HOUSE LAWMAKERS APPEAL TO CHU TO PROTECT NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY

By ExchangeMonitor

A bipartisan group of 100 House lawmakers is appealing to Energy Secretary Steven Chu to preserve funding for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility. The facility has been beset by complications in its quest to achieve fusion ignition and after the facility missed a key milestone at the end of June, the National Nuclear Security Administration acknowledged that it was unlikely that the lab would achieve fusion ignition by the promised target of the end of the fiscal year. A potential $30 million funding cut in Fiscal Year 2013 and a change in the way overhead rates are charged for the facility that would further cut into its budget has the lawmakers—led by California Democrats Pete Stark and Zoe Lofgren and Ohio Republican Michael Turner—worried about the future of the facility.

In the Aug. 3 letter, the lawmakers noted that the facility recently conducted the first 500 terawatt laser shot. “Given the tremendous progress to date, we are concerned that—rather than technical and scientific challenges—administrative, managerial and budgetary hurdles threaten to impede this promising research,” the lawmakers wrote, suggesting that management problems at DOE and NNSA could impact the facility. “We are concerned that the scientific advances at NIF and around the DOE/NNSA complex are being stifled by micromanagement and burdensome administrative processes.” The lawmakers encouraged Chu to “personally engage” on the management issues facing the NNSA and visit NIF. “It would be severely disappointing to get so close to a tremendous scientific breakthrough—fusion ignition at NIF—only to see it prevented by bureaucracy,” the lawmakers wrote.

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