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UNIVERSITY FUSION ASSOCIATION
http://depts.washington.edu/ufa
E-mail Newsletter
November, 2007
sent by S. Knowlton, UFA President
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Items:
1. Upcoming UFA General Meeting at DPP
2. Program news
3. Election of new officers; nomination of candidates for the UFA
Executive committee
4. Notices of upcoming meetings and events
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1. UFA General Meeting at DPP/Orlando
6 PM Monday Nov. 12 in Salon 3-4, Rosen Centre Hotel
The University Fusion Association will hold its annual
general meeting beginning at 6 PM on Monday evening, Nov. 12 at the
DPP meeting in Orlando. The location is Salon 3 and 4 in the Rosen
Centre Hotel. The scheduled speakers are Dr. Raymond Fonck, the new
Associate Director for Fusion Energy Sciences of DOE's Office of
Science, and Dr. Martin Greenwald, chairman of the FESAC sub-panel
that has responded to the recent charge from DOE Under Secretary for
Science Raymond Orbach to identify priorities, gaps, and
opportunities in US fusion energy research (often referred to as the
DEMO charge). Dr. Fonck will present his perspective on current and
future OFES activities and goals. Dr. Greenwald will discuss
highlights of the sub-panel's findings and potential implications for
strategic planning for magnetic fusion energy research. Both talks
should be of considerable interest to the UFA membership, and there
will be ample opportunity for questions.
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2. Program News
On behalf of the UFA, I attended the last two FESAC meetings
in Gaithersburg, MD. The July one was mainly highlighted by comments
from DOE Undersecretary of Science Orbach on the challenges of toeing
the budgetary line on ITER. His comments are summarized in a news
blurb from AIP entitled "Orbach Draws Firm Line on Cost Overruns
While Discussing ITER Project" http://www.aip.org/fyi/2007/077.html.
The last one on Oct. 23-24 was particularly informative, with AD
Fonck giving a program update on the Fusion Energy Sciences program
and Martin Greenwald presenting his FESAC sub-panel's response to
Orbach's DEMO charge. Dr. Orbach had been scheduled to attend the
meeting in person, but was detained with other commitments.
In his remarks, Dr. Fonck reported that the FY2008 budget
situation is not yet resolved, and we remain under a Continuing
Resolution (CR) until Nov. 16. Both House and Senate marks support
the full request of $427.85 M, but there remains some discrepancy
between House and Senate language about the High Energy Density
Laboratory Program (HEDLP) funding that must be ironed out. Fonck
said that CR spending restrictions will not be exceptionally painful
unless they continue until March of next year when ITER spending
picks up. He spoke of ITER design reviews and status, recent and
ongoing reviews of NCSX, and the plans for HEDLP, and I expect he
will cover this in his presentation at the DPP meeting next week.
Fonck then spoke with some urgency of the need to recognize that the
MFE program is truly entering the transition to burning plasma
physics, and there is a need to address issues of what the domestic
program should evolve to, and a need for planning activities to
develop strategic plans with 5, 10, and 20 year time frames. To
facilitate new priorities and action plans, Fonck is drafting a plan
for reorganizing OFES into three separate divisions: Projects and
Planning (ITER, International, MIE projects such as NCSX, reactor
analysis), Magnetic Fusion Sciences (organized around fusion relevant
concepts of experimental and theory science campaigns on toroidal
systems including tokamaks, AT's, ST', RFP's, CT's, and stellarators
along with associated diagnostics, enabling technologies, and
materials), and Plasma Sciences (HEDLP, IFE, low temperature and
basic plasmas, atomic processes, ...). He believes that a
reorganization of this type can have positive scientific and
programmatic benefits for most elements of the program, including
more effective stewardship of plasma science. I expect he will
elaborate on this and other issues in his talk to the UFA next week.
The slides from his talk are attached to this newsletter and are
available from the OFES website
http://www.ofes.fusion.doe.gov/agenda4.htm. He received a number of
comments on his presentation from FESAC members and in the time for
public comment time, many of which reflected some of the longstanding
issues within the program - is it our policy to be an energy or
science program? - to what extent should IFE research be supported
by OFES?
Dr. Martin Greenwald presented a 200-page report on his
sub-panel's activity entitled "Priorities, Gaps, and Opportunities:
Toward a Long-Range Strategic Plan for Magnetic Fusion Energy". In
response to Orbach's charge, the panel identified three scientific
themes of scientific and technical questions containing a total of 14
broad questions. The panel analyzed the world MFE program in terms
of its capabilities, assessed US strengths and opportunities in this
context, and summarized the gaps in our knowledge in relation to what
we require for DEMO. Significantly, the report prioritized, in three
levels, the urgent and important issues for fusion energy research,
and identified a number of research activities that could address
these questions and fill the gaps in our current state of knowledge.
The report is not final, and I, as a non-author, shouldn't quote from
it yet. Nonetheless, it is available in draft form on the FIRE
website http://fire.pppl.gov/#NewsSection for your perusal. The
findings are nicely summarized on pages 5-20 of the report. FESAC
members made numerous verbal comments and criticisms, but my
impression was that the report was genuinely quite well received and
considered to to a very positive step in a larger planning process.
