Highlights
- The Senate would provide
$8.9 billion for R&D in the
Department of Energy (DOE) next year, a 3.1 percent boost over FY 2005
in contrast to a requested cut of nearly 2.6 percent (see Table).
- The Senate
would add to the request for DOE’s Office of Science (OS) to boost utilization
of scientific user facilities. Science R&D would gain 1.3 percent
to $3.4 billion, a dramatic improvement over a requested cut of
4.5 percent. The House would provide a similar appropriation.
- Energy-related R&D would gain 20 percent to $1.4 billion because
the Senate would support Administration priorities in hydrogen, coal,
and nuclear energy R&D strongly while at the same time sustaining
DOE investments in other energy R&D areas.
- The Senate would continue
its traditional support of DOE’s defense R&D investments by adding $100
million to the DOE request. DOE defense R&D would fall slightly
by 0.2 percent to $4.1 billion, but the Senate would moderate even
steeper requested cuts. Unlike the House, the Senate would agree to
fund the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
program in 2006 at the requested $4 million but would eliminate funding
entirely for the National Ignition Facility.
DOE R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations
On June
16, the Senate Appropriations Committee drafted its version of the FY
2006 Energy and Water appropriations bill, following on last month’s
House approval of its own version. For the first time, the bill funds
all of the Department of Energy (DOE), while in previous years some
DOE programs had been funded in the Interior bill. The
Senate Energy and Water bill would provide $8.9 billion for DOE R&D
in FY 2006, a 3.1 percent or $268 million boost over this year’s
funding level and an improvement over a cut of 2.6 percent contained
in DOE’s budget request (see Table).
The Senate would also improve on the House version of the bill, which
would provide $8.6 billion or a 0.4 percent cut.
Traditionally,
the Senate has been far more generous to DOE than either the House or
the Bush Administration, and the FY 2006 appropriations process is shaping
up to be no exception. The FY 2006 Senate plan would provide $25.1 billion
for DOE’s total budget, a 2.7 percent increase
in contrast to budget cuts in both the House appropriation and the DOE
request. More than two-thirds of DOE’s budget goes to defense programs to maintain the nuclear
weapons stockpile and to clean up past weapons sites. While most DOE program areas
would see cuts in the budget request, the Senate would boost funding
for most areas. DOE’s R&D, split roughly
in half between defense and nondefense missions,
would total $8.9 billion, 3.1 percent above this year’s funding level
in a year when most R&D programs would be lucky just to stay even
(see Table). (For details of the President’s
request for DOE R&D, please see Chapter 9
of AAAS Report XXX: R&D
FY 2006 or the March 1 DOE R&D
Funding Update. For details of DOE R&D in FY 2006 House appropriations,
see the June 3 R&D Funding Update).
R&D in the DOE Office of Science (OS)
Both the House and the Senate have now shown their support for DOE’s Office of Science (OS) by adding $200 million to the
request to bring OS R&D to $3.4 billion, a small increase in contrast to a
4.5 percent requested cut (see Table and Figure 1). The Senate
appropriation would be a 1.3 percent increase over FY 2005, slightly smaller
than the House-approved increase. Both the House and the Senate would make
additional operating time at OS user facilities and domestic fusion research
high priorities.
The Senate appropriation would allocate $100 million of its funding boost
specifically to allow OS programs to stabilize operating times at its
user facilities, and the bill specifically instructs DOE to give
high priority to maintaining user access to facilities. The House Energy-Water
bill contains similar language. The Office of Science operates unique,
large-scale research facilities at DOE’s national
laboratories around the country, which external researchers can use
for their own experiments through a competitive proposal process. In
recent years, tight budgets (see Figure 1) have squeezed operating time
at these facilities, and the FY 2006 request would squeeze even tighter,
with operating times reduced by as much as 61 percent at some OS facilities
but the Senate appropriation should allow OS programs to at least sustain
operating times at current rates. In Basic Energy Sciences (BES), for
example, which would rise 12.3 percent to $1.2 billion in the Senate
plan, $20 million of the boost over the request would go to sustaining
BES user facilities. The entire $49 million boost over the request for
Nuclear Physics to $420 million (3.7 percent over FY 2005) would go
to Nuclear Physics user facilities.
