Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David
Hobson (R-OH), Ranking Minority Member Peter Visclosky (D-IN) and their
colleagues have sent a very favorable FY 2007 funding bill for the DOE
Office of Science to the House floor. This appropriations bill provides
full funding for the Bush Administration's request (see http://www.aip.org/fyi/2006/022.html
for the exact figures; recommended percentage increases in the FY 2007
request are noted with the headings.) The following selections are from
just-released House Report 109-474 that accompanies H.R. 5427. The full
report may be accessed at http://thomas.loc.gov/cp109/cp109query.html
COMMITTEE PERSPECTIVE ON OFFICE OF SCIENCE REQUEST (Up 14.1%):
"The Committee is generally pleased with the Department's budget
request for the Office of Science in fiscal year 2007. This request
finally reverses the trend of recent years, which saw the requests for
the Office of Science held essentially flat. As a consequence, funding
for physical sciences research, funded at the federal level primarily
by the DOE Office of Science, lagged seriously behind funding for life
sciences research. Congress was forced to provide additional funding
to address obvious deficiencies in the Office of Science request. Fortunately,
the fiscal year 2007 request fully funds operating time at existing
DOE user facilities, funds the investment in major new research facilities
such as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, the International
Linear Collider, and the 12 GeV upgrade to the Continuous Electron Beam
Accelerator Facility, and maintains a healthy level of funding for ongoing
research at the DOE laboratories and at universities. The fiscal year
2007 budget request appears to strike the right balance between maximizing
existing capabilities and investing in new capabilities for the future.
"The Committee recognizes that funding a significant increase
for the Office of Science required some difficult choices regarding
other DOE programs. However, the Committee supports the Secretary's
judgment that robust funding for the basic research mission of the Department
represents the best long-term use of the Department's constrained resources,
and the best long-term investment for the economic future of the country.
The Office of Science took seriously the Congressional direction to
prepare laboratory business plans and five-year budget plans, and these
plans give added credibility and context to the fiscal year 2007 budget
request.
"The Committee recommendation is $4,131,710,000, an increase of
$30,000,000 compared to the budget request and $535,319,000 over the
fiscal year 2006 enacted level. Compared to the previous fiscal year,
the Committee has reduced the number and dollar value of House-directed
projects [earmarks] in the Biological and Environmental Research subaccount
to $30,000,000, and has provided additional funding for these projects
so they do not diminish the proposed American Competitiveness Initiative."
HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS (Up 8.1%):
"The Committee recommends a total of $775,099,000 for high energy
physics, the same as the budget request. The Committee supports the
requested increase in research and development activities, from $30,000,000
to $60,000,000, to prepare for the International Linear Collider (ILC),
including detailed studies of possible U.S. sites for the ILC. The Committee
also supports the construction funding request of $10,300,000 for Preliminary
Engineering and Design (PED) for the new Electron Neutrino Appearance
detector (project 07-SC-07), which will maximize the science to be obtained
from the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) project at Fermilab.
"Over the past few years, the Committee has consistently supported
the DOE/NASA Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), a space probe to help
answer the fundamental physics question of our time what is the ‘dark
energy' that constitutes the majority of the universe. Answering this
question is among the top priorities of the physics community and of
the Office of Science, and the Committee strongly believes that this
initiative should move forward. DOE has done its part, developing the
SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP) as the DOE mission concept for JDEM.
Unfortunately, NASA has failed to budget and program for launch services
for JDEM. Unfortunately, in spite of best intentions, the multi-agency
aspect of this initiative poses insurmountable problems that imperil
its future.
"Therefore, the Committee directs the Department to begin planning
for a single-agency dark energy mission with a launch in fiscal year
2013. The Committee directs DOE to explore other launch options, including
cooperative international approaches and the procurement of private
launch services, to get the SNAP platform into space. DOE is to report
back to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, not later than
March 2, 2007, on the cost and feasibility of a single-agency mission,
including the use of alternative launch options. The Committee will
consider providing further guidance on this issue in the fiscal year
2008 appropriations bill and report.
"The control level is at the High Energy Physics level."
NUCLEAR PHYSICS (Up 23.7%):
"The Committee recommendation for nuclear physics is $454,060,000,
the same as the budget request. The requested funding will support increased
operations of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The requested funding will also
complete PED (project 06-SC-02) and initiate construction (project 07-SC-02)
for the Electron Beam Ion Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory,
and initiate PED for the 12 GeV upgrade to the Continuous Beam Electron
Beam Accelerator Facility at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility (project 07-SC-01).
