Authorization Bill for DOE High Energy and Nuclear Physics: Provisions

As reported in FYI #104, House science committee members Rick Boucher (D-Virginia), Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York), and chairman George Brown (D-California), have introduced a bill, H.R. 4684, to authorize the Department of Energy’s high energy and nuclear physics programs.

Too late to influence the fiscal year 1995 appropriation for DOE, which awaits a House-Senate conference, the authorization bill would approve funding levels for fiscal years 1996 through 1999. If passed by both the House and the Senate, the bill would put the DOE physics programs on firmer footing, with the intention of precluding any future catastrophes like the cancellation of the SSC.

The high-energy recommendations are based on the findings of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel’s Subpanel on Vision for the Future of High-Energy Physics, commonly known as the Drell report for chairman Sidney Drell. The field would be authorized according to the following formula: For fiscal years 1996 through 1998, it would receive the amount of the President’s FY95 request ($621.9 million), plus an additional $50 million each year, and an adjustment for 3.5 percent inflation. The $50 million “bump” would be dropped in FY99.

The authorization for nuclear physics assumes the FY95 House (and Senate) appropriation of $334.7 million, plus inflation and adjusted for the closure of the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF). The FY96 amount is consistent with the recommendation of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee’s May 1994 report, “Nuclear Science in DOE: Assessment and Promise,” except for recognition that the House, in its appropriations bill, provided less funding for construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) than expected. The authorization amounts are as follows (in millions of dollars):

Fiscal Year High Energy Physics Nuclear Physics

1996 695.4 337.1

1997 719.7 348.9

1998 744.9 361.1

1999 713.6 373.1

The bill would also require DOE to submit an operating plan to the authorizing committees, and, in collaboration with NSF, develop and bi-annually update a long-range plan to help guide its budget requests. It would require an independent review of DOE’s management of its physics programs, the application of environmental, health and safety regulations, and the composition of the physics advisory panels. It would also disallow initiation of any construction project estimated to cost more than $100 million without specific approval in an authorization- not an appropriations- bill. While requiring that the Secretary of Energy enter into negotiations with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on participation in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project, the bill would not authorize any funds for such purpose until the Secretary certified that an acceptable international agreement exists.