For the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, the President requests $291 million compared to $274 million in FY 2005. Funding for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) would climb from $5M to $56M. Since the total budget increase is only $17M, the budget request proposes $34M in cuts from ongoing domestic fusion research efforts. Included in the proposed domestic fusion program cuts are total elimination of fusion materials research ($7.3M), halving the effort on heavy ion inertial fusion ($7.2M), reductions in ongoing tokamak experiments and theory ($7.4M), reductions in non-tokamak (alternate concept) research ($10M) and reductions in enabling technology ($3.0M). General Plasma Science would increase by $1M.

Of the $56M earmarked for ITER, $6M would be for ITER Preparations, compared to $5M in FY 2005 and $46M is reserved for ITER hardware on the assumption that ITER construction is proceeding. Currently ITER construction is being held up by failure of the ITER partners to agree on a site. The U.S has negotiated a 10% contribution to the $5 billion estimated cost of the project. However, cost estimates by U. S ITER project office officials put the estimated cost to the U. S. at slightly over $1 billion over 8 years beginning in FY 2006. The U. S figures include inflation and contingency not in the official ITER project cost estimates and also reflects U. S re-estimates on the cost of building components in the U. S. According to U. S. ITER cost profiles, the U. S. contribution would grow from $46M in FY 2006 to $!30M in FY 2007 and peak around $190M in FY 2009 and 2010. Construction is estimated to be completed in FY 2013.

For the Office of Inertial Confinement and NIF, the President requests $460 million, compared to $535 million in FY2005. Almost the entire reduction is due to DOE's failure once more to request funding for Congressionally-mandated programs on high average power laser and z-pinch driver development ($34M) and high energy petawatt laser efforts ($38M).