FY 2005 House Appropriations Committee Report: DOE Office of Science
The all-important FY 2005 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill and its accompanying report have been released. The following are selections from House Appropriations Committee report 108-554 regarding the Office of Science. Subsequent FYIs will provide report language regarding other issues of interest to the physics community, including the Bush Administration’s nuclear weapons initiatives. To review the complete committee report language that includes External Regulation of DOE Science Laboratories, Open Competition, Performance Measures and Science Laboratories Infrastructure, see http://thomas.loc.gov/ FYI #74 at http://www.aip.org/fyi/2004/074.html has additional budget numbers.
OFFICE OF SCIENCE:
“The Committee has provided additional [FY 2005] funding for the Office of Science to address the following Committee priorities: high performance computing; additional operating time, equipment upgrades, and staffing to support increased research opportunities at Office of Science user facilities; nanoscale science research; remediation of safety deficiencies at DOE Science laboratories; and restoration of domestic fusion funding displaced by the new international fusion initiative. The Committee also provides additional funding to continue essential research and development and preconceptual design for the Rare Isotope Accelerator.”
HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS: “The Committee recommends a total of $753,380,000 for high energy physics, an increase of $16,000,000 over the budget request. The control level is at the High Energy Physics level. The additional funds are provided to meet increased electricity costs at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and to increase operating time and enhance user support at SLAC and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The Committee supports the Department’s collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), and the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), and encourages NASA to maintain the planned schedule for these missions.”
NUCLEAR PHYSICS: “The Committee recommendation for nuclear physics is $415,040,000, an increase of $14,000,000 over the budget request. An additional $7,000,000 is provided to continue research and development and initiate conceptual design activities for the Rare Isotope Accelerator, and an additional $7,000,000 is provided to increase utilization of the user facilities in the Nuclear Physics program.”
BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES (BES): “The Committee recommendation for basic energy sciences is $1,076,530,000, an increase of $13,000,000 over the budget request. For purposes of reprogramming during fiscal year 2005, the Department may allocate funding among all operating accounts within Basic Energy Sciences.
BES “Research.--The Committee recommendation includes $612,228,000 for materials sciences and engineering, and $232,422,000 for chemical sciences, geosciences, and energy biosciences. The additional $13,000,000 in these accounts is to fund additional research on nanoscale science, including research on low cost nanoparticles using plasma reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory, and increase operating time on the Basic Energy Sciences user facilities. Also included within this account is $7,673,000 for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), the same as the budget request.
BES “Construction.--The Committee recommendation includes $231,880,000 for Basic Energy Sciences construction projects, the same as the requested amount. The Committee recommendation provides the requested funding of $80,535,000 for the Spallation Neutron Source (99-E-334) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; $32,085,000 for the Molecular Foundry (04-R-313) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; $30,897,000 for the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (03-R-313) at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories; $20,075,000 for PED (03-SC-002) and $30,000,000 for long-lead procurements (05-R-320) for the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center; $18,465,000 for the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (05-R-321) at Brookhaven National Laboratory; $17,811,000 for the Center for Nanophase Material Sciences (03-R-312) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and $2,012,000 for PED to support the various nanoscale science research centers (02-SC-002).”
FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES: “The Committee recommendation for fusion energy sciences is $276,110,000, an increase of $12,000,000 over the budget request. The additional $12,000,000 is to be used to increase the utilization of existing large and small experiments; further work in inertial fusion technology; take advantage of opportunities in High Energy Density Physics, including research on fast ignition, and large-scale scientific computing; and provide for cost-effective construction and development of the National Compact Stellarator Experiment. The Committee notes the delay in site selection for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and expects the Department to reduce its planned expenditures on ITER in fiscal year 2005 in consideration of this delay.”
BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH: “The Committee recommendation for biological and environmental research is $571,590,000, an increase of $75,000,000 over the budget request. The Committee recommendation provides an additional $75,000,000 to maintain the program at approximately the same funding level as fiscal year 2004, which included several Congressionally-directed projects.
“The Committee does not provide the requested $5,000,000 to initiate Project Engineering and Design for the proposed new facility for the production and characterization of proteins and molecular tags. The Committee does not agree with the Department’s strategy of restricting competition for such a facility to only the DOE national laboratories. The Department should present in the fiscal year 2006 budget request an alternate procurement strategy for this and future Genomes to Life (GTL) facilities that will maximize rather than limit competition and will allow universities and other entities to compete with DOE national laboratories for these new GTL facilities. The Committee is aware that NASA has, for decades, conducted competitions for the development of research instrumentation among universities, NASA, DOE, and other government laboratories, and other entities. The Department is directed to develop a comparable approach to competition.”
ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING RESEARCH: “The Committee recommendation is $234,340,000, an increase of $30,000,000 over the budget request, with not more than $25,000,000 of the increase devoted to hardware. The Committee provides these additional funds to support the Office of Science initiative to develop the hardware, software, and applied mathematics necessary for a leadership-class supercomputer to meet scientific computation needs. The Committee is disappointed that the efforts of the High End Computing Revitalization Task Force (HEC RTF), under the lead of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), did not translate into increased fiscal year 2005 funding requests for advanced scientific computing by any non-defense agencies other than the Department of Energy. The Department is encouraged to make substantial time available on its new leadership-class supercomputer to the laboratories of other government agencies, universities, and others with a compelling need for this capability, and to select these external users on a competitive basis as is presently done for users of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.”
