The Cost of Unethical Behavior: A Pending Issue at the Argonne National Laboratory

By Maurizio Bottoni

While working at the Argonne National Laboratory by Chicago, Illinois, in the years 1990-96, Dr. Bottoni proposed to the Argonne management to invite his old acquaintance, Prof. Katsuhiro Sakai, of the Osaka University, Japan, to cooperate with him, during a one-year stay, on numerical problems related to thermal and fluid-dynamics computer simulations. At the end of the stay Prof. Sakai wrote a report documenting his work made with Dr. Bottoni and, part time, with an younger colleague, Dr. Sun. At this point the section manger, who had not cooperated to the technical work, pretended to be considered as co-author of the report, excluding Dr. Bottoni. This blatant violation of professional ethics was reported to higher management levels which, however, engaged in a cover-up policy aiming at tolerating the violation of the Code of Ethics establishedby the Laboratory. The books uncovers a full chain of violations so that the question arises whether the Code of Ethics is only a piece of paper. The author not only claims justice, but also thinks that the American taxpayer should be made aware of a state of affairs which implies waste of time and of financial resources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781467006545

Maurizio Bottoni

Maurizio Bottoni was born in Ferrara, Italy, on December 5, 1941. After humanistic studies in Ferrara, and basic courses in mathematics and physics at the Ferrara University, he studied nuclear engineering at the University of Bologna where he obtained a Doctor Degree in December 1965, with a thesis in neutron physics, which was awarded the Righi price of the Bologna University. For about 25 years Dr. Bottoni worked at the Nuclear Research Centre of Karlsruhe, Germany, and at the Argonne National Laboratory of Chicago, Illinois, on fast nuclear reactor safety analysis. After the demise of the fast reactor projects, both in Germany and in USA, followed years as visiting professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and at the Tsinghua University in Beijing. At present Dr. Bottoni is consultant at the Meteorological and Environmental Earth Observation (MEEO) Company in Ferrara and cooperates with the Mathematics Department of the Ferrara University on numerical simulations of space physics. Dr. Bottoni is author of 90 technical or scientific articles. His main interests are natural sciences, languages and mountain climbing. In 2008 Dr. Bottoni was given from the International Institute for Advanced Studies (IIAS) a meritorious award for his scholarly work.

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1. Introduction

From July 15, 1983 to July 15, 1984, I was delegated from the Institut für Reaktorentwicklung (IRE) of the Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe (KfK), in Germany, were I was staff member, to the Analytical Thermal Hydraulic (ATH) section of the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), headed by Dr. William T. Sha. Main tasks of the ATH section were to develop and verify, against experimental results, computer codes describing thermal and fluid-dynamic problems in a variety of physical conditions and geometrical configurations. One successful series of codes was that of the COMMIX programs, the acronym originating from the first tree digits of the words component mixing. Mixing of fluids, in a wide sense, in which also dilute particles of given concentrations can be considered as an idealized fluid, was described by subsequent members of the family of these codes, developed between 1970 and 1995.

Purpose of the delegation was to cooperate in Dr. Sha’s section to the development of a variant of the COMMIX code, dedicated to the treatment of two-phase flow with evaporation and condensation processes. Main applications of the code were foreseen for sodium as a fluid, within fast nuclear reactor assemblies, in frame of safety analysis of fast nuclear reactors, as the ill-fated US prototype called Clinch River Reactor, a project which was abandoned at the end of the 1980’s for political, not technical, reasons. Some young researchers in Dr. Sha’s group had been looking for a way to make stable numerical calculations of two phase flows, without success. As I realized their difficulties and the state of disorder of their computer codes and documentation, full of attempts made without a rigorous physical basis, I decided not to pursue their work. After consultations with Dr. Hank Domanus, the real genius of the team, and Dr. Robert Lyczkowski, one of the best theoreticians I ever knew, we decided to start a new development based on rigorous theoretical formulations provided by Dr. Lyczkowski. I made most of the programming work for the new development and within less than one year we were successful in completing a new COMMIX-2 version (2 for two-phase) and verifying it against experimental results. This version was properly documented in a report which I wrote and was issued with the name of other co-operators, but excluding Dr. Lyczkowski’ s name, an issue which we will recall later on.

