DOE Details Supply-Chain Constraints Facing Its Science Facilities

The Department of Energy Office of Science released a report this month that identifies systemic issues with its supply of materials and components for science instrumentation.

The office stresses there are few vendors worldwide for components with no mass market, that U.S. firms often struggle to compete with foreign vendors benefitting from strategic subsidies, and that many supply chains “originate in or traverse China, Russia, and other high-risk countries.” It notes, for instance, that the two best suppliers of high-purity diamonds for X-ray diffraction instrumentation are in Russia and that DOE labs can no longer purchase from them due to “geopolitical issues.”

It also observes that for specialized photonics components DOE relies on “mostly small struggling businesses,” and that in general the department is a small player within an optics market increasingly focused on China.

The report is based on input gathered from five panels focused respectively on accelerator systems; detector systems; instrument and target systems; specialty materials, machining, and manufacturing; and crosscutting issues.

Among the report’s recommended actions are for the office to aggressively fund in-house and external R&D on critical instrumentation, and it raises the prospect the office may need to assume direct responsibility over supply chains for certain critical components.