FPN21-32

President Biden Submits FY22 Budget Requests to Congress

May 31, 2021

President Biden has submitted his Fiscal Year 2022 budget request to Congress. The funding request for the U.S. Department of Energy, which includes funds for fusion research, can be found at:

https://www.energy.gov/cfo/articles/fy-2022-budget-justification

For the DOE Office of Science Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program, the President requests $675 million, compared to $672 million in FY 2021. The $3 million increase would be used to fund a new effort on designs for a potential future fusion pilot plant. The FES research operations budget would also increase an additional $31 million in FY22 by reducing construction funding by $31 million compared to the FY21 level. Of that, $21 million would result by reducing ITER construction funds from $257 million to $226 million, and $10 million would result by reducing MEC construction funds from $15 million to $5 million. MEC is the Petawatt Upgrade at SLAC.

The Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, funded within the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons program, would be reduced by $46 million, from $575 million in FY21 to $529 million in FY22. An unspecified amount would also be provided in support of High Energy Density physics within NNSA's Academics Programs category.