PRESIDENT'S '04 BUDGET:
FOUNDRY IN, 88-INCH OUT

It's still early, and President Bush's budget proposal for FY04 is only on paper right now. But in it, the prospects for Berkeley Lab are mixed. A mostly flat overall science budget announced yesterday includes welcomed funding for beginning construction of a new Molecular Foundry nanoscience building. But the plan also includes the recommended termination of the venerable 88-inch cyclotron.

Laboratory officials described the cyclotron news as "very disappointing" and unexpected. In the coming days, senior administrators will attempt to determine the reasons for such a decision. In the meantime, one of the few vestiges of the Laboratory's illustrious accelerator history faces an uncertain future.

The Molecular Foundry, an 86,500-square-foot building to be situated next to the National Center for Electron Microscopy, would receive $35 million in construction funds under the Administration's FY04 budget. Part of the DOE's nanotechnology initiative that features 5 new research centers, the Foundry building is expected to open for business in 2006 if funding survives Congressional scrutiny.

Another of Berkeley Lab's high-priority new initiatives, the SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP), also received a boost in the President's budget. Over $6.8 million is allocated to complete a conceptual design for the satellite-based telescope by 2006, bringing the project's annual total to $8.25 million. SNAP would launch within NASA's projected flight plans to investigate the mysterious qualities of dark energy in space.

Other Laboratory programs expected to benefit from the President's plan in the Office of Science are advanced scientific computing research, which gets a 4.2 percent boost to $173.5 million, and the Genomes-to-Life program, which would almost double in FY04 to nearly $60 million under this proposal.

In his press briefing for reporters, DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham made special mention of two other programs in which Berkeley Lab could play a role - carbon sequestration and alternative automobile technologies. The budget request maintains the FY03 level of $591 million for the department's Yucca Mountain waste repository project, boding well for Berkeley's team there.

Much of the detail of this budget proposal has yet to be analyzed. Officials say it's too early to anticipate any changes to the 88-inch cyclotron, a 40-year-old facility whose viability is at least assured through the current fiscal year.

More about the budget impacts on Berkeley Lab will be featured in this Friday's issue of Currents.

For links to various aspects of the proposed 2004 DOE budget, click here.

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