Senate Appropriations Report on DOE FY2000 Funding

As reported in FYI #93 , the Senate Appropriations Committee has passed its bill to fund energy and water development programs for FY 2000. Constrained by the budget caps, Senate appropriators would generally fund DOE’s civilian science programs at or near current (FY 1999) levels. The bill, S. 1186, is accompanied by a report (Senate Report 106-58) which provides some explanation of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee’s recommendations. In many cases the report blames “severe budget constraints” for reductions to the President’s requested funding level. Selected text from the report is quoted below:

HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS (HEP): [FY99 Approp.: $696.5 million; FY2000 Request: $697.1 million; Committee bill: $691.1 million]. “The Committee recommendation includes $691,090,000 for high energy physics, a reduction of $6,000,000 from the request. The reduction is taken from the $12,000,000 proposed for research and development for a TeV scale center of mass accelerator. The estimated cost of such a facility prohibits its serious consideration in the foreseeable future.”

NUCLEAR PHYSICS: [FY99 Approp.: $335.1 million; FY2000 Request: $342.9 million; Committee bill: $330.0 million]. “Due to severe budget restraints, the Committee recommendation for nuclear physics is $330,000,000, a reduction of $5,100,000 from the current level and $12,940,000 from the request. That reduction is offset by the completion of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for which the Committee provided from this account $16,620,000 in the current year.”

BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES (BES): [FY99 Approp: $809.1 million; FY2000 Request: $888.1 million; Committee bill: $854.6 million]. The Committee would reduce BES funding by $33.5 million from the request. Of that reduction, $28.0 million is from the Spallation Neutron Source. The report states, “The Committee recommendation includes $186,900,000, including $169,000,000 for construction, related to the spallation neutron source. Project delays in the current year have reduced the funding requirements for fiscal year 2000 and resulted in the commensurate reduction from the request of $214,000,000.” Also within BES, the report designates $6,815,000 for DOE’s EPSCoR program.

FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES: [FY99 Approp.: $223.3 million; FY2000 Request: $222.6 million; Committee bill: $220.6 million]. “The Committee recommendation for Fusion Energy Sciences is $220,614,000, a reduction of $2,000,000 from the request. While, in the past, the Committee has supported increases above the level of the request for this program, severe budget constraints and shortfalls elsewhere in the Department’s request, necessitate the reduction at this time.... The Committee recommendation includes $19,000,000 for inertial fusion energy research to improve heavy ion accelerator efficiency, heavy ion and laser chamber designs, and the design of fusion energy target pellets.”

BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH (BER): [FY99 Approp.: $443.6 million; FY2000 Request: $411.2 million; Committee bill: $429.7 million]. “The Committee recommendation includes $429,700,000 for biological and environmental research. The recommendation does not include the proposed $4,467,000 increase in radio-pharmaceuticals.”

Low Dose Effects program: “The Committee recommendation includes $22,500,000, of which $17,500,000 is within biological and environmental research and $5,000,000 is within defense environmental restoration and waste management environmental sciences.... The funding is provided consistent with the level and program proposed by the Low Dose Radiation Research Program Plan Subcommittee of the Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee.”

COMPUTATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH: [FY99 Approp.: $143.0 million; FY2000 Request: $198.9 million; Committee bill: $129.0 million]. “The Committee recommendation does not include the $70,000,000 requested for the Department’s participation in the Scientific Simulation Initiative.”

USE OF PRIOR YEAR BALANCES: The Committee would require DOE to apply a certain amount of “unobligated carryover balances” - unused funds from previous years - to these budget levels. These prior year balances to be used include: "$10,000 from high energy physics, $15,000 from nuclear physics, $7,739,000 from the Superconducting Supercollider, $790,000 from biological and environmental research, $75,000 from materials sciences [within BES]” and "$652,000 from magnetic fusion research and development.”

INERTIAL CONFINEMENT FUSION (ICF): [FY99 Approp.: $508.0 million; FY2000 Request: $465.7 million; Committee bill: $475.7 million]. Within its defense activities, DOE funds R&D on Inertial Confinement Fusion under its Stockpile Stewardship initiative. Funding for ICF includes construction funding and some operating expenses for the National Ignition Facility, currently being built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “An appropriation of $475,700,000 is recommended for the Inertial Confinement Fusion Program. The ICF Program continues to be a major contributor to the science and technology base supporting the nuclear deterrent through improved understanding of the underlying physics of nuclear weapons and computational modeling that will provide the future basis for ensuring safety, reliability, and performance on nuclear components.”

National Ignition Facility: Within ICF, “the Committee recommendation includes $248,100,000 to continue construction of the National Ignition Facility and $15,900,000 for operating expenses to support research activities related to NIF. The President’s fiscal year 2000 budget request significantly underfunded several areas of NIF research which would place at risk the success of scientific and stewardship objectives of the National Ignition Facility.... The additional $10,000,000 recommended by the Committee provides an additional $3,600,000 for core NIF diagnostics, $1,000,000 for direct drive laser beam smoothing development, and $5,400,000 to initiate critical cryogenic activities. Without this additional funding, the operational schedule...would be delayed by 1 year at a minimum.... An appropriation of $248,100,000, the full amount needed in fiscal year 2000 to keep this important project on schedule, is recommended for the NIF project. Fiscal year 1999 was the peak year for construction funding, and with the appropriation recommended for fiscal year 2000, the project will be 75 percent complete on an appropriations basis. The project remains on schedule and within the projected construction cost of $1,046,000,000. The Committee is pleased with the management and oversight attention provided by [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory] on the project.”

Senate floor action on S. 1186 has not yet been scheduled.