Energy secretary serving under microscope

WASHINGTON

As a physicist, Steven Chu has seen atoms suspended in a powerful laser beam and DNA stretched out in a vacuum chamber.

But in his new job as energy secretary, Chu is observing phenomena he never saw in the science laboratory.

At a recent Senate hearing, for example, he witnessed a junior Cabinet member (himself) being systematically dissected by a senior senator (John McCain).

McCain, unhappy when Chu affirmed the Obama administration's intention to suspend work at a planned nuclear waste site in Nevada, quickly bore down: "What's wrong with Yucca Mountain, Dr. Chu?" he demanded.

Chu started to explain, but the senator cut him off.

"What's wrong with Yucca Mountain, Dr. Chu?" McCain, R-Ariz., repeated.

Washington has been an initiation that the slight, soft-spoken Nobel laureate has likened to being "dumped in the deep end of the pool." Chu, 61, was chairman of Stanford's Physics Department and ran a national research laboratory. But in addition to being verbally slapped around by McCain, he has been forced to backtrack on some ill-informed comments about OPEC and ordered to spend quickly tens of billions of dollars in stimulus money with virtually no top-level help.

Chu is still mastering skills like ducking a tough question from a reporter and delivering the all-purpose "I'll get back to you on that."

He has admitted his naivete on certain policy questions, like OPEC production quotas, and is still getting used to the scrutiny that comes with a Cabinet job.

"I didn't appreciate how much of a public figure you become," Chu said in an interview recently in Milwaukee, where he talked to scientists about biofuels and toured a home that was being weatherized under a local government program.

President Obama has assigned Chu to carry out some of his central priorities: wean America from dependence on fossil fuels, rebuild the nation's electrical grid and address the challenges of climate change.

"Does he drop some off at the liquor store on his way?" Chu asked impishly.

A few hours later, wearing khakis frayed at the cuffs and brown, thick-soled professorial shoes, he dutifully traipsed through the small house that was getting new insulation and appliances to cut the owner's electric bills. When he emerged, five news cameras were set up on the lawn. But to his relief, most of the questions went to Gov. James Doyle of Wisconsin, who had accompanied him on the tour.

Asked later what part of his job he liked the least, Chu said: "The fact that I'm constantly being told that I have to be careful what I say to the press and in public. I can't speculate out loud anymore. Everything I say is taken with total seriousness."

Yet as he takes on one of the toughest policy and management challenges in government, Chu brings assets that none of his peers or predecessors has had: a Nobel Prize, a YouTube following (for his lectures on climate change) and an unofficial theme song ("Dr. Wu" by Steely Dan). He is a celebrity in Taiwan, where scientific achievement is rewarded with rock-star status. He is a member of Academica Sinica, Taiwan's most distinguished scholarly society, as was his father.

Chu is struggling to get his arms around one of the most perplexing and intractable bureaucracies in Washington and to efficiently -- and carefully -- disburse $39 billion from the stimulus package. Most of the department's top appointed positions, including deputy secretary, remain unfilled, leaving him largely reliant on career staff members to manage 114,000 employees and contractors and a budget that has more than doubled this year. The task at times appears overwhelming, and some in Washington quietly wonder if Chu is in over his head.

"Is he secretary of energy or secretary of research and development?" Harbert asked.

Dan Leistikow, the Energy Department's director of public affairs, said Chu was a scientist, not a politician, and should be given a little time to adjust.

"A Nobel scientist is more likely to figure out Washington than a career politician is to figure out how to deal with carbon sequestration," Leistikow said.

Chu said he had been frustrated by the job vacancies and the glacial pace of his department. He is eager, he said, to get on with what he sees as his main task: finding and financing the scientific breakthroughs that will end the nation's dependence on carbon-based fuels and solve the climate change problem.

Borrowing an analogy from the world of physics, he said that in Washington, Newton's first law -- a body in motion tends to stay in motion -- does not apply. "In a bureaucracy, if you start something in motion, it either stops or gets derailed," he said. "You have to keep applying force."