"Section 981 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) directs
the Secretary to construct and operate a Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA),
with construction to commence no later than September 30, 2008. Unfortunately,
the Department has ignored this direction, and the fiscal year 2007
budget includes no funding for RIA. Instead, the Department proposes
$4,000,000 for ‘generic R&D activities aimed at development
of exotic beam capabilities.' Despite the high near-term priority assigned
to RIA in the ‘Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty-Year
Outlook' report, prepared by the Office of Science in 2004, RIA seems
to have been supplanted by a longer-term international facility for
exotic beams research. The Department, in its March 20, 2006, report
to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees as directed in the
statement of managers accompanying the conference report for the Energy
and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2006 (P.L. 109-103), argues
that this shift is a sound programmatic decision and in the best interests
of the nuclear physics community. The Committee directs the Department
to submit a report to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees
providing the Department's plans to comply with Section 981 of the Energy
Policy Act of 2005, or the legislative proposal to seek relief from
the requirements of that section. In order to inform Congress prior
to conference on the fiscal year 2007 bill, this report should be submitted
no later than August 11, 2006."
BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH (Up 13.1% without current
and recommended earmarks):
"The Committee recommendation for biological and environmental
research is $540,263,000, an increase of $30,000,000 over the budget
request. The Committee recommendation provides an additional $30,000,000
for House-directed university and hospital earmarks.
"The Committee concurs with the proposed re-scoping of the Genomics:
GTL program, from four separate facilities to two vertically-integrated
sets of facilities. The Committee reiterates its previous guidance that
any Genomics: GTL facilities must be fully competed. The funds appropriated
in fiscal year 2005 for Preliminary Engineering and Design (PED) work
for the Genomics: GTL facilities are available to fund operating expenses
for the proposed new Genomics: GTL centers."
[The report then lists House-directed projects in a table.]
BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES (Up 25.2%):
"The Committee recommendation for basic energy sciences is $1,420,980,000,
the same as the budget request and an increase of $286,422,000 over
the current fiscal year. For purposes of reprogramming during fiscal
year 2007, the Department may allocate funding among all operating accounts
within Basic Energy Sciences, consistent with the reprogramming guidelines
outlined earlier in this report.
"Research.--The Committee recommendation includes $1,004,212,000
for materials sciences and engineering, and $268,499,000 for chemical
sciences, geosciences, and energy biosciences. The Committee recommendation
funds operations of the four completed nanoscale science research centers,
instrumentation for the recently-completed Spallation Neutron Source
(SNS), and the science research portion ($50,000,000) of the hydrogen
initiative at the requested levels. The Committee has directed the National
Nuclear Security Administration to make available, from existing stocks,
sufficient heavy water to meet SNS needs. Also included within this
account is $8,000,000 for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive
Research (EPSCoR), the same as the budget request.
"Construction.--The Committee recommendation includes $148,269,000
for Basic Energy Sciences construction projects, the same as the requested
amount. The Committee recommendation provides the requested funding
of: $161,000 for completion of PED (03-SC-002) and $105,740,000 to initiate
construction of the Linac Coherent Light Source (05-SC-320) at the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center; $18,864,000 to complete construction of the
Center for Functional Nanomaterials (05-R-321) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory; $257,000 to complete construction of the Molecular Foundry
(04-R-313) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; $247,000 to complete
construction of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (03-R-313)
at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories; $20,000,000 for PED
for the National Synchrotron Light Source II (07-SC-06) at Brookhaven
National Laboratory; and $3,000,000 for PED for the Advanced Light Source
User Support Building (07-SC-12) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."
FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES (Up 10.9%):
"The Committee recommendation for fusion energy sciences is $318,950,000,
the same as the budget request. The Committee is pleased that the department
finally requested sufficient funding for the U.S. participation in the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project without
doing so at the expense of domestic fusion research activities or at
the expense of other Office of Science programs.
"The Committee strongly encourages the Office of Fusion Energy
Sciences to invest adequately in fast ignition research and leverage
the new facilities such as OMEGA-EP and FIREX-I in Japan to conduct
critical research to explore the feasibility of this innovative concept.
Also, the Committee is aware of the recent proposal from the Naval Research
Laboratory for a fusion test facility; the Committee encourages the
department to give serious consideration to providing Office of Science
funding support in the future for these alternative approaches to fusion
energy."
ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING RESEARCH (Up 35.8%)
"The Committee recommendation is $318,654,000, the same as the
budget request and an increase of $83,970,000 over the current fiscal
year. The Committee commends the Office of Science and the Office of
Advanced Scientific Computing Research for their efforts to provide
cutting-edge capabilities to meet current scientific computational needs,
and at the same time to extend the boundaries of that cutting edge into
the next generation of high-performance scientific computers and supporting
software."
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