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technical status of the programs and will recommend how to structure them. The FY 1991 budget request provides for maintaining the current magnetic fusion program balance, with a focus on confinement physics. Budget estimates will be revised as necessary once the review is completed and the Department has determined what changes, if any, to make in the program.

FY 1991 MAGNETIC FUSION ENERGY BUDGET REQUEST

The FY 1991 budget request for Magnetic Fusion Energy is $325.3 million. includes $291.9 million for Operating Expenses, $14.3 million for Capital Equipment, and $ 19.1 million for Construction (Table 9).

This

The Fusion budget is organized into five major subprograms: Confinement Systems, Applied Plasma Physics, Development and Technology, Planning and Projects, and Program Direction. Confinement Systems, with an FY 1991 Operating Expenses request of $163.0 million, operates large experimental devices and analyzes the data to improve our understanding of plasma behavior and to learn how to obtain and control the physical conditions necessary to ultimately produce fusion energy. Research is currently being conducted on several toroidal devices, primarily tokamaks, to investigate key physics issues and prepare for performing burning plasma physics experiments on future devices. One important aspect of present experimental research is the effort to obtain a better understanding of transport, or energy loss, in tokamak plasma systems.

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The Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is the largest U.S. tokamak, with a long-term goal of conducting plasma experiments using deuterium-tritium fuel at plasma temperatures and densities similar to those anticipated in a future fusion reactor. During the past calendar year, the TFTR program has focused on the energy transport issue. New diagnostics were fabricated and installed, and new techniques for obtaining improved confinement were developed. The Advanced Toroidal Facility at ORNL will contribute to the understanding of confinement in tokamaks, while Doublet III-D at General Atomics is the focal point for a variety of ongoing experiments on plasma transport. During the past year, scientists at Doublet III-D also achieved a new world record beta value for tokamaks. Beta is defined as the ratio of the plasma thermal energy to the magnetic pressure that is used to confine the plasma. Doublet III-D experiments achieved a peak beta value as high as 9.3 percent and sustained a beta value of 8 percent for almost a second. This is greater than the beta value thought to be necessary for economical fusion reactors. Abroad, the Joint European Torus in Great Britain has essentially reached equivalent energy breakeven conditions in deuterium, in other words, conditions where the energy released is equal to that required to heat the fuel.

Upgrades for microwave heating experiments on the Princeton Beta Experiment will be completed in FY 1990 and the device will resume its research operations aimed at operating under higher plasma pressure conditions in FY 1991. Fabrication of the Alcator C-Mod facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will be completed in early FY 1991, and initial operations are planned for FY 1991. This facility will allow scientists to

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study plasma performance with a compact, high-field, high-density design using improved plasma edge controls in support of a future burning plasma physics experiment. Preliminary design activities for the Compact Ignition Tokamak will continue to improve projected performance. Technology R&D will also be conducted in support of prototype development.

Applied Plasma Physics, with an Operating Expenses request of $70.9 million, plays a major role in addressing the magnetic confinement and burning plasma physics issues at a very fundamental level. The subprogram conducts research on potentially attractive advanced confinement configurations and on basic magnetic confinement physics. It also develops information on new diagnostics and techniques to heat and control plasma, and provides computational and theory support for the overall program. In FY 1991, this subprogram will continue to expand our understanding of magnetically confined plasma through experiments with various magnetic configurations, including tokamaks, compact toroids, and reversed field configurations. Fabrication of the Large S Experiment (LSX) will be completed at Spectra Technologies in FY 1990 to further investigate the potentially attractive field reversed configuration concept. The Confinement Physics Research Facility, under construction at the LANL, will improve our understanding of reversed field pinches once it is operating. I will refer to this project later when I discuss the program's Construction request.

In FY 1991, research on applied plasma physics theory will give special emphasis to modelling and understanding the process of controlling the transport of energy and particles in toroidal plasma. The Texas Experimental

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Tokamak (TEXT) at the University of Texas will be operated with new electron cyclotron heating and diverter hardware in order to compare transport data with other tokamaks. Support is also provided for the continued operation of the computer center at LLNL and the five user service centers. The computing capability will be improved through faster network access and additional local computing work stations.

With an Operating Expenses request of $48.1 million, the Development and Technology subprogram will continue to support the development of technologies required for fusion experiments and the design and analysis of fusion systems. During the last year, the first phase of the tritium proof-of-principle pellet experiments was completed at the Tritium System Test Assembly at LANL. During those experiments, scientists from ORNL obtained information that demonstrates the feasibility of tritium pellet fueling for next-generation experiments.

A number of international collaborative programs will be supported in FY 1991, including the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The ITER process is developing into a successful and unique model for large-scale, equal participation, international projects. An Interim Conceptual Design Report has been completed, with the full Conceptual Design Report to be completed in December 1990. ITER-related technology R&D tasks have been defined and are under way in each of the participant countries as part of the $8.0 million ITER technology R&D funding provided by each participant. Physics R&D tasks are being undertaken on a voluntary basis by the home program of participating countries. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just completed a pulsed supconducting coil winding, which is expected to