In his Fiscal Year 2001 budget request, President Clinton has asked Congress to provide $265.5 million for Inertial Confinement Fusion within DOE's Office of Defense Programs. This compares to this year's budget of $226.3 million. However, DOE explicitly states, "Funding is not requested for High Average Power Lasers in 2001." For the past two years, Congress has added approximately $10 million each year for high average power laser research (FPN99-48). The development of high average power is important for the eventual civilian applications of inertial confinement fusion. In addition to the above request, the President's budget requests $74.1 million for continued construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). This is the amount needed according to the original NIF funding profile. However, due to unforeseen technical problems discovered during construction (FPN99-41), NIF is facing cost increases that have not yet been fully assessed. A "rebaselining" of the NIF cost and schedule is underway, with a report to Congress due in June.

The budget document states that the funding increases for the operating program are needed "to support the design and development of the NIF Cryogenic System, the development of the initial set of core target diagnostics and laser characterization diagnostics for NIF, ignition target design and development and experiments to verify conditions necessary for ignition, weapons physics experiments whcih also support other Stewardship campaigns, and additional grants and national ignition program coordination and technical activities."

The DOE Defense Programs budget document can be accessed on the web (http://www.dp.doe.gov/dp_web/public_f.htm)

The complete DOE budget can be accessed at http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/01budget/index.htm