FPN05-31

FESAC Cautions Orbach on Fusion Priorities

April 21, 2005

The U. S. Department of Energy's Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) recently approved a report of its "priorities panel" and sent it to DOE Office of Science Director Ray Orbach with "our strong endorsement." However, the FESAC noted that the charge letter from Orbach to which they were responding with the report had instructed them to assume that U.S. funding for construction of ITER would be provided above the current level of the U.S. domestic fusion program. In its letter of April 11, 2005, transmitting the report to Orbach, FESAC said:

"However, FESAC is deeply troubled by the President's proposed budget for FY 2006 and its implications for later years. In particular, the core program cannot shoulder a significant portion of the ITER construction costs without dismantling the fusion scientific enterprise.

"Already, the proposed FY 2006 budget compromises an essential feature of a viable domestic fusion energy science program, highlighted in the priorities panel report: a strategic balance among the major scientific campaigns." "It will not be possible to address the central scientific questions and campaigns noted above with the implied long-term reductions in the core research program," FESAC said.

The 157-page priorities panel report describes the U. S. fusion program in terms of three "overarching themes." and identifies 15 "topical scientific questions." The fifteen questions were then grouped into six "campaigns." In a set of 4 recommendations, the panel lists 14 "high priority activities," and comments on priorities for these activities.

The panel recommended a distribution of effort among the six scientific campaigns as follows:

Macroscopic plasma physics: 27%
Multi-scale transport physics: 25%
Waves and energetic particles: 15%
Fusion engineering science: 13%
Plasma boundary interfaces: 13%
High energy density physics: 7%

A copy of the report is posted on the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences web site at http://www.ofes.fusion.doe.gov/more_html/FESAC/pp_Rpt_Apr05R.pdf