The
Senate would also join the House in strongly supporting domestic fusion
research. Total Fusion funding would jump 6.1 percent to $291 million,
the same as the request, but the Senate would dramatically rearrange
fusion priorities to favor domestic fusion research over an international
collaborative project. In its budget request, DOE proposed $56 million
for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project,
up from just $5 million this year. The $5 billion international project
has been delayed because the international partners have been unable
to agree on a site in either Japan or France; more than a year after
a deadline to pick a site has come and gone, the six partners are still
deadlocked, but the budget request assumed that the project will proceed
in time to require an increased U.S. contribution. The Senate would
shift $28 million from the ITER request to domestic fusion research
in order to sustain operating times at Fusion facilities in New
Jersey, California,
and Massachusetts. The
House would shift $30 million out of ITER for these facilities, and
as an added step inserted an amendment to its Energy-Water bill that
would prohibit DOE from entering into any agreement on further U.S.
contributions to ITER until at least March 1, 2006. The Senate would
be more flexible, expressing its openness to reallocating Fusion funds
if the ITER site is officially selected soon.
The biggest
Senate boost to Science programs would be for Basic Energy Sciences,
which would see its funding climb 12.3 percent to $1.2 billion (see
Table). The Senate would provide in $30 million in new funds to establish
a National Nanotechnology Enterprise Development Center (NNEDC) in New
Mexico to translate nanotechnology research
at DOE nanoscale research centers into working
technologies. BES funding sustains nanoscale research centers at several DOE national labs, which
would collectively receive more funding in the request and the Senate
bill. The Senate would also add $67 million to the request for energy-related
issues associated with water resources, including desalination research,
arsenic treatment research, water supply technology development, and
some water management demonstration projects. Also in BES, funding for
the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Tennessee
would surge $36 million to $149 million as the facility transitions
from construction to operations beginning next year.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
While most OS accounts would see increases in FY 2006, Advanced Scientific
Computing Research (ASCR) and Biological and Environmental Research
(BER) funding would decline dramatically in the Senate bill (see Table).
The Senate would provide only the $207 million request for ASCR for
a 10.9 percent cut from this year’s funding level. BER funding would
total $504 million in FY 2006, $48 million more than the request but
still $78 million below this year’s funding level. The entire $48 million
boost over the request would go to fund 48 congressionally earmarked
projects; the House would add $35 million for 53 projects in its version
of the BER budget. Most BER core programs would have flat funding in
the Senate appropriation.
After more than a decade of steep cuts and stagnant budgets, the DOE Office
of Science has less money now for its R&D programs than it did in
the early 1990s (see Figure 1). In
today’s dollars, the Science program has been stuck at roughly $3.2
billion since FY 2001, and now both the House and Senate appropriations
would enable Science to just stay ahead of expected inflation.
DOE Energy and Defense R&D Programs
The Senate would provide dramatic boosts in funding for energy R&D
programs, funding both Administration priorities in coal, hydrogen,
and nuclear energy as well as other energy R&D programs that were
slated for cuts in the request. The overall DOE energy R&D portfolio
would climb 20.2 percent to $1.4 billion in the Senate, far more than
either the House or the DOE request (see Table).
