Mr. SWETT. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm pleased to be here this afternoon as well as this hearing for what is for me such a fascinating critical field, fusion energy.

I would particularly like to welcome our panelists who will be talking about alternative approaches to fusion. Given our current budget climate, we need to make sure that every taxpayer dollar we spend is wisely invested. Likewise, we need to make sure that we are keeping our eyes open to possible new scientific breakthroughs, wherever they may be found.

I have been interested in alternative approaches to fusion since 1989 when University of Utah researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann startled the world when they announced that they had created a fusion reaction at room temperature. As is well known, the effect they were describing was not readily reproducible, and Pons and Fleischmann were branded as frauds.

Since 1989, however, researchers both here in the U.S. and around the world have continued work in the field. In fact, just two days ago, on May 3rd, Pons and Fleischmann had an article published in "Physics Letter A" which documents the remarkable results of some of their recent research.

Here in this country, Dr. Edmund Storms of Los Alamos National Laboratory, who is one of our panelists today, along with scientists at SRI and at various other laboratories and universities around the country, have documented positive results from similar experiences.

Not being a scientist myself, but rather an artist with a little bit of science rolled together to make me an architect, I have to say that as we go into the energy fields and look at research for energy, it's very important that DOE and all of the other agencies that fund this type of research look at all of the alternatives. Good design, good research comes about by trial and error, and much of this has to be spread across a wide field.

My concern is that if we narrow our scope too narrowly, if we exclude opportunities and alternative fuels that are available and not give them any opportunity to grow and develop, I think that we ultimately restrict our possibilities and our potential and could cause great harm to the future of this country.

I look at what our competitors are doing around the world. I see that they are making investments in areas that we are not, and that concerns me, and I hope that today's testimony both in the current funding areas and, of interest to me, in the areas of alternative fusion will bring to light those opportunities and possibilities that will make the future of fusion much brighter in this country and much more varied.

I look forward to hearing the remarks of our witnesses. I thank you all for coming today. And I thank you, Madam Chairman, for the time to make this opening statement.

Mrs. LLOYD. Thank you, Mr. Swett.

Mr. Barton?

Mr. BARTON. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I appreciate the hearing.

I'm especially interested in any comments on the helium-3 nonreactive fusion program. That appears to me to be very positive

in its application and somewhat revolutionary. So I look forward to that part of the testimony.

Thank you.

Mrs. LLOYD. Thank you very much.

Mr. Roemer, do you have any opening remarks?

Mr. ROEMER. Madam Chairperson, I would only say that I'd ask unanimous consent; I have a prepared statement for the record.

And I'm very interested in our distinguished panel's testimony today on how to use fusion wisely as a potential alternative, an option in the future, whether that should be an international program, what kind of budget impact it has, and when those kinds of fusion results would pay off in the future, what kind of timeline we're looking at. I'll be very interested in hearing our witnesses, and ask unanimous consent that my entire statement be entered. Mrs. LLOYD. Without objection, your entire statement will be a part of the record.

[The prepared opening statement of Mr. Roemer follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE TIM ROEMER

Madame Chairman, it seems our troubled economy dictates everything we do these days. We are faced today with determinations to be made for the long-term health and continuation of the American fusion program.

We must invest limited resources wisely, and fusion holds some promise for our future energy needs. But the complexity of the nature of fusion requires that we carefully examine the potential benefits with the costs.

If there are ways that we can expand this technology without busting the Federal budget, we must proceed. But we have an obligation to do this carefully, and this Committee has an enormous responsibility to lead this mission.

Madame Chairman, as is your custom we are gathered here to discuss a timely issue of significant importance. I would like to salute your leadership, and close by saying I look forward to hearing and reading the testimony of our witnesses, who are working so hard on this critical issue before us.

Mrs. LLOYD. And, Mr. Bartlett, do you have any opening statement?

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much, and thank you for conventhese hearings.

I have been very privileged to have been able to spend a fair part of my life in science and engineering. So I have a very special and keen interest in this subject.

