PhysOrg – Modest but uneven R&D increases proposed for FY 2013
PhysOrg – Modest but uneven R&D increases proposed for FY 2013
By David Kramer | 31 March 2012
A $3 million trimming of the fusion energy research budget, to $398 million, masks a big cut proposed for the US fusion laboratories. The request would raise the annual US contribution to the ITER fusion test reactor by $45 million, to $150 million next year, but would simultaneously cut back the domestic research program by $49 million. One of three US experimental fusion devices, MIT’s Alcator C-Mod, would be shut down altogether in 2013, halting work for the 100 staff members and 30 graduate students there, says Miklos Porkolab, director of the MIT plasma fusion center. In a 27 February letter sent to Holdren and Chu, Porkolab, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory director Stewart Prager, General Atomics vice president Tony Taylor, and other US fusion scientists warned, “If implemented, the $49 million cut contained in the budget request will result in the layoff of hundreds of fusion scientists, engineers, graduate students, and support personnel” and “will demote the US program to a second-tier player in the world fusion effort.” What’s more, the US commitment to ITER is slated to ramp up to a peak of $350 million in FY 2016—more than the total US fusion energy budget—according to the ITER agreement. “ITER is too expensive to be paid for out of the domestic program,” says Stephen Dean of Fusion Power Associates, an industry group.
To read the full article, click here.
