have the responsibility for the program have felt the pressures of the fiscal stringencies very much during the last year. That accounts for our lowering our sights. Chairman HOLIFIELD. In other words, we have the facilities, but we are not going to use them because of reductions in operating and maintenance funds? Dr. MCDANIEL. That is correct. We have the facilities that can be used at a higher level of activity than we will be using them in the fiscal 1970, 1971 and later years. Chairman HOLIFIELD. I was sure this was not a recommendation of the Panel. Dr. MCDANIEL. No. The Panel recommendations contained in the June 1969 report were at a much higher level. Representative HOSMER. Mr. Chairman, this question may be somewhat rhetorical, but assuming that the budget crunch ends, then can we go back up to a fully activated high energy physics program? Dr. MCDANIEL. I think so; yes. Chairman HOLIFIELD. I would hope so. Dr. MCDANIEL. I also would hope so, too. I would certainly recommend that it go up if there were no continuation of the fiscal stringencies. PLANNING FOR STORAGE RINGS Representative HOSMER. Either the Panel report that the chairman mentioned or some Panel report recently pointed out that we don't have any storage ring plans in the making; we don't have enough collision beam type experiments and equipment and all that sort of thing. Would you like to comment on that? Dr. MCDANIEL. The June 1969 report made it very clear that the storage ring situation was very bad in this country and that we should provide for the construction of storage rings at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. Unfortunately, the budget stringencies have not permitted us to put into the budget the line-item which we had originally recommended for it, a relatively large device costing several million dollars. Representative HOSMER. Was that about $9 million? Dr. MCDANIEL. The original proposal by Dr. Panofsky was for about $17 million. When he re-reviewed the situation a few years ago, the cost of the project was more like $9 million; yes, sir. We have, as the Chairman and Mr. Abbadessa testified during the opening hearings, a tentative plan for providing some help to Dr. Panofsky in this connection and I think Mr. Abbadessa testified earlier that we would hope to be able to do something this fiscal year, that is in the 1971 fiscal year. Mr. ABBADESSA. Mr. Hosmer, we have submitted to the Bureau of the Budget a recommendation to fabricate this equipment and Dr. McDaniel will have to explain to you exactly what. It is, essentially, one-ring rather than two, for a total cost of $5.270 million. We are doing this out of equipment money at a considerable cost to our total equipment budget. Based on the recommendations of the Panel and the technical people, they are prepared to make this sacrifice. The specific funding will involve $1,050,000, which will be carried over from 1970 to 1971, and $1,600,000 out of the equipment funds that are contained in this year's request. That will provide $2.650 million to be obligated in fiscal year 1971. It would involve Representative HOSMER. You are selling them on the line item essentially for hardware for this thing, aren't you? Mr. ABBADESSA. That is essentially correct. We will not be purchasing other equipment that we had planned to purchase in the high energy field. Representative HOSMER. Do you think all this is legal? Mr. ABBADESSA. Yes, sir; I think it is legal. One of the reasons I appreciate the question is the opportunity it gives for us to lay it out to this committee and receive the judgment of this committee on the matter. Let me just finish. This carries a mortgage of $2,620,000 against fiscal year 1972 equipment funds. That will make a total cost of $5,270,000. As to the question of legality, I am not sure that is precisely the right word, Mr. Hosmer. We have our accounting procedures we follow. The question here is whether this is AEC equipment or a line item? Representative HOSMER. This involves some cement and things like that, does it not? Mr. ABBADESSA. The housing involved will be temporary housing at a cost of something like $20,000 out of the total $5.2 million. Representative HOSMER. Are the foundations temporary, too, the foundations for the equipment? STATEMENT OF PHILLIP MCGEE, DIVISION OF RESEARCH, ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION Mr. MCGEE. There will be no building foundations. There will be a temporary enclosure which will rest on the existing slab in the experimental area. Mr. ABBADESSA. Essentially this is an equipment undertaking. Representative HOSMER. Good luck with GAO. Mr. ABBADESSA. Having disclosed this to this committee, we are in a lot better shape to discuss it with the GAO. Chairman HOLIFIELD. All right. Dr. MCDANIEL. We are back to the 200 Bev. ENERGY SPECTRUM DEFICIENCIES Chairman HOLIFIELD. With the emphasis on the 200 Bev accelerator coupled with the reduction in funding for other accelerators, what gaps will develop in the low end of the high energy physics spectrum? Dr. MCDANIEL. I think there will be some serious gaps in the lower energy spectrum over the coming years unless collectively we are able to do something about it. May I say that last Saturday I had the privilege of going up to the Princeton University and talking to some of the younger people who will be affected by the Princeton University accelerator closeout. They were quite concerned about the fact that with closing the 3 Bev cosmotron a few years ago, with the closing of the PPA in the offing; and with rumors persistently