As the end of the one-year period approached, Dr. Sha, who was very happy to see, as impact of my work, a completely new version of the COMMIX-2 code being developed and successfully verified, was hoping to rely on my co-operation for a second one-year term. For this purpose he contacted Prof. Dieter Smidt, Director of the IRE, a Division of KfK in Germany, sending him a letter, dated April 2, 1984, in which he praised my work and asked for an extension of my delegation to ANL. Because the appreciation of my work, expressed in this letter, is very different from that given years later, as we will see in the course of this account, I quote this letter almost in full:

As you know, the COMMIX code is one of the most comprehensive 3D [three dimensional], steady state/transient, single/two-phase, component/multicomponent, thermal-hydraulic computer code, and has a wide range of applicability (fuel assembly, reactor plenum, piping, IHX, steam generator, etc.). Although COMMIX is a very large, complex computer code, Maurizio took very little time to familiarize himself with the code, obtain operating experience, and realize full potential of applicability. While he is learning the porous media formulation, implicit formulation, code structure, and applications of the COMMIX code, he has already made valuable contributions in recommending further improvements and additional capabilities.

Maurizio is very valuable in the COMMIX development. But more importantly, Dr. Bottoni can help us expedite development of COMMIX-2 (two-phase version) to a satisfactorily working level so that Dr. Bottoni can take COMMIX-2 with him to KFK. We also consider performing analyses for the experiments carried out in our laboratory. Such analyses would greatly enhance understanding of the physical process, as well as being very useful in validating the COMMIX code.

In view of the potential contributions and benefits derived from Dr. Bottoni’s assignment at ANL, and to keep the continuity of the KFK-ANL link (Dr. Weinberg is expected to arrive in summer 1985), I am respectfully requesting his assignment be extended for another year.>

I have only to remark that I did not learn the porous media formulation and the implicit formulation from the COMMIX code, as assumed by Dr. Sha, but from the already years-long co-operation with the French colleagues of the Commissariat à l’Energié Nucleaire de Grenoble (CENG), during the development of the two- and three-dimensional versions of the BACCHUS code, dedicated to safety analysis of fast reactor bundles under hypothetical accident conditions. Nor was Mr. Weinberg delegated to ANL because the management of the FZK was starting to realize that Dr. Sha was "cheating too much" [Oral quotation], meaning that he was making promises which he well knew would not be able to keep.

On April 13, 1984, Prof. Smidt replied to the above letter, saying he "was very delighted by the favorable report" on Dr. Bottoni, but he could not agree on the requested one-year extension of the delegation, because I was needed for urgent work at KfK. Subsequently it was agreed about a three months extension, till October 15, 1984. This extension of the stay did allow me to write and edit a report about the newly developed code COMMIX-2. It was important to document the code both for the colleagues in ANL and for subsequent developments which were envisaged to be done upon my return to FZK. My predecessor at ANL, who apparently was not urgently needed at KfK, who had not made code development at ANL, but had just run the code, had been granted a three-year’s delegation, with great economical advantage. I was rewarded for my good work at KfK with a shorter delegation and modest economic advantage.

My stay at ANL in the years 1983 – 1984 had been one of the highlights of my scientific formation, especially from the viewpoints of physical modeling and of computational fluid-dynamics. The main benefit for the enhancement of my scientific formation arose from the acquaintance with Dr. Hank Domanus and his rigorous way of working. I have never seen Dr. Domanus in the Argonne library and seldom have I seen him studying technical reports or scientific articles. Nevertheless, when it was necessary to give a new impulse to the development work, by initiating a new code version, Dr. Domanus knew how to plunge into the work and six months later he came out with a new approach, which always turned out to be very good. As some colleagues said, he worked rigorously on application of fundamental principles, which are few and sound. Unfortunately, Dr. Domanus did not like writing reports about his ongoing work, nor technical articles. Every detail of his code developments was stored in his mind, but was not very accessible to his colleagues. For this reason the section relied for the documentation of computer codes and of preliminary or final computational results upon the figure of a technical writer, who wrote the reports for everyone and this writer was in most of the cases Dr. Vipin Shah, whom we will meet in the following. Nor did Dr. Domanus like travelling to participate to scientific conferences or workshops. I think that this was a serious drawback for Dr. Domanus’s career. With his technical capabilities he could have become professor three times, but this was not one of his aspirations either, nor, I think, did he like teaching. He therefore continued to carry on his activity in the shadow of Dr. Sha who managed to present himself as the key person of the code developments, leaving to Dr. Domanus and to the other co-operators not the crumb of the credit.

The second person who strongly influenced my scientific formation was the already mentioned Dr. Lyczkowski, who always impressed me for his fundamental knowledge of thermodynamics and of two-phase flow, from both the theoretical and modeling viewpoints. The development of the successful COMMIX-2 program would not have been possible without Dr. Lyczkowski’s support. I could discuss with Dr. Lyczkowski about almost every topics and modeling of physical problems and ask for useful references. Two days later he would give me a list of dozen of references, all well known to him, in which I would find hints for the solution of my problems.

