DEPARTMENT OF APPLIED PHYSICS Seeley W. Mudd Building

TEL (212)854-4457, FAX (212)854-8257 500 West 120th Street

May 31, 1996

Dean R. W. Conn, Chair, FEAC

University of California - San Diego

Office of the Dean, School of Engineering

9500 Gilman Drive

La Jolla, CA 93093-0403

Dear Professor Conn:

In March you sent by FAX to the FEAC Scientific Issues Subcommittee (SciCom) a copy of a charge to the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee initiated by the March 25 letter from Dr. Martha Krebs to you involving Alternative Fusion Concepts and directed that the SciCom begin to address the issues involved in order to prepare a report to FEAC. In Dr. Krebs' letter of March 25, 1996, the DOE asked FEAC to organize and conduct a review of alternative concepts (charge letter is attached) and specifically to address the following: (1) Review the present status of alternative concept development in light of the international fusion program; and (2) Produce an overall plan for a United States alternative concepts development program including experiments, theory, and modeling/computation and systems studies, that is well integrated into the international alternative concepts program. The DOE asked that the overall review of alternative concepts be delivered to DOE by mid July. In addition, the DOE asked for an earlier report on the "...findings and recommendations with regard to the spherical tokamak assessment..."

In response, the SciCom established an "Alternative Concept" Panel including members from universities, national laboratories, and the international community. (Membership list of the panel is attached.) To date, this panel has met twice, once in Germantown, MD and once in Chicago. The meeting of the Alternative Concepts Panel in Washington, D.C. on March 26 and 27 included presentations from U.S. scientists on spherical tokamaks (agenda attached). More recently, this panel met in Chicago on April 23 and 24 with presentations on stellarators, reversed-field pinches, spheromaks, and field-reversed configurations (agenda attached). This panel is planning one additional meeting June 6 and 7 in San Diego and invitations have been extended for presentations on all other alternate concepts.

This letter transmits the Alternative Concepts Panel findings with regard to its assessment of spherical tokamak research. A detailed scientific assessment of U.S. alternative concept research within an international context will be provided in the panel's final report to be transmitted to you in July.

The FEAC-SciCom has reviewed this interim report of the Alternative Concepts Panel and voted to accept it with 12 in favor (1 opposed and 1 abstention). The SciCom also voted to endorse the panel findings with 12 in favor (1 opposed only to finding 3), 1 opposed , and 1 abstention. Key among these is that the panel finds that the spherical tokamak concept is scientifically ready to move to the "proof-of-principle" stage of development.

Sincerely yours,

Gerald A. Navratil, Vice-Chair, FEAC-SciCom,

on behalf of the Scientific Issues Subcommittee of the

Fusion Energy Advisory Committee (FEAC-SciCom), and

its Alternative Concepts Panel

Enclosure