I think that our country, our society in general, has been somewhat paranoid about nuclear power, and I hope that more education can change that public perception.

I think that whether or not one makes an investment in an area, that one must consider the potential for societal payoff. I am a very strong fiscal conservative, but I will tell you that in the case of fusion energy research, because of the enormous benefit to societyfossil fuels are not forever; in the foreseeable future, indeed, we're going to run short on oil and gas, and then we're left with coal, more difficult to use-so we must have alternative energy sources. Fusion, although difficult to attain, is going to be enormously beneficial. So, from my perspective, one has to make a compelling argument for not funding this research because the cost of the research is so small compared to the total outlays of our government and the potential payoff for society is so great.

Thank you for coming to these hearings today. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Mrs. LLOYD. Thank you very much.

We are excited about our witnesses today and our No. 1 panel: Dr. Anne Davies, Associate Director for Fusion Energy, Department of Energy; another old friend, Dr. Harold Forsen, senior vice president for research and development at Bechtel Corporation. Dr. Davies, please proceed with your testimony.

I think you'll have to pull that pretty close to you [referring to the microphone].

STATEMENT OF DR. N. ANNE DAVIES, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR FUSION ENERGY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, WASHINGTON, DC; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. HAROLD K. FORSEN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOP. MENT, BECHTEL CORP., WASHINGTON, DC

Dr. DAVIES. I have to turn it on, too.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm pleased to be here today to present the Department's budget request for the fusion energy program for Fiscal Year 1994. I really appreciate the support that this committee has provided for the program over many years now.

I have a prepared statement which I would like to submit for the record.

Mrs. LLOYD. Without objection, it will be a part of the record and you may summarize or proceed as you wish.

Dr. DAVIES. Thank you. I will try to summarize, and I will try to address your questions and comments as I go through, but, please, if I miss some, please feel free to come back to me.

I'm glad to hear and I know how strongly the members of this committee feel about the need for future energy sources for the country. The Department is pursuing fusion because of its potential, of our chairman has said, the potential of an affordable and abundant energy source with relatively attractive safety and environmental features.

Let me take a minute here and talk about that. The issue of whether or not the tokamak is too complex, it is complex when compared to some things, but when you compare it to things like a 747, maybe it is not so complex. Our largest Tokamak experiment in the United States operates with something like 80 percent reliability, and it's still a scientific research experiment. It is not meant to be a reactor that produces power at this stage.

When you talk about the cost of fusion, I think we really ought to start with the safety and the environmental aspects of fusion because without those characteristics an energy source can have infinite cost. If people are unwilling to buy it, the cost is infinite.

The fusion reactor, as we conceive it, would produce in volume as much radioactivity as a fission reactor, but with much less energy density, and that means that you don't worry about the decay heat. It's a much safer situation than the fission reactor that Bob Hirsch was comparing it to.

Also, the radioactivity associated with the fusion reactor is in the structure. It's not in the fuel elements like a fission reactor. It's in the structure, which means it's relatively easy to manage. You don't worry about it getting into the air. You don't worry about it getting into the water supply. You do have to handle it remotely. You do have radioactivity.

With the selection of materials for the structure of a fusion reactor, we believe you can reduce the radioactivity orders of magnitude below what you would get with steels, which is the thing that Bob Hirsch compares it with when he does this. And even with steel, fusion reactors have real advantages over fission reactors, as I was describing.

And when you look at the cost of fusion reactors, we don't know what fusion reactors are going to cost yet. We've done design studies and we've tried to make estimates. And we've been doing this for a number of years. I think those estimates are more useful when we're comparing different fusion reactor concepts, but if you want to compare them with the cost of fission, they look like they're in the same ballpark. When you look at the best possible, best ever experience with fission, that's cheaper, but when you look at the median cost of fission reactors on line today, the fusion costs look comparable or lower.

So I think that when you look at cost, fusion reactors appear to be in the same ballpark as fission reactors. I'm not sure where Dr. Hirsch gets his figure of 50 percent higher, which is a number I've heard him quote.

