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UNIVERSITY FUSION ASSOCIATION

http://depts.washington.edu/ufa


E-mail Newsletter
Mar. 24 2008
sent by S. Knowlton, UFA President

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Items:

1.  UFA Executive Committee Election Results
2.  UFA White Paper
3.  News
4.  Correction


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1. UFA Executive Committee Election

Michael Brown, UFA Secretary/Treasurer, recently informed of his 
tally of the balloting for the election of new members to the UFA 
Executive Committee.  Joining the committee are Max Austin of U. 
Texas, Bill Dorland of U. Maryland, Mark Gilmore of U. New 
Mexico, and Zhihong Lin of UC Irvine.  They join the existing 
membership of David Meyhoffer of U. Rochester, Uri Shumlak of U. 
Washington, Matt Stoneking of Lawrence U., David Anderson of U. Wisconsin,
John Cary of U. Colorado, Darren Garnier of Columbia U., and Amanda 
Hubbard of MIT.  We welcome them on board, and I look forward to 
their advice and contributions.  I'd like to thank all candidates for 
their willingness to serve the interests of university educators and 
researchers in fusion, and also express my gratitude to the departing 
executive committee members, Boris Breizman of U.Texas, Troy Carter 
of UCLA, Jim Drake of U. Maryland, and Arnold Kritz of Lehigh U., for 
their service.

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2.  The UFA officers and executive committee have drafted and 
approved a White Paper that outlines the roles of US universities in 
the upcoming era of burning plasma physics.  It is intended to spark 
discussions among university researchers - and all participants and 
stakeholders in the US fusion program - about the opportunities and 
challenges universities face in the ITER era and beyond.  At issue is 
how university research programs adapt to broad new priorities in the 
program, and how to they continue to perform effectively in what they 
currently do well.  By request of OFES, a recent draft of the White 
Paper was presented at the last FESAC meeting, and the final version 
is attached to this newsletter.  Comments from the membership are 
welcome, and can be sent to any of the UFA officers or executive 
committee members.  These comments will be useful in further 
developing the ideas of the paper, and actions that may result from 
them.

E-mail addresses of the executive committee members and officers can 
be found on the UFA website at 

http://depts.washington.edu/ufa/membership.html#Exec_Comm

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3.      Last month, I attended the FESAC meeting on Feb. 19-20 just 
prior to Fusion Day.  The meeting featured overviews on OFES program 
planning by OFES Associate Director Raymond Fonck and on the DOE 
Science FY09 budget request by Under Secretary for Science Raymond 
Orbach. Copies of all presentations are available at:

http://www.ofes.fusion.doe.gov/Agenda-Feb.htm

Fonck described an ongoing planning process for OFES that is similar 
to what Basic Energy Sciences recently completely, with the 
difference that Fonck hopes to carry out and implement the planning 
on a faster time scale than the earlier BES process.  The process 
leads to workshops that will identify new initiatives.  A Low 
Temperature Plasma Sciences Workshop is taking place later this 
month.  Fonck also discussed the perilous state of the OFES FY09 
budget (and beyond) following from the disappointing outcome of the 
FY08 Omnibus bill.    The Administration's FY09 budget for OFES is 
quite good (as was the original FY08 one), but as I mentioned in my 
last newsletter, the 09 budget is facing significant questioning from 
Congressional appropriators.  You can get a sense of the issues from 
two AIP news blurbs about Orbach's Mar. 13 visit to the House 
Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water Development
http://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/036.html
and
http://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/037.html

   One has a Rashomon-like feeling in reading the two one after 
another since they refer to the same meeting, but the message may be 
taken that appropriators are not against science (or fusion), but are 
being squeezed across the board.  For this reason, it is important to 
keep up our support of DOE Science funding as requested in the 2008 
America COMPETES Act.  In requesting all stakeholders to support the 
program, Fonck stressed that it is important to represent, and think 
of, the US fusion program as an integrated one as opposed to one 
composed of separate international and domestic pursuits.  More 
details can be found in his presentation.  He also discussed the 
consequences of the cost overrun of NCSX, and indicated that the 
completion of that facility necessitates a temporary reduction in 
operational funding for the C-Mod, D3-D, and NSTX facilities and the 
projected cessation of NSTX operations within 3 years.  NCSX will be 
undergoing another DOE Science cost and schedule review in April.

        Fonck also discussed the two new charges given to FESAC to 
define the roles of non-tokamak concepts in the MFE portfolio and 
those of High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP) in the OFES 
program.  The charges were not available at the time of the meeting, 
but have since been released and are available at

http://www.science.doe.gov/ofes/fesac.shtml

under the sub-title "Current FESAC Charges", and are attached to this 
newsletter (FESAC_Charge_-_Major_Altern.pdf, HEDLP-Charge.pdf). 
Dr. Ned Sauthoff of the US ITER Project Office gave an 
update on the status of ITER, and as mentioned above, I presented the 
UFA white paper on the role of US universities in the OFES program.

        The meeting concluded with a presentation by Prof. Ronald 
Davidson of Princeton on the extensive scientific opportunities in 
the HEDLP program, followed by perspectives of the HEDLP program from 
OFES AD Fonck and Dr. Christopher Deeney of DOE's National Nuclear 
Security Agency (NNSA).  As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, 
OFES funding for HEDLP science is slated to increase to $25M in FY09, 
while NNSA support will decrease to $10M.  At this juncture, the 
prospect for broad university participation in HEDLP science remains 
uncertain. A recent research article published in Science Magazine by 
an MIT/Rochester collaboration on OMEGA illustrates the promise of 
such a program.  On the other hand, Deeney of NNSA repeatedly stated 
that the primary university role is only to provide the future 
workforce for NNSA facilities, and that major NNSA facilities would 
not be made available to university researchers without an extensive 
performance record.  With regard to university participation in the 
HEDLP program, there appears to be a disconnect between the visions 
of the two agencies.


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4.  Correction
        In the last newsletter, I referred to the upcoming ICC 2009 
Workshop.  The correct title is ICC 2008 Workshop.  It takes place 
THIS year at the University of Nevada Reno June 24-27. Abstracts are 
due Mar. 31.