully utilizing the power of well crafted partnerships.
  Larry Stolarczyk of Raton Technology Research (RTR), in Raton, NM 
leads this unique small business. He's built a range of products 
through partnerships with Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories 
using different approaches. And he even brought in expertise from 
Russia through the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention Program.
  RTR tapped into different federal programs to build their products. 
In some cases, they contracted directly with a national laboratory when 
that laboratory had a unique capability that wasn't available from U.S. 
industry. In that case, RTR paid the full support costs for the 
national laboratory personnel. RTR has also used the CRADA or 
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement approach, enabled by my 
National Competitiveness and Technology Transfer Act of 1989. A CRADA 
enables cost-shared research involving both industry and laboratory 
scientists working toward common goals.
  Where a research subject is closely related to a laboratory's 
mission, the CRADA is a wonderfully cost-effective way for industry to 
tap into national

[[Page S9528]]

laboratory resources. Usually, industry pays only for their part in the 
CRADA partnership, with the national laboratory costs provided through 
DOE funding. Furthermore, the CRADA mechanism provides good protection 
to industry for jointly developed intellectual property.
  Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) is a program within 
the Department of Energy. The program involves 10 national 
laboratories, over 20 institutes in the Former Soviet Union, and well 
over 50 U.S. corporations. The U.S. companies form the U.S. Industry 
Coalition or USIC and Larry Stolarczyk was a founding member of USIC. 
IPP traces its origins to the Cooperative Threat Reduction program 
established by Senators Lugar and Nunn.
  Each of RTR's products involves transmission of radio frequency waves 
and detection of reflected and scattered waves. Analysis of the return 
signals documents characteristics of materials near the sensor.
  With the IPP program, Larry Stolarczyk built a team that couples 
expertise from Sandia National Laboratories with his company and with 
the Sedakov Institute for Measuring Systems Research of Nizhny Novgorod 
in Russia.
  They are developing a borehole radar system for mapping fractures 
within tens of meters surrounding a borehole in an oil/gas reservoir. 
Precise understanding of these fractures outside the borehole enables 
optimization of the oil recovery strategy. Halliburton Logging Services 
is working with Raton Technology for initial field demonstrations.
  The borehole radar tool can help reach some of the 300 billion 
barrels of oil remaining under U.S. soil, oil that can reduce our 
dependence on foreign sources. Furthermore, while the Russian institute 
was 100 percent supported by military missions before these programs 
started, it now has about 70 percent non-military support. Shifting 
these institutes away from military support toward commercial projects 
is one of the strongest objectives of the IPP Program.
  In Raton, New Mexico, coal mining has been an important industry, and 
that's led RTR to apply its high technology capabilities to that 
sector. RTR has developed a Horizon Sensor to allow coal mining 
equipment to follow a coal seam. In coal mining, following that seam is 
important! Mining into the roof can cause a collapse, leaving 
significant coal in the seam reduces the profitability of the mine, and 
mining into the floor contaminates the coal. The low-tech solution is 
to have a miner posted near the cutting drum, not the world's safest 
location. The RTR approach mounts the sensor on the cutting head and 
allows measurements up to 20 feet ahead.
  And now let me talk about RTR's contributions to locating land mines. 
I don't need to remind any of my colleagues that proliferation of land 
mines is a critical international problem. It's estimated that more 
than 100 Million land mines are buried in third world countries. Daily 
headlines discuss the tragic consequences of civilian encounters with 
these mines. The innocent victims are frequently children, who may 
incur life-threatening injuries or as a minimum, are forced to face 
life without some of their limbs. Around 27 Thousand people are killed 
or injured annually by land mines. Finding land mines, especially non-
metallic ones, is very difficult.
  The landmine project is funded through the U.S. Army Night Vision 
Laboratory. Los Alamos and NASA Johnson Space Flight Center are 
subcontractors to Raton Research. The instrument being build by Raton 
Technology will detect and image mines with a hand-held device. It may 
be the best chance we have of ridding the world of the scourge of non-
metallic land mines.
  These experiences were especially interesting to me, since I have 
strong personal interests in each of these national programs. I've 
encouraged partnerships between our national laboratories and U.S. 
industry. These partnerships provide benefits to the taxpayer by 
strengthening the laboratories for their national missions and they 
certainly provide benefits to U.S. business by enabling new commercial 
applications of lab technologies.
  In addition, I've been a strong supporter of the Cooperative Threat 
Reduction programs designed to reduce the threat of proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction. IPP encourages interactions between our 
national laboratories and institutes in the Former Soviet Union, and 
also build opportunities for U.S. industries to work with these foreign 
institutes. These programs are designed to ensure that the scientists 
working on weapons of mass destruction in these foreign institutes stay 
right where they are, and are not lured to rogue states to build new 
weapons of mass destruction.
  I'm pleased to see that these national programs are really working 
and providing the benefits we intended.

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