Fusion Advisory Committee Hears About Budget, ITER
“However it plays out, there is a tomorrow and we will go on.” -- Anne Davies, on the possible end to U.S. participation in ITER.
The Director of DOE’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, Anne Davies, addressed the Department’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) on July 30 about congressional recommendations for the program, including language that might result in the termination of U.S. participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [ITER].
Davies reported that both the House and Senate had passed versions of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, which funds DOE civilian R&D programs. The House recommended an appropriation of $232 million for the fusion program. This amount would be coupled with an across-the-board general reduction in the bill (which would cut fusion by $3.758 million), to result in an effective fusion appropriation for FY 1999 of $228.2 million. The Senate also recommended $232 million, but various reductions totaling $4.726 million would result in an effective FY 1999 appropriation of $227.3 million. (The current FY 1998 effective funding level is $229 million, after general reductions.) Davies warned, however, that these levels might not be secure against further cuts when the House and Senate go to conference.
Additionally, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee reports cautioned DOE against signing a three-year extension to the ITER engineering design activity, as the Department had planned to do. Davies said DOE staff had been busy consulting with Members of Congress in an attempt to “salvage” ITER, but did not get permission to proceed with the extension. “The last word from the House,” she said, was that “they’re not going to let us sign,” and, from the Senate, that “they’re not going to push the House.” The other three international partners - Japan, Russia, and the European Union - signed the extension, but without the U.S. signature, it expired on July 21. It is unclear, Davies remarked, how it could be reenacted at a later date, or whether the other three partners would continue without the U.S. contribution. She noted that House Science Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) plans to visit Japan during the August congressional recess, and hoped that he might “encourage appropriators to let us go ahead in some way,” when they meet in conference in September. Otherwise, “if we get language saying get out of ITER,’” Davies said, she expects that Congress would direct her office to “proceed with an orderly close-out.”
Aside from ITER, both the House and Senate reports also direct DOE to review its portfolio of technologies for fusion energy. The House report states, “In addition to magnetic fusion, there are several promising technologies that have potential for producing electricity. The Department is directed to comprehensively review all known technologies and submit a program plan...” It appears, Davies cautioned, that Congress is preparing to “ask us to choose” among the technologies. She related efforts among leaders of the magnetic and inertial fusion communities to meet to discuss the future of fusion energy. A joint workshop was being planned to, as one FESAC member put it, identify “cooperative efforts to advance both” technologies.
The House and Senate are both on recess now. The Senate plans to return on August 31; the House, on September 9.
