Recent News Items
BROWN BILL ENCOURAGES INVESTMENT: On April 8, House Science Committee Ranking Minority Member George Brown (D-CA) introduced a concurrent resolution, H.Con.Res. 58, designed to stimulate important investments while balancing the budget by 2002. Brown’s budget would encourage funding for R&D, capital infrastructure, and education and job training, areas crucial to future productivity. In introducing his resolution, Brown remarked that no balanced-budget plans so far “have fully addressed the underlying imperative to create an economy that can sustain growth after the year 2002.” See the House Science Website at http://www.house.gov/science_democrats/welcome.htm for further information.
SENSENBRENNER INTRODUCES AUTHORIZATION BILLS: Today, House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced eight bills to authorize programs under the committee’s jurisdiction, including NSF, NIST, civilian space and DOE civilian R&D. Sensenbrenner plans to hold a committee mark-up of these bills on April 16. A future FYI will provide details of the mark-up.
BROOKHAVEN TO HOST JAPANESE RESEARCH CENTER: The Japanese Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) plans to establish a research center at the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) this year. Research at the center will relate to physics done at Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which will begin operating in 1999. In recent years, RIKEN has agreed to contribute $20 million to equip RHIC with the capability to study “the world’s highest energy spin-polarized protons,” according to a BNL press release. The center initially will host about 30 scientists each year, and its first director will be Nobel-winning physicist T.D. Lee, now at Columbia University. Lee states in the press release, “The progress of physics depends on young physicists opening up new frontiers. The RIKEN BNL Research Center will be dedicated to the nurturing of a new generation of scientists who can meet the challenge that will be created by RHIC.” DOE’s Director of Energy Research, Martha Krebs, added that “locating a prestigious new research center at the Brookhaven National Laboratory is also a tribute to the quality of science that is carried out there.”
TOKAMAK FUSION TEST REACTOR SHUT DOWN: The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), which in 1994 set the world record for fusion power, became a victim of budget cuts to the U.S. fusion program on April 4. After DOE’s fusion budget was cut by one-third in FY 1996, it was determined that this would require the premature closing of one of the major domestic tokamak facilities to allow for increased operation of the others (see FYIs #13 -14 , 1996.) Some funding will remain to continue analysis of the data collected during the running of TFTR.
PCAST FORMS PANEL ON ENERGY R&D: On March 20, Presidential Science Advisor John Gibbons announced formation of a panel, under the auspices of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), that would provide advice on how to ensure the U.S.'s energy R&D program addresses the needs of the next century. The panel will work cooperatively with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Energy Department to review the nation’s energy programs, including efficiency, renewables, advanced fossil-fuel technologies, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. It will make recommendations for federal R&D, incentives for private-sector R&D, and participation in international efforts. PCAST member John Holdren, Director of the Program on Science, Technology and Public Policy at Harvard’s J.F. Kennedy School of Government, has been named to chair the panel. It will comprise 21 experts from academia, industry, think tanks, national laboratories, and utilities.
NEW DOE DEPUTY SECRETARY TO BE NOMINATED: President Clinton announced on April 9 his intention to nominate Elizabeth Moler as Deputy Secretary of Energy. Moler currently chairs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and prior to that was senior counsel to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Energy Secretary Federico Pena offered words of gratitude to departing Deputy Secretary Charles Curtis, saying he “helped lead the Department’s national security programs out of a Cold War environment,” and had an impact on improving the management of the national laboratories.
