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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
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Page 87

B

Funding Data

TOTAL BUDGET OF THE OFFICE OFFUSION ENERGY SCIENCES

The total OFES budget figures shown in Figure B.1 are the Congressional appropriation numbers in FY00 dollars and do not include general reduction costs to the program. The allocation of OFES funding to particular categories is shown in Table B.1 for FY97 to FY00. The percentage shares for FY00 are shown in Figure B.2.

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~ enlarge ~
FIGURE B.1 Congressional funding of magnetic fusion R&D, FY70 to FY00. SOURCE: Richard E. Rowberg. 2000. Congress and the Fusion Energy Sciences Program: A Historical Analysis, Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
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Page 88

TABLE B.1 OFES Budget Distribution Since FY97 (million spent dollars)

Fiscal Year

Budget Category

1997

1998

1999

2000

Tokamak research

48.7

46.2

45.8

47.1

Facility operations

60.8

56.1

60.2

70.1

Alternative concepts

16.4

24

37.3

52.3

Theory

18.4

19.8

22.7

24.6

General plasma science

3.8

5.1

6.2

8.2

Other

14.3

6.9

6.9

7.4

Materials research

6

7.7

6.8

7.2

Engineering research

56.3

58.3

36.7

27.8

Total

224.7

224.1

222.6

244.7

SOURCE: Office of Fusion Energy Sciences. Image: jpg
~ enlarge ~
FIGURE B.2 Funding profile for OFES in FY00, $245 million spent dollors.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
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Page 89

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION/DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY PLASMA PHYSICS PARTNERSHIP FUNDING

According to OFES, it spent the following amounts under the NSF/DOE plasma physics partnership: FY97, $2.030 million; FY98, $2.878 million; FY99, $3.369 million; FY00, $4.121 million. According to the NSF, it spent the following amounts for the NSF/DOE plasma physics partnership (these figures do not represent the full NSF investment in plasma science and engineering; instead, they represent contributions for the partnership): FY97, $2.75 million; FY98, $2.75 million; FY99, $2.75 million; and FY00, $3.00 million.

OFFICE OF FUSION ENERGY SCIENCES FUNDING TO UNIVERSITIES

In FY99 and FY00, OFES funding for various university research activities in fusion energy science was distributed as shown in Table B.2 (the total OFES budget was about $240 million): The sharp dropoff in enabling R&D funding between 1999 and 2000 is associated with a decrease in pass-through monies for ITER superconducting magnet development work being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Funding of fusion energy sciences at universities by the OFES with and without MIT is shown in Figure B.3 . These data do not include pass-through funds sent to universities for ITER-specific expenses that were not spent on research, such as operation of the ITER co-center and industrial tasks (magnets, etc.) in 1992 to 1999. FY00 dollars are actual figures through April 2000 and estimates for the rest of the fiscal year.

Figure B.4 shows the distribution of DOE funding for three categories of R&D at colleges and universities (total of direct and indirect costs). These numbers reflect data reported by DOE to the Office of Management and Budget under Schedule C, categories 1441-01 (direct) and 1442-01(indirect). They exclude funds for FFRDCs administered by universities (e.g., PPPL and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)). The total for each program is the total appropriated minus any below-the-line general or targeted reductions (e.g., contractor travel reductions).

TABLE B.2 OFES Funding for Fusion Science Research at Universities (million dollars)

Item

FY99

FY00

Major facilities (PPPL, General Atomics, MIT)

19.235

19.744

Smaller facilities

13.604

16.671

Diagnostics

3.232

3.210

Theory

8.551

9.126

General plasma science

4.310

5.103

Enabling R&D

16.553

9.192

Total

65.485

63.046

SOURCE: University Fusion Association.
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
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Page 90

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FIGURE B.3 Office of Fusion Sciences funding of fusion energy sciences at universities, with and without the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SOURCE: Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

Image: jpg
~ enlarge ~
FIGURE B.4 Distribution of university funding for DOE's fusion and high-energy and nuclear physics programs as a percentage of the total funding for those programs. SOURCE: DOE Congressional Funding Office via the Office of Management and Budget.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
×
Page 87
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
×
Page 88
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
×
Page 89
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Funding Data." National Research Council. 2001. An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9986.
×
Page 90
Next: Appendix C: The Family of Magnetic Confinement Configurations »
An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program Get This Book
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 An Assessment of the Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences Program
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The purpose of this assessment of the fusion energy sciences program of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science is to evaluate the quality of the research program and to provide guidance for the future program strategy aimed at strengthening the research component of the program. The committee focused its review of the fusion program on magnetic confinement, or magnetic fusion energy (MFE), and touched only briefly on inertial fusion energy (IFE), because MFE-relevant research accounts for roughly 95 percent of the funding in the Office of Science's fusion program. Unless otherwise noted, all references to fusion in this report should be assumed to refer to magnetic fusion.

Fusion research carried out in the United States under the sponsorship of the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) has made remarkable strides over the years and recently passed several important milestones. For example, weakly burning plasmas with temperatures greatly exceeding those on the surface of the Sun have been created and diagnosed. Significant progress has been made in understanding and controlling instabilities and turbulence in plasma fusion experiments, thereby facilitating improved plasma confinement—remotely controlling turbulence in a 100-million-degree medium is a premier scientific achievement by any measure. Theory and modeling are now able to provide useful insights into instabilities and to guide experiments. Experiments and associated diagnostics are now able to extract enough information about the processes occurring in high-temperature plasmas to guide further developments in theory and modeling. Many of the major experimental and theoretical tools that have been developed are now converging to produce a qualitative change in the program's approach to scientific discovery.

The U.S. program has traditionally been an important source of innovation and discovery for the international fusion energy effort. The goal of understanding at a fundamental level the physical processes governing observed plasma behavior has been a distinguishing feature of the program.

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