Years later I would meet Dr. J. Richard Travis, one of the key persons in the development, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, of the GASFLOW code, dedicated to safety analysis of containments for pressurized water reactor, with special concern on hydrogen production and distribution within the containment. Dr. Travis had in some way the technical capabilities of Dr. Domanus, but also the advantage of not disliking documenting properly his own work, and of liking travelling to participate to scientific meetings. The fastness with which Dr. Travis was able to produce a new result was and still is impressive. I think I learned from him to enhance my versatility on addressing new issues.

At the Kernforschungszentrum Kasrlsruhe the person who made the strongest impact upon my scientific formation was doubtless Dr. U. Schumann, who later went to occupy a leading position at the German Atmospheric Research Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen. A strong worker and very versatile in every domain of fluid-dynamics, Dr. Schumann influenced positively my formation, nevertheless I disliked some superficiality, or lack of rigor, which I sometimes noticed in his reports and publications.

To complete the picture I should mention the years-long co-operation with the research group headed by Dr. Dominique Grand at the Commissariat à l’Energié Nucleaire de Grenoble (CENG), from which I learned how to build up, improve and verify a larger computer program. This experience allowed me, years later, to successfully lead the development of the BACCHUS-3D/TP three-dimensional, two-phase flow computer code, dedicated to safety analysis of fast reactor bundles under transient hypothetical accident conditions.

Back to KfK in Germany, following the completion of my stay at ANL, the program version COMMIX-2, which I had taken with me, according to the agreements between KfK and ANL, formed the basis for a further code development, in cooperation with colleagues of KfK, among these Dr. Gunther Grötzbach and Dr. Horst A. Borgwaldt, interested in applications of the code in frame of safety analysis of the equally ill-fated German fast reactor prototype SNR-300. For a further development of the German version of COMMIX-2 at KfK, project managers invited from Japan Prof. Katsuhiro Sakai who was expert in methods for minimizing numerical diffusion arising from numerical treatment of differential equations. Prof. Sakai stayed two years at KfK implementing into the COMMIX-2 code the method called QUICK (Quadratic Upstream Interpolation for Convective Kinematics) which substantially improved the numerical performances of the computer program.

Because of the termination in Germany of the SNR-300 project, to which I had dedicated 15 years of my professional activity, I decided to leave KfK at least temporarily, looking for a chance to continue, in another Country, to dedicate myself to fast breeder reactor technology and safety analysis. At that time the US were still supporting the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBR) project and therefore a possibility was represented by an appointment in the US, for instance in ANL, where I had already been a few years before and where I had received consideration from the leader of the ATH section, Dr. Sha.

One possibility offered by KfK to its staff member was that of a termination of the appointment with grantee of a reinstatement within 3 years (Beendigung des Beschäftigungsverhältnisses mit Wiedereinstellungszusage), if wished by the former staff member. Mr. R. Schiko of the Personnel section of FZK, explained me that, in my case, all prerequisite necessary for an application to the termination of the appointment with grantee of a reinstatement, like length of previous work at KfK, quality of work performed, etc., were amply satisfied and said that there was no doubt about acceptance of my petition from the KfK Board of Directors. Mr. Schiko added that, given the right prerequisites, never before had an application for resignation, with option of reinstatement, been rejected. Thrusting this assurance, on January 15, 1990, I addressed my petition to the Personnel Section of KfK. Prof. Smidt, leader of the IRE, was informed of my request and consulted Dr. Struwe, section leader and my direct supervisor. Dr. Struwe, who knew I was planning to move to ANL, stated that he could not continue in his section the work on reactor safety analysis without my support and was therefore categorically against conceding me a free time from the KfK. Prof. Smidt made this viewpoint his own and reported it to Dr. Hennies, President of the Board of Directors, which rejected my request.

In the formal answer I received from the Personnel Section, dated January 25, 1990, my plan to change over to a another Research Centre, instead of going to the industry, is given as the main reason for the rejection of my request. The truth is different. The truth is that Dr. Struwe thought I was indispensable for his section. Some days earlier I had made it clear to Dr. Struwe that in case of the rejection of my petition I would resign, but he did not believe my words. He had probably forgotten that I was a chess player, who does not take back a move, and not a poker player, who might be bluffing. He had also forgotten that, as mountain climber, I had many times in a ponderable way risked my life and I did not mind to risk only a job. I therefore resigned the day after the communication of the rejection of my petition, on January 26, 1990, the termination of my employment being set for 6 months later, on July 31, 1990. In this way Dr. Struwe, instead of loosing me for a couple of years, lost me for ever. I never regretted my decision, which allowed me to enlarge somewhere else my vision. At KfK, where the cadres had been formed dozen of years before, in the 1960’s, and since then nothing was changing, it was not the quality of work which would allow someone to rise in the management scale. At KfK I would always have remained the last wheel of the cart. What I regretted in the following years was that things at ANL did not go the way they should have gone.

