The Committee recommends $4,640,469,000 for the Office of Science. This is $622,758,000 above fiscal year 2008 and represents the single largest increase for any program in the bill.
The Committee provides $493,050,000 for Fusion Energy Sciences, the same as the budget request. The Committee understands the department's difficult decision to close the National Compact Stellarator Experiment [NCSX] project. The fiscal year 2009 budget request included $20,342,000 for the NCSX. The Department is directed to reallocate these funds as proposed by the Department to the Committee under Scenario II. The Committee understands this means approximately $9,000,000 will be used for orderly closeout of NCSX, $9,250,000 will be used to restore run times for three facilities and support major upgrade work at NSTX, and $2,000,000 will be used to enhance non-NCSX stellarator research.
Recent advances in pulse power have renewed interest in nuclear energy systems that utilize both fusion and fission. The Committee directs the Department to work with laboratories and industry to develop a systems concept that identifies the challenges, opportunities and future research path of such a fusion-fission hybrid system.
The Committee recommends $453,242,000 for the ICF (Inertial Confinement Fusion) campaign activities. This is an increase of $32,000,000.
The Committee recommends $103,644,000, consistent with the budget request (for the ignition campaign). The Committee provides $68,248,000 as requested (for NIF Diagnostics, Cryogenics and Experimental Support).
Pulsed Power Inertial Confinement Fusion: The Committee recommends $10,920,000, an increase of 2,000,000 to support for development of the Linear Transformer Driver concept.
Joint Program in High Energy Density: The Committee supports the budget request to fund a joint program with the Office of Science to support joint research utilizing NNSA facilities.
Facility Operations and Target Production: The Committee recommends $210,384,000, an increase of $30,000,000. Of this increase $15,000,000 is for National Ignition Facility operations and target production and an increase of $15,000,000 to support single shift operations on the Z machine and to explore advanced concepts.
NIF Assembly and Installation: $56,899,000 is provided, as requested, to support this budgeted activity.
Construction: No funding is provided for NIF construction, consistent with the request.
Advanced Simulation and Computing: The Committee is frustrated by the lack of information regarding the computing strategy for the NNSA laboratories in this budget. The budget lacks specifics regarding the acquisition priorities and budget to support new computing platforms. How computing time will be allocated and the existing computing workload divided among the labs remains unclear. The Committee requests that the NNSA provide a written report outlining its shared computing strategy to address these issues. The Committee expects this strategy to have the benefit of an independent review and be submitted to the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee within 6 months after enactment. While the Office of Science supports a strategy to expand its leadership in computing capabilities and capacity, the Committee is concerned about the declining NNSA investment in computing platforms needed to sustain the computing capability at each the three national security labs. Advanced computing capabilities are critical to each of our national laboratories, enabling a wide range of programmatic activities. The Committee has recommended new climate change modeling responsibilities for the national labs, and computational modeling and simulation will play a very big role in the success of this program. It is imperative the NNSA labs have the capability to support this and other missions. The President has requested $171,000,000 for computational systems, which is $13,000,000 below current year levels. Even more troubling is the out-year funding proposed in this budget which falls to an average of $126,000,000 during years 2010 to 2014. This is nearly $60,000,000 below current year levels and is insufficient to meet our needs in the areas of national security, advanced engineering, climate change, nuclear physics and biology, all major scientific priorities for the Department of Energy and NNSA.