The Department of Energy will extend Battelle's contract to operate Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for another five years, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced Wednesday after getting a look at some of the research there.

"Battelle has done an extraordinary job operating PNNL over the years," Abraham said.

More than 40 percent of the work at the Richland lab is related to national security. It's work that's critical to the nation since Sept. 11, Abraham said.

Technology being developed at the lab includes an automated system to isolate bacteria from soil, water and air samples, which the lab demonstrated to the Energy secretary during his tour of the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory there.

Biodetection Enabling Analyte Delivery System, or BEADS, can clean samples so micro-organisms can be identified in places such as food processing lines and water treatment plants. It also can be coupled with a detector to identify agents of biological warfare without requiring samples to be manually purified for identification.

Battelle Memorial Institute has held the contract to operate the laboratory since 1965. The lab now employs about 3,500 people and has an annual budget of about $540 million.

Abraham could have requested proposals from other corporations to operate the lab. However, citing three years of "outstanding" ratings of the national laboratory, Abraham authorized DOE's Richland office to start contract negotiations with Battelle.

In addition, the Richland lab was the first DOE Office of Science to win Gold Star status in DOE's voluntary Protection Program, lab Director Lura Powell pointed out.

The laboratory also has signed three major partnerships to collaborate with universities. That included an alliance formed in September with researchers at public and private universities across Washington.

Powell said she was pleased with the strides the laboratory has made in three initiatives, she said. Those include computational science and engineering, nanoscience and technology and biomolecular networks, which include research of cell behavior that advanced knowledge gained from the mapping of the human genome.

Abraham also used his visit to Hanford to announce DOE grants of $8.4 million for another research focus of the laboratory, cleanup of nuclear sites such as Hanford.

DOE is awarding $39.6 million over three years to universities, national laboratories and other research institutions for 45 research projects to solve complex environmental cleanup challenges.

The Richland lab won grants to lead 11 of the projects and collaborate on five others.

Projects include developing technology to remove plutonium from steel and concrete surfaces and to better predict consequences of various scenarios in handling high-level waste in Hanford's tanks.

Such research could help the nation speed up cleanup of its nuclear sites, possibly at less cost, Abraham said.