Anyway, for the first time in the history of KfK, an application for termination of the appointment with grantee of a reinstatement was rejected, essentially because my direct superior had declared that he could not renounce to my cooperation. Prescinding from any consideration about the egoism inherent in the motivation, this rejection was, paradoxically, the highest recognition which I received in all years of my professional activity.

Following my resignation at KfK, I joined Dr. Sha’s Analytical Thermal Hydraulic (ATH) section at ANL, on August 1, 1990, at first as visiting scientist, with a one-year term. At that time the Analytical Thermal Hydraulic Research Program was working on the optimisation of a new advanced single-phase code version COMMIX-1C. As soon as I started my duties in the ATH section, I was confronted with an unpleasant situation due to the tense relationships between Dr. Sha and his best scientist, Dr. Hank Domanus. Unlike many other high rank scientists who joined Dr. Sha’s section and left it as soon as they became aware that Dr. Sha was incapable as technical manager and arrogant in the human relationships, Dr. Domanus remained all the time till his retirement. However, just before I joined the group in 1990, Dr. Domanus had been appointed as Manager of Code Development and, though still formally belonging to Dr. Sha’s section, was de facto autonomous in his research, with great benefit for the proficiency of the work. Nevertheless there were attempts by Dr. Sha to denigrate Dr. Domanus’s work and one of these attempts concerned the new formulation adopted by Dr. Domanus for solving numerically, in the COMMIX-1C code, all conservation equations of the thermal- and fluid-dynamics. This new approach, called Finite Volume Formulation was questioned by Dr. Sha as being unduly applied in the code. His arguments were not sound, never clearly explained, sometimes based on the claim of numerical equations being used in the code in some form, which in reality was not used.

A typical example of this state of affairs is given by a memorandum, dated June 26, 1990, addressed by Dr. Sha to several people on a distribution list, with the clear intent of letting everyone believe that Dr. Domanus’s new code was based on wrong assumptions. In this memorandum Dr. Sha gave an equation, Eq. (1), claiming that the transient term of the momentum equation was not represented properly by the given equation. He concluded stating:

On August 3, 1990, Dr. Domanus took the time to rebuff Dr. Sha’s insinuation about the correctness of the formulations used in the COMMIX-1C code. In a memorandum addressed to Dr. Sha he made the point clear (excerpts):

<3. Your Eq. (1) is not now nor has ever been present in any COMMIX version. Specifically, Eq. (1) was not duplicated from the COMMIX-1C code. Moreover, the equation is obviously incorrect if you carefully check the units.

4. The current formulation has been re-examined and still remains sound. [This paragraph continues explaining how the documentation can be somewhat modified to be made clearer.]

The current formulation and implementation models the conservation of linear momentum at least as good as any previous version: that is, in cases where the old versions give good results, so does the new formulation and in some particular cases where the old versions give poor results or have other difficulties, the new formulation now gives good results and is more robust.>

This last memorandum was distributed three days after my start in the ATHRP. The tense atmosphere surprised me and a further surprise was Dr. Sha’s request to me to read and check the documentation of the COMMIX-1C code and point out the "inconsistencies in the formulation" [Oral quotation]. It seemed that Dr. Sha continued to take it for granted that the formulation was inconsistent. Considering the issue now, years later, in the retrospective, I am convinced that Dr. Sha knew very well that Dr. Domanus’s work was flawless, but he nevertheless looked for some pretext to attack him.

In the following ten days or so, I carefully studied the COMMIX-1C documentation, a massive work of about 250 pages, which had been written by Dr. Y. S. Cha. This had been Dr. Cha’s last work in the ATH section, which he left shortly thereafter to join a quieter environment in a research group working on high-temperature superconducting materials, within the same Materials and Components Division. I made a list of suggestions to improve formally some parts of the COMMIX-1C report, and eventually I explained to Dr. Sha that, after checking the finite volume formulation as applied and coded by Dr. Domanus, I found it correct. Anyway, I concluded, to my opinion it was not worth while to continue to argue about the formulation and its implementation in the code, but it would have been much more appropriate to define a series of experimental tests to be simulated by the code and critically examine the computational results against the experimental data. A test of this kind would have been very sound. As Einstein stated: The theorist cannot be envied, because finally the experiment is a very strict judge of his work. The same applies, I would add, to the numerical analyst, a figure of scientist which did not exist at Einstein’s time. Dr. Sha was not happy about my conclusions, but the issue was dropped at this point. I remember very well that I wondered why so much time had to be invested in rising silly questions in an attempt of denigrating a serious worker like Dr. Domanus, but I did not even suspect at that time that much worse would happen to me a couple of years later.