Fossil Energy R&D funding would surge 15.5 percent
to $518 million in the Senate bill, in sharp contrast to steep cuts
in the House and the request. Although the House and the request would
boost coal-related R&D at the expense of other fossil fuels, the
Senate would add funds across the board. The Senate would keep funding
for the FutureGen program at the $18 million
request for this program to develop a near-emission-free, coal-fired
electricity and hydrogen production plant, but would boost overall coal
R&D from $351 million this year to $426 million in FY 2006, with
big increases for coal power generation R&D (up from $49 million
to $100 million) and carbon sequestration R&D (up from $45 million
to $74 million). But the Senate would also reverse proposed DOE eliminations
of funding for oil and gas R&D and keep funding closer to this year’s
levels. Energy conservation R&D would be one area where the Senate
would cut from the request, resulting in $321 million for R&D, down
12.6 percent, but primarily because of the transfer of distributed energy
and energy transmission R&D programs from this account to the Electricity
Transmission and Distribution program in Energy Supply. Fuel cells R&D
and biomass R&D programs in this account would increase dramatically.
In Energy Supply,
hydrogen and nuclear energy priorities would reshape the portfolio.
Nuclear energy R&D funding would surge dramatically by 47 percent
to $125 million. Most of the new funding would support a dramatically
expanded Next Generation Nuclear Plant program to develop new technologies
for future nuclear power plants in an effort led by the Idaho National
Laboratory. There would also be dramatic boosts in nuclear hydrogen
R&D to explore ways to use nuclear power to produce hydrogen, and
in advanced fuel cycle R&D to develop better technologies for reprocessing
spent nuclear fuel. Electricity Transmission and Distribution R&D
would jump 40 percent to $128 million because of the transfer of a $56
million distributed energy and electricity reliability R&D portfolio
from the Energy Conservation account. Funding for other accounts within
this program would decline. In Solar and Renewables,
surging spending on hydrogen technologies within a declining total R&D
budget would squeeze funding for R&D on other renewables
such as geothermal technology, wind energy, and solar energy.
The Senate
would once again add to requested funding for DOE’s
defense R&D, but would still leave funding slightly below this year’s
level. The Senate would add to DOE’s core
defense Weapons Activities account but would leave funding at $3.0 billion
for R&D, 3.1 percent below FY 2005. The Senate would dramatically
increase funding for Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) to $736
million (up 5.6 percent), in contrast to steep requested and House-approved
cuts. The ASC program funds R&D in high-end computing for leading-edge
supercomputers and software necessary to simulate nuclear explosions
without nuclear testing. The Senate’s $75 million boost over the ASC
request would go specifically for Los Alamos National Laboratory to
acquire a 150 teraflop computing system for weapons-related calculations.
But, in a dramatic gesture, the Senate bill would slash Inertial
Confinement Fusion (ICF) funding by 41 percent to $314 million by zeroing
out funding for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) under construction
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Language accompanying the Senate Energy-Water bill takes aim at DOE
budget plans for reducing ICF funding dramatically in coming years to
sustain NIF construction; it appears the zeroing out of NIF construction
is a warning sign only, because other language indicates that the Senate
expects DOE to continue building the mega-laser. The NIF reduction should
allow core ICF research funding to increase slightly.
The Senate
would support the Administration’s request for $4 million to do research
on the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator
(RNEP) program in 2006. Last year, DOE requested funds but Congress
provided no money. DOE tried again in FY 2006 with a request of $4 million,
but last month the House approved its Energy-Water bill with no funding.
This Administration proposal to initiate research on a new generation of
nuclear weapons, including the RNEP and other tactical or ‘low-yield’
nuclear weapons (also called ‘bunker buster’ bombs), has been opposed
by Congress so far because building these weapons would require the
repeal of a U.S. ban on developing new nuclear weapons. The FY 2006
request also contains $9 million for R&D on the Reliable Replacement
Warhead, a 5-year, $98 million project initiated by Congress in the
final FY 2005 budget that would explore the possibility of new warhead
designs to use with existing rather than new nuclear weapons. The Senate
would support both the RNEP at $4 million and the Reliable Replacement
Warhead project at $25 million.
Next Steps
The Senate Energy-Water
bill is expected to go to the full Senate for debate and approval in
July. The House has already approved its version of the bill. A House-Senate
conference to hammer out the final version of the bill could be convened
later this summer.
- June 20, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
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AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
