Clarification and History of Proposed Fusion Law

[Jim Bowery]

I apologize for not foreseeing the need to post the origin and
history of the proposed replacement of the Magnetic Fusion
Engineering Act.

I am acting as the chairman for the Coalition for Science and
Commerce, a grassroots network of science and technology enthusiasts
who got their start in politics trying (successfully) to draft and
pass legislation to reform NASA's launch procurement policies.

After the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 (the Packard Act),
which we originated and pushed through Congress, was signed into
law, we looked around at other key areas of federal science and
technology policy that appeared to be in the same failure mode
as NASA's space transportation policy.

Although there were several candidates, from the Human Genome project
to the National Research and Education Network project, it appeared
the area with the greatest potential that most resembled NASA in its
policy failure, was the DoE's fusion program.

I went down to the law library in San Diego, dug out the McCormick
Act that informs the current fusion program, and began to look for
ways it might be amended to correct the failures of the current
fusion program. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a prohibition
against conflicts of interest in the committees. That, in itself,
was sufficient to ensure failure. I hoped that correcting the
constitution of the advisory committee to exclude conflicts of interest
would be sufficient to fix the problem.

However, as I began researching the political history of the fusion
program, it became clear that the effects of this central policy failure
had, over time, created an exceedingly politicized milieu -- so
politicized, in fact, that minor legislative fixes would be
overwhelmed by the vested interests that had become entrenched
within the program.

Further, it became clear that this failure had been going on for so
long that, like NASA's Shuttle program, a substantial inventory of
attractive innovations had built up, awaiting modest amounts of
funding, while large sums of money were still being spent on the
Tokamak technology -- a system design which had failed to meet the
expectations of its original proponents so miserably that those
proponents were turning against it. However, most were silenced by
the political milieu that funded them. The lone exception was
Bob Hirsch, whose stature in the field allowed him to speak the words
that so many engineers were afraid to say publicly (paraphrasing):

"The Tokamak is not the right system design. It's time to move on."

The parallels with the programmatic failures of NASA's Shuttle were
compelling. But the unrealized potential of fusion energy was far
greater than the unrealized potential of space transportation,
especially considering the fact that appropriate fusion technology
could make all current efforts in space transportation moot.

Efforts to raise private funds were hampered by a perception in
the investment community that if the DoE was spending hundreds
of millions of dollars a year on the Tokamak, there was no point
in even considering an investment in alternative fusion technologies.
Cold fusion exacerbated this situation. The political rancor over
cold fusion further chilled private investors toward fusion.

Over the course of the last year and a half, I have identified several
alternative fusion technologies, cold fusion among them, which have
their enthusiastic proponents -- proponents who are highly skeptical
of all technologies but theirs. This is typical of a robust and
immature field of technology.

My role was to talk to these innovators, brainstorm with them and
get their input on what sort of government program would be most
helpful to them without showing favoritism toward any one technical
approach.

Naturally, all innovators want money given to them to become the
next "flagship" program, but since this is precisely the policy
failure that led us into the mess we now face, I was careful to
set up a technically competitive program with incentives for private
investment in the actual achievement of engineering milestones on
the way to a viable commercial fusion system.

The result of that effort is the proposed Fusion Engineering Act
which you have received.

--
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