Many lawmakers will be retiring when Congress adjourns at the end of this year, but none will be missed more by the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories than Pete Domenici (R-NM).
The veteran senator, often referred to within the laboratory system as “St. Pete,” cited his diagnosis of a rare degenerative brain disease in announcing this past summer that he wouldn’t seek a seventh term in 2008.
“Almost everyone in the national lab system owes an enormous debt to Senator Domenici for caring about all of the science that is done at the labs,” said Bruce Tarter, former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “At the moment, he’s almost irreplaceable.”
“He was much more than the savior of Los Alamos,” echoed former Los Alamos director Siegfried Hecker. “He was the patron saint for science and technology in the US.”
A combination of seniority, key committee chairmanships, forceful...
