Looking Ahead: Status Report on Future DOE Science Facility Needs

What major facilities are on the twenty-year wish list for the DOE Office of Energy Research? The answer to this question can be found in a report given to the DOE Laboratory Operations Board (LOB) at a meeting last week by Director of Energy Research Martha Krebs. She briefly discussed a status report entitled “Future Science Facility Needs.”The following selections are from the seven page report given to the Board:

“The Facilities Plan identifies current and future facilities to be developed and sustained during the first quarter of the next century. The Plan is being prepared under the aegis of the Office of Energy Research in consultation with the Energy Research Program Advisory committees and scientists at national laboratories and universities. It will identify the principal instrumentation needed to support the Science and Technology mission of the Department, as described in the 1997 Department of Energy (DOE) Strategic Plan and as updated by subsequent programmatic plans and updated program announcements, plans, and directives.”

“The document will present current recommendations for large facilities (>$25 -$50 million) most needed by the scientific communities which look to the Office of Energy Research for sponsorship. A new ER strategic plan, and the facilities built to support it, will chart the course for much of the progress of ER funded science in the United States for the next 20 years.”

“A final draft of the report is being prepared. The budgetary scenarios under which these facilities might be provided are under development.”

The report is divided into seven sections, with single paragraphs for each facility. The facilities are as follows:

OFFICE OF BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES: Spallation Neutron Source, Upgrade of High Flux Isotope Reactor, Upgrades to the High Flux Beam Reactor, Steady-State Neutron Facility, Second Generation Light Source Upgrades, Third Generation Light Source Upgrades, Center for Combinatorial Materials Science and Technology, Fourth Generation Light Sources, Revitalization of Electron Beam Microcharacterization Centers

OFFICE OF BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH: Integrated User Facilities for Experimental Field Research, Center for Biological Sciences, Networks of Distributed Research Facilities

OFFICE OF FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES: Spherical Torus Proof-of-Performance Facility, Reduced Cost/Advanced Tokamak Physics Facility, Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility for Inertial Fusion Energy, Accelerator-Based Neutron Source for Fusion Materials Research, Other Fusion Energy Sciences Facilities

HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS PROGRAM , NEAR TERM: Large Hadron Collider, Neutrinos at the Main Injector, BTEV, Non-Accelerator Facilities

HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS PROGRAM, LONG-TERM: New High-Energy Collider, Electron-Positron Linear Collider, Muon Collider, Very Large Hadron Collider

NUCLEAR PHYSICS PROGRAM: Construction of an Isotope Separation On-Line Facility, Upgrade of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, Upgrade of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, New Solar Neutrino Detector

OFFICE OF COMPUTATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH: National Energy Research Scientific Computing; Advanced Software Support Facilities Requirements; Advanced Computing Research Facility Roadmap; Networking Facilities Requirements; Distributed Data Management, Analysis and Visualization Technology Test Facility; International Network to Support Collaborative Science; Center for Advanced Optimization Technology; Center for Massively Parallel Scientific Software

Krebs commented that the technical state of readiness for each of these facilities is different. Some of the facilities can be built within the general confines of expected budgets, the major question being when they should be built, she said. Larger facilities, such as the Next Linear Collider or a smaller ITER “would require a major decision.” Krebs told LOB members that framing these decisions will begin during coming weeks and months, with some discussions already in progress. A draft with more detail should be produced next month.

Only one question was posed by LOB members, that concerning the timing of the next report.