Concerning the issue of alternate concepts, other than Tokamaks, several of you mentioned this point. This is a subject that is debated and debated in the fusion community time and time again. Under budget constraints, we've often curtailed our programs in research other than Tokamaks. There is not a person in the fusion community who likes that. Everybody who looks at the program says anything this long term ought to have some room for innovation, some resources set aside to look at improvements. I agree with that, and we've set aside a modest amount of money this year in order to entertain proposals for small-scale experiments that could improve on the tokamak design to investigate or entirely different concepts, and those proposals are under review right now. We hope to get the results soon.

But we agree with that point. It is very difficult for us, too, when we have to scale back or eliminate some of our concepts, and we've eliminated a number over the years, not for technical reasons, but for budget reasons.

Let me go back and talk a little more from what I prepared. I wanted to answer your questions about the tokamak as a concept. Fusion is not just something that the Department is doing. At this point President Clinton's "Vision of Change for America" identified fusion as part of the program that the country should embark on for the sake of its long-term economic future.

We in the program, those of us who are trying to develop fusion, appreciate that kind of support. We're working hard to try to justify it. You said that it's a very difficult challenge to develop fusion, and you're right, it is.

A year ago when we were here, we reported on results from the very first magnetic fusion experiments, using deuterium and tritium, the fuel that fuses most easily in the Joint European Torus, the Euratom experiment that's located in the United Kingdom. In that experiment, 2 megawatts of fusion power was produced in a short pulse length of about 2 seconds. Dr. Rebut, who's going to ap

pear before you later today, was the Director of the Joint European Torus at that time, and he is now the Director of ITER.

Since the time we were here last year, we have made progress on preparing to use tritium in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton. We've completed a major set of environmental reviews and have just recently brought 100 curies of tritium onsite to begin to test the tritium-handling system for TFTR.

We have one more major operational readiness review scheduled, and then we expect to begin the deuterium/tritium experiments in September with the production of 10 megawatts or more of fusion power by next year, the first of next year. These experiments are important to us. They are going to be our first opportunity to study, in detail, with a complete diagnostic system a tokamak plasma that is producing significant amounts of fusion power. I expect that Dr. Davidson will want to talk to you about this more. We have had this program reviewed by our advisory committees to make sure that it's worth the money that it is going to cost to do it, and we believe that scientifically it is. And then we expect that some of our people from TFTR will go to JET as they begin their tritium experiments in the following year.

Another major_accomplishment of this year was the signing of the Engineering Design Activities Agreement for ITER last July by the United States, the Russian Federation, the European Community, and Japan. Key personnel assignments have been made. The three co-centers are operating, including ours in San Diego, California. The Director of the project and his senior staff are selecting members of the Joint Central Team and they've produced a reference design and a preliminary work program. They've done a lot of work in a fairly short time.

In the United States we have had excellent support from the State of California; from the University of California at San Diego; their contractor, Scientific Applications Incorporated; and the San Diego business community as well in operating our co-center, hosting our co-center. There are three co-centers. One is in the United States, one in Japan, and one in Germany. Each is to be staffed by an international team that takes a part of the ITER design, and it's all coordinated through the San Diego co-center.

As you know, the ITER work that will be assigned to the United States will be carried out through the U.S. Home Team. We have a new home team leader, Dr. Charles Baker from Oak Ridge, who will be with you a little bit later. And he has reorganized the U.S. ITER effort and he has also led our effort to assist the Director as the Joint Central Team is getting itself organized.

Our home team has also brought industrial partners on board in all the key areas of research and development and also design, so that industry will already be with us when the ITER Director assigns tasks to the United States. We don't want to waste any time once we have task assignments. We want our industry people to be up to speed. We want our industry people to be knowledgeable and have the experience base, so that when it's time to build ITER, our industries will be able to compete, and compete successfully, to build components for ITER.

Most of the rest of our program is also focusing more and more on ITER, everything from our theoretical work to our experiments,