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September 30, 1996

The Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) met at the Hilton Hotel, Gaithersburg, MD, September 24-25. They reviewed the FY 97 budget for the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES), as recently passed by Congress. Discussion centered on the "strawman" budget distributions as proposed by the OFES, as described in FPN-15, and recommended modifications thereto. Votes were taken on various questions on the second day of the meeting. Seventeen members voted; not everyone voted on every question; chairman John Sheffield (ORNL) did not vote. A detailed letter report is being prepared. Below is a summary of their recommendations.

The FESAC unanimously re-affirmed "the importance of proceeding expeditiously" to implement the so-called "Restructured Fusion Energy Sciences Program" (Report of FEAC to DOE, January 27, 1996). However, the FESAC split 11-6 on the question of whether "broadly speaking, the DOE (strawman) budget strategy is responsive to the FEAC restructured program proposals." The FESAC was unanimous in stating that the budget needs to be presented in a way to make it "clearer" that the restructuring is underway and that there is extensive national and international collaboration underway in all elements of the program. They were also unanimous in their opinion that the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory needed "to emphasize more clearly the transition to its future program." The FESAC was fearful that, unless this was done in a visible way, the fusion program risked losing the money labled as TFTR next year, after TFTR was shut down.

Votes were taken on the budgets proposed for various program elements in the strawman budget . With respect to the tokamak experimental physics budget (proposed to go from $115.0M this year to $111.1M next year), eleven members said the amount was "slightly too high," 3 said it was "roughly correct," and 2 said it was "slightly too low."

With respect to the magnetic Alternate Concepts budget (proposed to go from $7.4M to $13.1M), 2 said it "slightly too high," 7 said it was "roughly correct," and 8 said it was "slightly too low."

With respect to Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE), the FESAC voted 15-2 to recommend that its status be upgraded within OFES to the category of Alternative Concept. OFES had described the program as an "enabling technology," as a subcategory of the Technology category; but in an exchange of views with FESAC member John Lindl, OFES Director N. Anne Davies acknowledged that she considered IFE to be the "major alternate." The FESAC also voted 15-1 to restore some or all of the IFE funding cut proposed in the strawman budget (proposed to go from $7.8M to $4.9M).

On Fusion Theory, 11 persons thought the budget (proposed to go from $18.6M to $16.8M) was "slightly too low," and 5 thought it was "roughly correct." In the area of Basic Plasma Sciences (proposed to go from ($0.2M to $3.0M), 12 persons thought this as "correct," and 5 persons thought this was "high." The strawman budget had proposed to "zero out" the plasma technology and fusion technology categories, which this year have budgets of $5.6M and $3.3M, respectively. The FESAC voted 11-4 to restore some or all of the plasma technology money and 9-5 to restore some of the fusion technology money.

The strawman budget proposed to reduce ITER and its direct supporting technology programs, from $54.4M plus $5M, respectively, this year to $54.5M total next year. Three persons thought that the amount allocated in the strawman budget was "slightly too high," 5 thought it was "roughly correct," and 5 thought it was "slightly too low." The FESAC also voted 12-4 to restore some or all of the proposed cuts in the Materials category, which had been targeted for a reduction from $7.9 M to $4.9M. They also voted 9-5 to restore some or all of the money to the Systems Studies category, which had been earmarked for a reduction from $2.3M to $1.0M.

When asked to indicate the priority in which the recommended increases should be funded, 13 members indicated inertial fusion energy, 9 indicated base (plasma and fusion) technology, 9 indicated materials, 7 indicated theory, and 5 indicated systems studies.

A variety of answers were provided to the question of where the money for the proposed increases should come from. In the end FESAC agreed to leave that problem to the DOE.

FESAC member Charles Kennel (UCLA) attended only the first day of the meeting and hence did not take part in the voting. Members Bob Conn (UCSD), Katherine Gebbie (NIST), and Mike Knotek (Battelle PNL) did not attend. As mentioned, chair John Sheffield (ORNL) did not vote. The 17 voting members present were: Ira Bernstein (Yale), Richard Briggs (SAIC), Jim Callen (Wisc.), Melissa Cray (LANL), Sam Harkness (Westinghouse), Richard Hazeltine (Texas), Joseph Johnson (Florida A&M), John Lindl (LLNL), Earl Marmar (MIT), Bruce Montgomery (MIT), Marshall Rosenbluth (UCSD), Tony Taylor (GA), Nermin Uckan (ORNL), Stewart Zweben (PPPL), Stewart Prager (Wisc./APS), John Davis (McDonnell Douglas/ANS), and Ned Sauthoff (PPPL/IEEE) . Over 20 members of the fusion community signed up to make comments during the public comment portion of the meeting, the most ever in memory for a fusion advisory committee meeting. Chairman John Sheffield is to be congratulated for revising the meeting agenda to accommodate all of them. Public comment was heard from shortly before noon on the first day until 7 PM that night. Numerous written statements had also been received and were distributed by the chairman at the meeting.

For more information, contact: Stephen O. Dean