Audit Report: IG-0562

The Department of Energy's (Department) Office of Basic Energy Sciences maintains four
Synchrotron Radiation Light Source facilities designed to collect data on the structure of matter
on the atomic and molecular scale. The Department refers to these facilities as "user facilities"
because they are made available to a variety of private sector, commercial, and educational
research entities and are, as such, major instruments for enhancing the nation's science base. Our
audit focused on two of the four facilities, the Advanced Light Source, located at Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, located at the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Both of these facilities generate and deliver soft x-ray and
vacuum ultra-violet light in the form of beams. Scientists at Berkeley and Stanford are allocated
beam time (shifts) to perform a variety of research.
There are two categories of users at Berkeley and Stanford, participating research teams and
independent investigators. Participating research teams submit proposals, assist in funding the
construction of beam lines, and receive a percentage of beam time (usually 75 percent) for a
period of three years. Independent investigators also submit proposals and receive beam time
based on the scientific merit of their proposals; however, because the independent investigators
provided no funding for the construction of beam lines, they were only awarded the time that
had not been allocated to participating teams.