going about that if we have fiscal crunches in future years we will have to close even more accelerators; these young people were concerned that there will be a gap in the energy range somewhere between the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility at 800 Mev, and the bevatron or the AGS in the 6- to 30-Bev range. There will be an energy range in the 1- to 5-Bev range that can only be attacked over the future years by lowering the energy of some of the bigger machines. TRAINING OF YOUNG SCIENTISTS Chairman HOLIFIELD. It would not be economical to do that. What you are really saying is that the closing down of these smaller accelerators is going to put a gap in the training of young scientists. Dr. MCDANIEL. That is another very important point because it is in the university groups on the smaller machines where there is enthusiasm for the high energy physics, and where training of young scientists take place. Chairman HOLIFIELD. That is where they get a start and an interest in the field and then they go to the bigger machines if they mature scientifically. Dr. MCDANIEL. That is right but there will technically be a gap in the 1 to 5 Bev. range. Representative HOSMER. You don't have to degrade the entire machine to pull out some low energy beams and so forth? Dr. MCDANIEL. No. Representative HOSMER. What you mean is that geographically you don't have the spread and therefore the availability of the machines to the researchers that you would if you had duplicate or had separate operating devices. Dr. MCDANIEL. You are right. And if one looked at it strictly from an economical point of view, it is more economical to get a 3-Bev particle from a machine that is designed to be a 3-Bev particle producer than to turn down the 200 Bev and, so to speak, use the elephant gun on a mouse approach. Representative HOSMER. You can pull a Mev beam out of a Bev machine if you wanted to do it. Dr. MCDANIEL. If the experiment were of sufficiently high priority in the scientific scheme to justify an expenditure to pull a 3 Bev beam from a larger machine, you certainly could. Chairman HOLIFIELD. You would be faced with either taking a larger energy beam and using it or degrading the operation of the entire machine. Dr. MCDANIEL. That is right. Chairman HOLIFIELD. If you use it at a lower beam energy, you would in a sense be not using the facility to its capacity. Dr. MCDANIEL. That is right. That is a good way of looking at it, Mr. Chairman. ESTIMATED STAFFING REDUCTIONS Chairman HOLIFIELD. How many people will be lost to the program as a result of these and other reductions in high energy physics? I am thinking mainly of the younger scientists. Dr. MCDANIEL. I can give you a general answer and then I will be glad to furnish for the record a more detailed answer. I think if one looks at the number of people associated with the high energy physics program, say last year or the year before, and then extrapolates to the end of the fiscal year that we are talking about here, my guess is, and it is an educated guess, that there is about a 10percent reduction in manpower associated with that gap in time, even counting the 200-Bev personnel increases in it. My guess is that there will be about 10 percent reduction. We have some specific numbers for the two accelerators where the major impact takes place. At the Princeton-Penn accelerator where they currently have about 180 people, that will decrease to zero at the end of fiscal 1971. At CEA, where we had a level of about 210 in fiscal year 1966, that will be cut back to about 118 in fiscal year 1971. Chairman HOLIFIELD. What is it now? Dr. MCDANIEL. Now it is 180. So that will be cut back to 118 or thereabouts. Chairman HOLIFIELD. So with the two you have about 360 people cut back to 118? Dr. MCDANIEL. For those two accelerators. But my earlier statement was throughout the program because each of our contracts have been reduced in the 1971 budget submission by a substantial amount in actual dollars. When one considers the inflationary forces that are still at work in th's country, the actual reduction in effort and personnel will be much more substantial than the dollar reductions. So that, while I can't give you an exact number on that, I think it is overall about 10 percent. (Supplementary information for the record follows:) The table below indicates anticipated high energy physics personnel reductions during FY 1970 and FY 1971 of about 1,120 from the ongoing, research-oriented, program. This loss is partially offset by an anticipated increase of about 390 people in the construction-oriented program at NAL, leaving an overall program loss of about 730 people-a ten percent reduction in two years. Many of the personnel reductions being levied during FY 1970 are in recognition of the limitations of the FY 1971 funding represented in the President's Budget Request. The reductions are particularly discouraging with respect to the participation of young scientists in this field. Though about 300 Ph.D.'s per year are currently being granted in the field of high energy physics in the U.S., there will be fewer Ph.D.'s in total able to practice research in this field at the end of FY 1971 than in FY 1969 because of funding limitations. Further discouragement is reflected in the larger-than-proportionate (about twelve percent in two years) decrease of graduate students supported in the program. Substantial additional losses prior to FY 1970 for individual laboratories and the university program are also indicated in the table which follows. 42-051 0-70-pt. 2 |