 Under Weinberg 's tenure as director , ORNL 's Biology Division grew to five times the size of the next largest division . This division was charged with understanding how ionizing radiation interacts with living things and to try to find ways to help them survive radiation damage , such as bone marrow transplants . In the 1960s Weinberg also pursued new missions for ORNL , such as using nuclear energy to desalinate seawater . He recruited Philip Hammond from the Los Alamos National Laboratory to further this mission and in 1970 started the first big ecology project in the United States : the National Science Foundation — Research Applied to National Needs Environmental Program . 