I expect that the report could be quite influential in shaping the
future of the US fusion program.
Other reports were given at the meeting on the planning for
the Fusion Simulation Project and on the ongoing review of NCSX
motivated by a projected increase in the project cost. Neither
process is considered complete at this stage. Reports on both are
available on both the FIRE and OFES websites listed above.
Another report of interest (not associated with the FESAC
meeting) that's come across my electronic desk is a recent Government
Accountability Office (GAO) report to the US Senate and House
Appropriations Committees entitled "Fusion Energy: Definitive Cost
Estimates for U.S. Contributions to an International Experimental
Reactor and Better Coordinated DOE Research Are Needed". The report
states, among other things, that the $1.12B US commitment to ITER
construction does not cover the cost to the US of operation and
decommissioning, estimated in the report to be about $1.2B. This
doesn't seem too surprising, but the report goes on to raise the
legitimate concern that the challenges of international partners
managing a joint project are likely to lead to increased construction
costs for the US. The report also faults DOE for not coordinating
between NNSA and OFES the plans and support for IFE research in a
more effective way, and goes on to criticize OFES for not pursuing
alternate pathways to fusion more aggressively and for not carrying
out a plan to maintain and expand its workforce fusion research in
the face of growing personnel needs in fusion energy. The report
includes a letter from AD Fonck commenting on the criticism. In
reading the report, I found myself wondering how the GAO collected
and selected the material it based its strong assessments on. You
can judge the validity of the charges for yourself. At least it's
one of the more titilating reports on the fusion program I've come
across recently - you can find it on the FIRE website
http://fire.pppl.gov/#NewsSection
Lastly, DOE has released an updated report on the Office of
Science 20-year facilities plan. The report can be viewed at
http://www.science.doe.gov/about/Future/Facilities%20for%20the%20Future%20of%20Science.htm.
A powerpoint presentation of Dr. Orbach given to a BES meeting
(attached)in late September summarizes the current priorities of
Office of Science facilities. ITER remains the number one priority,
followed by ultra-scale computing, which has ties to the fusion
program. Tied for 18 is a Next Step Spherical Torus, and tied for 23
in far-term priorities is a Fusion Contingency experiment and
Integrated Beam experiment.
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3. Nomination of candidates for the UFA Executive committee
It is once again time to nominate new candidates for election
to the UFA executive committee. UFA secretary Michael Brown is
organizing a Nominating Committee of three to select candidates for
the upcoming election. UFA by-laws also encourage nomination
candidates directly by the membership: "Nominations may also be made
by five or more members of the Association in writing to the
President at or before the annual meeting". So, nominations can also
be sent by e-mail to me (knowlton@physics.auburn.edu) or to the UFA
secretary (doc@swarthmore.edu).
Cycling off the executive committee at the end of the year
are Boris Breizman of the University of Texas, Troy Carter of UCLA,
James Drake of the University of Maryland, and Arnold Kritz of Lehigh
University. We are grateful for their time and service.
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4. Upcoming Meetings and Events
A. NSTX Research Forum
The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) Research Forum
for 2008 is scheduled for November 27 - 29, 2007 at the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, NJ USA. Team members and
prospective collaborators are invited to attend or participate
remotely. The Research Forum is intended to provide interested
researchers the opportunity to present ideas for experiments to be
conducted on NSTX in the forthcoming run. Both well-developed and
new ideas in the early stages of development are welcomed. A web
site for the FY2008 NSTX Research Forum has been created. It can be
accessed through a link on the NSTX Home Page or directly
http://nstx-forum-2008.pppl.gov.
Proposals for experiments to be performed in 2008 can be submitted
for discussion at the Research Forum through the website. Any
problems with the website should be addressed to S. Kaye
(skaye@pppl.gov). There are no registration
fees for the meeting, but researchers from other institutions are
asked to pre-register in order to participate.
B. Fusion Power Associates Annual Meeting
Fusion Power Associates will hold its annual meeting and
symposium this year in Oak Ridge, TN on December 4-5, 2007 at the
Doubletree Hotel. The symposium is entitled
Fusion Energy: Preparing for the NIF and ITER Era
The advance registration fee is $475, and there is a reduced rate for
retirees; the registration fee for students is waived. Conference
information, the current agenda, and registration material can be
found in the document FPA_2007.doc attached to this newsletter. For
further information, the FPA website is http://www.fusionpower.org/
C. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Annual Meeting
Thanks to Prof. Miklos Porklab of MIT, this year's annual
meeting of the AAAS will include a special session entitled "Progress
in Magnetic Fusion Energy Research: 50 years of International
Collaboration and Future Prospects". The meeting will be held in
Boston on Feb. 14-18, 2008; the special session on MFE will take
place Saturday, Feb. 16, 1:45- 4:45 PM. For details about the
meeting, you can visit the AAAS meeting website
http://www.aaas.org/meetings/