When the DOE was established, the entire nuclear defense program was brought into the program. With this came many other efforts in such fields such as nuclear waste management, theoretical physics, the fusion program, etc. These programs are carried out by the same organization that designs, develops, produces nuclear weapons. Some of the parts of the organization include Los Alamos National Lab, Oak Ridge Lab, the Berkley, Livermore and Argonne labs, the production and recycling facilities for nuclear weapons, etc.

These labs and production facilities consume $17 billion of the DOE budget. I do agree that the DOE has failed miserably in meeting the charge of lessening our dependence on foreign oil and its mission needs to be more clearly focused on energy independence. Fold the labs and production facilities into DARPA. At least the people involved understand the language of science and engineering.