Clinton Asks for a Greener DOE

Abstract

When Clinton makes his formal budget request this week, he will ask Congress for a 7.2% rise (to $4.75 billion) in DOE's general science and energy supply research programs. Reflecting Clinton's - or perhaps Vice President Al Gore's - green streak, the big winners are solar and other renewable energy sources (up 27% to $327 million) and biological and environmental research (up 17% to $416 million). Losers include some accounts that were expected to suffer - such as nuclear energy research, whose $345 million 1993 budget is to be cut almost in half - as well as some that were not, including basic energy sciences, which would drop 7% from its $861 million 1993 budget. This means that the defense labs will shrink, a blow only somewhat softened by a 68% ($624 million) increase in lab technology transfer programs. In basic research, most of what appears to be a healthy increase is eaten up by new construction, leaving core science programs with little more than a cost-of-living rise of about 3%. Clinton's 1994 request will include $20 million to start work on the Tokamak Physics Experiment at Princeton, $26 million to kick off an Advanced Neutron Source at Oak Ridgemore » National Laboratory, and $36 million to establish a B-factory - an accelerator to produce a high-intensity beam of particles known as B mesons - at either the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) or Cornell University.« less