Abstract
This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of the second Committee of Visitors (COV) whose charge was to review the manner in which the U. S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Science (OFES) manages certain programs under its charter. The specific programs reviewed by this COV involve confinement innovation and basic plasma sciences. The charge letter from the Department of Energy is included as Appendix A.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 237-261 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Journal of Fusion Energy |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2005 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The NSF/DOE Partnership in Basic Plasma Science and Engineering: This program is managed in cooperation with the National Science Foundation (NSF) under a five year Memorandum of Understanding with the Department of Energy which was originally signed in 1996 and renewed in 2002. It is restricted to academic and non-profit institutions and funds basic plasma science research that is not directly related to fusion. The program details can be found on the NSF web site: http://www.nsf.gov/ pubsys/ods/getpub.cfm?nsf99159. In addition to direct support for single PI/small group plasma science and engineering, the NSF, DOE and UCLA have jointly funded, under a separate MOU, the operation of the Large Aperture Plasma Device (LAPD) at UCLA, which serves as a user facility for a broad group of plasma researchers. The DOE part of the FY04 budget for the entire NSF/DOE Partnership was over $4 million (including $780 thousand for the LAPD), with a comparable contribution from the NSF. General Plasma Physics program supported at the DOE Laboratories: The program to fund General Plasma Physics at the DOE labs was last completed in 2000. The FY04 budget is a little over $2.5 million. Also included in this category is the funding of the DOE laboratory part of the NSF Center for Magnetic Self-Organization (CMSO) in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The DOE part of this NSF Physics Frontier Center is about half a million dollars. 3. Some IFE related questions: Who and how is it decided which IFE projects will be funded by OFES as opposed to the DOE Defense Program (NNSA)? How is this information communicated to scientists? How does OFES deal with grant applications that it feels are misdirected? Where does OFES publish the IFE solicitations? Does OFES coordinate IFE solicitations with the DOE Defense Program?
Keywords
- Fusion science
- Magnetic confinement
- Plasma science
