Fusion News: Science Magazine- Major U.S. Science Agencies Face Flat Prospects
After President Barack Obama’s proposal for a $3.901 trillion budget request to Congress, Science Insider shown reports on what they have found. In the fusion section, called Computing Wins, Fusion Loses in Energy Department’s Science Wing, the fusion research program will take a 17.6% cut due to the program’s unstable budget in the past year. As reported by the Science Insider in the article, “Major U.S. Science Agencies Face Flat Prospects:”
In contrast, the fusion program would take a 17.6% cut to $416 million—$88 million less than it’s getting this year. Although far from final, the numbers suggest another big dip for a program that has enjoyed a roller coaster ride in recent years. In its proposed 2013 budget, DOE called for slashing spending on domestic fusion research to help pay for the increasing U.S. contribution to the international fusion experiment, ITER, in Cadarache, France. That budget also called for closing one of three smaller fusion experiments, or tokamaks, in the United States: the Alcator C-Mod at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But that budget never passed and last December, when Congress finally agreed to a budget for this year, it restored funding for C-Mod and gave the fusion program a handsome boost of nearly $200 million. The new budget request would give some of that increase back and suggests DOE officials see bigger priorities elsewhere.
