DOE FY 1995 Budget Bill Passes Senate - Fusion
With passage by the Senate on June 30, the fiscal year 1995 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill has cleared both chambers of Congress. A conference will now be scheduled to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill.
FYIs #94 and #95 reported on the Senate appropriations committee’s recommendations for the High Energy and Nuclear Physics portions of the bill, which remained unchanged by the full Senate. However, DOE’s fusion program won a reprieve on the floor: Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-Louisiana), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee responsible for DOE, offered an amendment to reverse committee language eliminating funds for construction of Princeton’s Tokamak Physics Experiment (TPX). His committee had provided only $28 million for continued TPX design, omitting the $45 million for initiating construction intended by the Administration and the House. Johnston felt construction on TPX should not begin until the United States was firmly committed to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an international project that is intended as the follow-on to TPX. The report states, “As TPX’s primary purpose is linked to ITER and a demonstration reactor, without ITER, TPX’s contribution to the Department’s fusion program would be questionable.... We strongly believe we should not pursue TPX unless and until both the President and the Congress have made a full commitment to ITER.”
Having made clear his wishes in the report, Johnston, a supporter of both TPX and ITER, successfully offered an amendment on the floor to add back the TPX construction funds, on the condition that authorizing legislation (legally approving the project) be enacted first. Johnston is also chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the authorizing committee for TPX in the Senate, which has passed legislation for the fusion program. The House science committee has similar legislation pending. Below are selected quotes from Johnston’s floor statement on TPX:
“The TPX project, in my view, should not begin until the Congress understands what the mortgage is of the TPX project, ... and makes a decision to go ahead, which the authorizing legislation would allow.
“We have already passed in the Senate a[n authorization] bill which deals with TPX and ITER and it now reposes in the House.... In other words, it would be possible to get that authorizing bill passed this year, or, if not this year, early next year. It provides, in effect, that the $45 million as provided by the House may not be used to commence the project until and unless it is authorized.”
“Madam President, having been burned on the SSC program, having seen us invest, together with termination costs, almost $3 billion in SSC and then decide to terminate that program, we should not proceed with what could be a program three times or four times that big without at least an authorization. That is all this amendment does. From somebody who favors the program, TPX, it says let us proceed, but subject to authorization. And there is every ability to authorize that project this year, with a bill that reposes in the House.”
The Senate bill recommends a total of $362.6 million for fusion energy, less than the House recommendation of $376.6 million and the Administration request of $372.6 million.
