President Bush signed into law Monday a bill that will provide $62.5M for high energy physics. At Fermilab this morning director Pier Oddone announced the end of plans for involuntary layoffs of some 140 employees at the lab. Any remaining funds, according to the language of the bill, can be used to support new neutrino research projects; the Nova experiment was among the casualties of the omnibus appropriations in late December 2007.
This is fantastic news for Fermilab, where, with the LHC startup imminent, time is running out to make a dramatic new discovery. The Tevatron is running very well and the experiments are accumulating piles of high quality data. It’s make-or-break time.
The supplemental bill included $162 billion for funding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and $3.6 billion of non-war-related funding. (So, somehow, this post I am writing here is reminding me of an old Monty Python skit, where a newscaster says “And now the news for Wombats. No wombats were killed today in an accident involving….”)
The supplemental bill failed to include the $160 million US contribution to ITER, and so leaves the US in default on our international agreement. This will compromise for years to come our ability to participate as a reliable partner in large international scientific projects.
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Great news for Fermilab, obviously. I predict a LEP-like situation, where the Tevatron has a tantalizing 2.9-sigma result just as it is shut down…
Too bad about ITER, which seems like a great project.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
In talking with US fusion researchers, I seem to hear the opposite. A few different people have told me that the ITER design wasn’t the best use of money.
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’d like to here more about the sensibilty of ITER. I seem to see a lot of suggestions that the engineering is just too hard for it to ever break even.
62.5M/162G=0.4‰
Excuse me while I go weep in my beer.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Today, the director of PPPL (Princeton Plasma Physics Lab) sent out an email mentioning the $62.5 million as going to the DOE Office of Science, saying he thought some of it would be used towards our ITER commitments. I think the bill you’re referring to didn’t specifically give the money to High Energy Physics but rather DOE-funded science in general, with the specific goal of holding onto personnel.
Also, apparently the budget for FY2009 should see a $200 million dollar increase in funding to US Fusion research, covering the ITER costs as well as some extra. This also includes ~$9 million to be used to clean up the NCSX (http://ncsx.pppl.gov//index.html) project which was recently cancelled. Hopefully more funding will come in the future and we can finish the project.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
The additional HEP DOE funding is also supposed to restore the 125 lay-offs that ocurred at SLAC due to the omnibus bill. I’m not sure how this is or can actually happen as these folks are already gone and hopefully have found gainful employment elsewhere. Fermilab was not the only lab to be hit…
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:58 pm
The ITER project has suffered a lot of delays due to political tensions.
ITER was postponed, believe it or not, because of the Iraq war:
With the money spend on Iraq one could build an ITER every 6 weeks or so
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Seeing a hyperlink whose text consists of 4 full paragraphs gives me a headache, and offends my anal-retentive web page editing sensibilities. Would somebody mind fixing this?
July 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Fixed … in Firefox there was no hyperlink.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Fusion research, including the ITER, I find problematic. The traditional D-T fusion results in about 80% of its energy in a neutron. This energy is effectively lost, for the neutral particle is hard to “catch.” This has always struck me as a huge fly in the ointment with the whole program. It strikes me as more energetically favorable to do
p + Li_7 — *Be_8 — 2He_4, * = unstable,
which involves a beam of protons on lithium in some state, such as a solid foil that the beam scans. I am aware of some problems with this, but at least all the energy is in charged alpha particles.
At any rate it looks as if HEP is critical condition list.
Lawrence B. Crowell
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I meant to say “off” the critical condition list.
LC
July 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Hello — is there a danger that that America’s failure to live up to its ITER funding obligations will end up hurting Fermilab’s chances of landing the ILC?
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Flip — after your 5 billion dollar gift to FNAL, I’m confident things will work out just fine.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 am
In reply to Lawrence,
Most of the energy goes into a neutral particle which would end up heating water to produce steam to run a turbine, which is the overall idea of a fusion reactor. Still, a significant amount of the energy produced in the fusion reaction results in a 3.5MeV alpha particle which deposits it’s energy back into the plasma, resulting in a self-sustaining burning plasma. Ideally, a plasma which exists for month-long shots, all the time producing 14 MeV neutrons (whose energy is used to power turbines) while only using D-T fuel pellets is certainly a reasonable energy source.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:14 am
To an extent, those neutrons are used to produce new fuel.
Tritium is produced through the forced fission of lithium when bombarded by neutrons. By surrounding the reactor with a layer of lithium, you can produce new tritium using the apparent waste products of the reaction.
Similarly, that energy that is removed from the reactor makes the plasma far easier to handle. If all the energy from the reaction had to be removed by conduction/transport alone then there would be no material I know of to stand up to the requirements.
The current pressing problems are materials development (which is a second, equally massive project going alongside ITER) and plasma stability. There are a number of issues that need to be resolved before fusion could possibly be sustained beyond a few seconds, but these things are being worked on and studied in current reactors.
So long as we can be sure that ITER won’t tear itself apart things should be good to go once it is built.
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 am
With regards to the concerns about other countries seeing the U.S. as a reliable partner in projects, that horse has long left the barn. Think of the unilateral decision made about closing down the space station without informing its partners. I am not saying whether the decision was good or bad, just that it was unilateral.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
So here is a (semi)-moral question to consider. You are a member of congress, maybe even representing IL or the district that encompasses Fermilab. You oppose the war but want the money back for the lab. How do you vote?
This is an example to me of a dysfunctional government when items are tied together in a package rather than considered individually.
I don’t know the right answer but would have a difficult time with this if I were in that situation.
e.
July 4th, 2008 at 11:45 am
“With the money spend on Iraq one could build an ITER every 6 weeks or so”
That is equivalent to saying, ” I will stop smoking, save all that money and buy a car.” Theoretically possible, but in real life it never happens
November 15th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
abelian: I know someone who did that. Bought a van.