Returning to the mainstream of our account, the Analytical Thermal Hydraulic Research Program aimed at deriving from the COMMIX-1C single-phase code version a multi-component, multi-phase code version which had to be called COMMIX-M. Having studied the documentation of the COMMIX-1C program and analysing preliminary results I realized that the problem of numerical diffusion in COMMIX-1C, although tackled with a new original technique, had not been solved satisfactorily. It should be remarked that the problem of numerical diffusion was independent of the finite volume formulation followed by Dr. Domanus and improperly criticized by Dr. Sha.

Looking back to the successful co-operation with Prof. Sakai at KfK, I suggested to Dr. Sha that he invite Prof. Sakai to ANL for one year to help us by introducing the QUICK method into the COMMIX-1C code. Dr. Sha accepted the suggestion and, following a formal invitation from the management of the Laboratory, Prof. Sakai came in August 1991, as visiting scientist, to join the Analytical Thermal Hydraulic Research Program at ANL with a contract for one year. Soon thereafter Prof. Sakai and I started to introduce in the COMMIX-1C code the methodology which had already been successfully developed and tested at KfK and in Japan. After about half a year from the beginning of Prof. Sakai’s stay and in view of the continuation of the work after his departure from ANL, the young colleague Dr. J. Sun, who had just graduated form the Illinois University at Champagne, and, although brilliant as a student, had not experience in numerical methods, started co-operating with Prof. Sakai and contributed to the development of the code. At that time, to help Dr. Sun to get acquainted as fast as possible with the QUICK method, I gave him a Japanese report, written in English, and all my personal notes with very detailed documentations of the analytical treatments involved. The notes were about 40 pages in total.

Meanwhile, on September 16, 1991, after termination of my first term as visiting scientist, I had become staff member of ANL in the Materials and Components Technology Division. Dr. Sha had opened a position in his section and formally declared me as "the ideal candidate to fill that vacancy. At that time he let me read a letter prepared for the Human Resources with such a statement, aiming at supporting my candidacy. In Dr. Sha’s mind I still was a good guy. Shortly after this time occurred the episode sketched in the Intermezzo Nr. 1. As we will see later on, within less than one year I would have turned to become a bad guy".

Beside the cooperation with Prof. Sakai, my main tasks to be tackled as staff member involved, as mentioned, development and verification of the computer code COMMIX-M, describing multi-phase, multi-component flows in complex engineering systems. This code had to be applied to the NRC supported project entitled COMMIX PWR Applications for which Dr. Sha and I were both PI (Principal Investigators). I was also involved with modeling of turbulence in single-phase flows with thermal stratifications and, later on, in particulate two-phase flows.

2. Closer acquaintance with Dr. Sha

In the years following my arrival to ANL and the appointment in Dr. Sha’s ATH section, I had the opportunity of getting a deeper acquaintance with Dr. Sha and of realizing that his attitude towards me changed radically in the very moment I terminated being a visiting scientist and started to be a regular ANL staff member. Having gained a deeper understanding of Dr. Sha’s personality, I realized that he was not, after all, as strong as he wanted to appear, but seemed rather to suffer from an inferiority complex arising from his position in the family. This feeling of inferiority demanded a compensation of values in the working environment.

Dr. Sha had come as a young researcher from mainland China, where his father had managed an enterprise in which, as I was told, people were run as schoolboys who had only to obey whatever order they were imparted. In the style of his farther in mainland China, Dr. Sha believed to have the authority to run researchers in his section in USA as schoolchildren, to whom the only recognized freedom was that of agreeing with him. And actually young Chinese post-doctors in his section, just graduated from the university, with a provisional one-year contract with the Laboratory, under the imminent perspective of being denied a renewal of the contract, had no choice but agreeing with him. Researchers with more experience, already well established in the research environment with a good record of original work and publications, could not accept his tyranny and usually left the group after a very short term with him. Among these were excellent people who would have given him, as section manager, a good fame if only the merits of carrying on research and of assuring financial support had been properly split. This was not the case, as Dr. Sha claimed for himself the totality of the credits. It thus turned out that Dr.