On the Front Burner: Efforts Underway on Critical Fusion Program Funding

The first agenda item at yesterday’s meeting of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was a report of the Fusion Review Panel. The bottom line: the magnitude of funding for the Department of Energy’s magnetic fusion program contained in the House Energy and Water Development FY 1996 appropriations bill that is now on the House floor will have severe consequences for fusion research. In response, PCAST members and administration officials will be conferring with the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee in an effort to increase fusion funding in their version of this bill, H.R. 1905. Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) and his subcommittee colleagues may be marking up their bill as early as next week, so time is of the essence.

The PCAST Fusion Review Panel was established at the last PCAST meeting in March (see FYI #52) in response to a congressional recommendation in last year’s DOE appropriations bill. Their 67-page report was completed in three months, and released following yesterday’s unanimous vote to send it on to President Clinton. The panel was co-chaired by John P. Holdren and Robert W. Conn. Holdren reported that there was unanimous support for the report’s conclusions by all nine members of the review panel.

It is coincidental that the report was released while H.R. 1905 is on the House floor. This bill provides, as this FYI is written, $229.1 million for the magnetic fusion program. Current year spending is $368.4 million. DOE requested $366.1 million (see FYI #84.)

In the report’s Executive Summary, three funding levels are addressed:

The summary begins by stating, “we believe there is a strong case for the funding levels for fusion currently proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) -- increasing from $366 million in FY 1996 to about $860 million in FY 2002 and averaging $645 million between FY 1995 and FY 2005.” This provides funding for ITER construction and “a vigorous, complementary domestic program....”

The Executive Summary continues with one of its major recommendations: “Although the program just described is reasonable and desirable, it does not appear to be realistic in the current climate of budgetary constraints; we therefore have devoted most of our effort to developing a budget-constrained U.S. fusion R&D strategy that, given level funding at about half of the average projected for the period FY 1996 through FY 2005 under the current DOE plan, would preserve what we believe to be the most indispensable elements of the U.S. fusion effort and associated international collaboration. This strategy would cost about $320 million per year, $46 million less than the U.S. fusion R&D budget in FY 1995.”

Although not written with the House version of H.R. 1905 in mind, the Executive Summary describes the consequences of a third, much reduced, fusion budget: “In addition to developing the strategy just described for a fusion R&D program funded at about $320 million per year, we also have attempted to envision a program that could preserve key priorities at a still lower budget level of about $200 million per year. We find that this cannot be done. Reducing the U.S. fusion R&D program to such a level would leave room for nothing beyond the core program of theory and medium-scale experiments described above -- no contribution to an international ignition experiment or materials test facility, no TPX, little exploitation of the remaining scientific potential of TFTR, and little sense of progress toward a fusion energy goal. With complete U.S. withdrawal, international fusion collaboration might well collapse -- to the great detriment of the prospects for commercializing fusion energy as well as the prospects for future U.S. participation in major scientific technological collaborations of other kinds. These severe consequences - deeply damaging to an important and fruitful field of scientific and technological development, to the prospects for achieving practical fusion energy, and to international collaboration in science and technology more generally - are too high a price to pay for the budgetary savings involved.”

The Executive Summary of this report, “The U.S. Program of Fusion Energy Research and Development,” concludes:

“We urge, therefore, that the Administration and the Congress commit themselves firmly to a U.S. fusion R&D program that is stable at not less than $320 million per year.”

Holdren said that the Senate appropriations mark-up of the Energy and Water Development Act is “key” to the future of the program. The subcommittee members (see FYI #14) will complete their consideration of the FY 1996 DOE budget as early as next week, although a definite date has not yet been scheduled. Holdren wants a forceful push by the Clinton Administration. Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Gibbons said that he will be taking this report to the Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget, and said that briefings for Senate committees are being planned.

Assuming that the House version of H.R. 1905 includes the $229 million for fusion, the Senate figure will have to be considerably higher to get nearer to the $320 million level recommended by the PCAST report. This will be a budget item finally decided by the all-important conference committee that will meet later this year to finalize the FY 1996 DOE budget. House and Senate conferees typically split the difference on many items, making a high Senate figure critical to the FY 1996 fusion program budget.

The thirteen senators on the appropriations subcommittee, and later perhaps senators on the floor, are going to have to, in the words of John Holdren, “go out on a limb” for the fusion program. The degree to which they do this will depend greatly on the kind of support which is demonstrated for this program by not only the administration, but also by the American people.