In its report to DOE of January 27, 1996, the Fusion Energy Advisory Committee (FEAC) recommended that a review of Alternative Concepts be carried out as part of making the transition to a Fusion Energy Sciences Program. This review should fundamentally be directed at recommending an investment strategy for funding alternate concepts. What criteria, in addition to scientific excellence, should determine the effort devoted to the Alternative Concept Program (for example, similarity to or difference from the tokamak, power density, size, etc.)? Within the general guidelines of this recommendation, the Department requests the FEAC to organize and conduct such a review as expeditiously as possible, using whatever approach it deems most appropriate. Although FEAC recommended that inertial fusion energy (IFE) should be considered as part of the alternative concepts review, the Department recognizes the distinct characteristic of IFE and will request a review of IFE in a separate charge.

It is generally recognized that the various alternative concepts are at significantly different levels of development. Within this context, the review should address the following:

1. Review the present status of alternative concept development in light of the international fusion program. As part of this review consider not only the prospects for alternative concepts as fusion power systems but also the scientific contributions of alternative concept research to the Fusion Energy Sciences Program and plasma science in general.

2. The review should produce an overall plan for a U.S. alternative concepts development program including experiments, theory, modeling/computation and systems studies, which is well integrated into the international alternative concepts program. The U.S. plan and supporting documentation should include but not be limited to:
   • recommendations on how best to collaborate in alternative concepts where our international partners already have large experiments (e.g. the stellarator),
   • recommendations for encouraging new innovations in alternative concepts,
   • a methodology for assessing on a comparative basis the scientific progress of alternative concepts in their early stages of development, and
   • a set of criteria for use in determining when an alternative concept is ready to undertake a "proof-of-principle" scale experiment. For this purpose, consider the Princeton Large Torus as the proof-of-principle experiment which validated the tokamak concept.

3. The spherical tokamak is recognized to be a scientifically advanced alternate. Based on the FEAC recommendations to enhance research on alternative concepts, the FY 1997 budget request contains proposed funding for the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment (NSTX) at Princeton. An experiment of this size and scope could be considered a "proof-of-principle" for this concept. There are several ongoing spherical tokamak programs and several new grant applications also under review. We are not asking you to review any specific proposals. Rather an assessment of the readiness of this concept to move to "proof-of-principle" experimentation would provide a useful example to be carried out early in the overall review process. This assessment should specifically address, in the international context, the present theoretical understanding and experimental data base of the spherical tokamak concept. In addition, the potential for such spherical tokamak research to resolve key physics and technology issues of importance to both the conventional tokamak and the spherical tokamak as a reactor in its own right should be considered.

   The FEAC's findings and recommendations with regard to the spherical tokamak assessment should be delivered to the Director of Energy Research by mid-April. The overall review of alternative concepts should be delivered by mid-July.