FPN08-65

Fusion Planning Workshop Update

December 8, 2008

The USDOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) is planning a Research Needs Workshop (ReNeW) for the magnetic fusion portion of its program. The workshop is currently scheduled for early June in Bethesda, MD, but attendance is by invitation only. Prior to the actual workshop, a massive preparation activity is underway under the leadership of Richard Hazeltine (U. Texas) and is involving a large number of the magnetic fusion community organized into thematic teams. The workshop web site is active at http://www.burningplasma.org/renew.html

ReNeW welcomes suggestions regarding its process and, especially, regarding the initiatives on which its final report will be based. In particular, five Theme Workshops to be held in March and early April will devote time to presentations from scientists outside the ReNeW process who wish to propose initiatives. In addition, members of the fusion community are welcome to submit 2- or 3-page documents, describing proposed initiatives, to the public page of the ReNeW web site.

Such "white papers" will be most effective if they are written with awareness of how ReNeW intends to perform its task. For this reason they recommend reading the "Goals and Strategies" document (G&S) on the public web site before composing a white paper.

Key points from G&S are:

- The objective of ReNeW is to provide scientific and technical input to OFES, to help that Office develop a strategic plan for U.S. fusion research in the ITER era. It will also help introduce the fusion program to a new federal administration.

- The starting point for ReNeW will be the issues and gaps identified by the Greenwald, TAP and EPACT reports (available from the public web site). ReNeW will avoid repeating the effort that went into these very useful and detailed reports.

- The output of ReNeW will be a program strategy based on a set of approximately 15 scientific and technical initiatives, where "initiatives" is defined in detail in G&S.

- The ReNeW initiatives will span a range of sizes, from relatively small, tightly focused programs (a few $M per year) to much larger, more encompassing efforts (about $100M per year). Such a spectrum will give OFES more flexibility in planning, and seeking support for, fusion research.

It is also important to appreciate the process for developing initiatives that ReNeW will use. Beginning with the scientific and technical issues identified by the Greenwald, TAP and EPACT documents, ReNeW panels will first determine the scientific and technical requirements for addressing those issues. From these, the panels (working separately and together within a theme) will identify the tools (instruments, theory, hardware, codes, and facilities) needed to meet these requirements. Only then will the panels and theme groups begin to construct initiatives, by combining the necessary tools into a coherent framework.

The main point of this process is to ensure that each initiative is convincingly grounded in a compelling need of the (magnetic) fusion research program. It will also facilitate identification of the cross-cutting benefits provided by an initiative, which will be helpful in generating a single consolidated list of initiatives prior to and during the June workshop.

White papers in MSWord or PDF formats should be sent by email attachments to ehooks@mail.utexas.edu They will then be posted on the ReNeW web site public page: http://burningplasma.org/renew_whitepapers.html