Friday, 1 November 1991 Washington, DC
1. HEPAP RECOMMENDS "PEANUT BUTTER" DIET FOR HIGH-ENERGY
RESEARCH
--spread the pain evenly. That's not the answer
DOE was fishing
for. Based on the recommendations of the Townes Task Force, DOE
left the Fermilab main injector upgrade out of its initial FY 93
budget submission to OMB and put $15M already appropriated for
the upgrade in "escrow." Alas, trying to get physicists to agree
on anything has been compared to herding cats. So when the High-
Energy Physics Advisory Panel met early this week, it chose to
ignore the advice of the Townes panel. After listening to a
passionate appeal by Ray Brock of Michigan State on behalf of
Fermilab users, HEPAP overwhelmingly reaffirmed the 1990 Sciulli
report, which ranked the Fermilab injector upgrade as second only
to the SSC in high-energy priorities. A week earlier, the Nuclear
Science Advisory Committee had been under pressure to recommend a
slowdown of RHIC. NSAC responded by reaffirming RHIC as the top
priority for nuclear physics (WN 25 Oct
91). At the start of the HEPAP meeting, Will Happer told the
group to assume a cut of 10% in FY 93, but to "resist any
temptation to slow down the SSC."
2. BROWN WARNS THAT DOE'S ACTIONS COULD JEOPARDIZE THE SSC.
Rep. George Brown (D-CA), chair of the Committee on
Science, Space and Technology, was a leader in the fight to fully
fund the SSC in FY 92. Last week, in a letter to Secretary of
Energy James Watkins, Brown expressed concern that DOE's efforts
to protect the SSC may backfire. When the Administration
proposed the SSC, Brown wrote, "Congress was assured that it
would not be funded at the expense of ongoing science programs.
This is obviously no longer true." He worries that this will
provide opponents with the leverage to defeat the SSC. "Thus,
intended or not," Brown argues, "the ground rules provided to the
Townes Task Force are a warning to other DOE science programs
that the increased funding required to support the SSC places
their programs in peril."
3. MEANWHILE, SSC OPPONENTS WERE FIRING OFF THEIR OWN
WARNINGS.
First it was the Illinois delegation. The
delegation has a keen interest in the search for the top quark,
and Bob Michel, House
Minority Leader, went straight to President Bush last year to
save the injector upgrade (WN 11 Jan 91). In a letter to Watkins,
the delegation promises "to see that Fermilab remains viable."
4. A LETTER ASKING DARMAN "TO CAST A COLD EYE ON THE SSC
NUMBERS"
was signed by Howard Wolpe (D-MI), chair of the
Investigations
and Oversight Subcommittee of Science, Space and Technology, and
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), ranking minority member. The letter is
openly disdainful of the Administration's efforts to enlist Japan
and skeptical of the official cost estimate of $8.25B. DOE has
promised that one third of the cost will come from non-federal
sources, but so far it has pledges of only $875M from Texas and
$50M from India. Bromley came back from Japan empty handed last
week; the White House is now pinning its hopes on Bush's visit.
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