September 28, 1997

FPN97-23 Fusion Program Notes

US Fusion Budget and Strategy

Conferees of the House and Senate of the U. S. Congress met this past week and agreed to appropriations for the Department of Energy for Fiscal Year 1998, which begins on October 1. The bill includes appropriations for the DOE's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences and for the inertial confinement fusion program within the DOE Defense Programs office. It was good news.

The Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) will receive $232 million, which is $7 million more than requested in the President's budget. Two million of that, however, is an accounting transfer for a materials program that was previously in the nuclear energy programs budget. Nevertheless, the action marked a sharp reversal of the downward trend of the past two years.

The inertial confinement fusion (ICF) program will receive the amounts requested by the President for both the base ICF program ($217 million) and for the next year of construction of the National Ignition Facility ($197.8 million).

Although the conference report must still be adopted by the full House and Senate and signed by the President, this is expected to be pro-forma and rapid.

Meanwhile, a subpanel of the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee has been meeting for the purpose of making recommendations on fusion strategy relative to the next phase of ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project). The present agreement on ITER ends next July. The full FESAC will take up the committee's recommendations at a public meeting October 20-21 in the DOE auditorium in Germantown, MD. Persons can make 5 minute statements at the meeting by signing up with John Galambos (galambosjd@ornl.gov). Email statements may also be sent to Galambos for transmittal to the FESAC.

One group of fusion researchers have already prepared and submitted to the subpanel a detailed proposal claiming, "Our assessment, shared by many of our colleagues, is that the U. S. strategy to explore the science and technology of energy-producing plasmas must change in the post-ITER-EDA period." The proposal, entitled "A US Strategy to Explore the Science and Technology of Energy-Producing Plasmas, Discussion Draft, September 16, 1997," is available on the web (http://www.fusionscience.org/policy/). Signers of the proposal are David Baldwin (GA), Robert Goldston (PPPL), Michael Mauel (Columbia U.), Miklos Porkolab (MIT), Michael Saltmarsh (ORNL) and Keith Thomassen (LLNL).

For more information, contact: Stephen O. Dean