White House seeks $100 million for FRIB

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is seeking $100 million to continue construction of a nuclear research facility at Michigan State University.

“I think it’s going very well,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said of the project Tuesday during a briefing of the department’s budget proposal for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1.

Construction of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, which is supposed to be completed by 2022, is eight to 10 weeks ahead of schedule, according to another department official.

“We continue to strive to bring this project to completion on time and on budget,” said Mark Burnham, MSU’s vice president for governmental affairs. Overall construction is 55 percent completed, he said.

The facility is a being built under a cooperative agreement between the federal government, which is picking up $635.5 million of the cost, and the university, which is paying for $94.5 million.

The $100 million the federal government wants to spend in the next fiscal year would keep construction on schedule.

After 2017, federal spending is scheduled to ratchet down for the final four years of funding.

In December, Congress approved the full $100 million requested by the administration for this fiscal year’s funding, even though lawmakers were months late in finishing the budget.

The Obama administration’s 2017 budget request is subject to the approval of a Republican Congress, which has already declined to invite Obama's budget director, Shaun Donovan, to testify about his proposal.

The Energy Department is requesting a 10 percent overall increase over this year’s spending, and a 6 percent increase in science spending.

Moniz said while 10 percent is “obviously a very large increase,” there’s a lot of support for the department’s commitment to innovation in energy and other areas.

“The innovation agenda is one that a lot of people can get around, and have gotten around, in a bipartisan way,” he said. .

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will provide intense beams of rare isotopes for a wide variety of studies in nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics and other topics in nuclear physics. It will help scientists study the origin of the elements and the evolution of the cosmos.

The Energy Department says the science is essential for U.S. leadership in that area, and to provide the knowledge and workforce needed “for numerous activities and applications relevant to national security and economic competitiveness.”

The 2017 budget request also includes $500,000 for a high resolution gamma array tracking device that will be built at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to “exploit the full scientific potential of FRIB.”

The $100 million request for FRIB would help pay for completed construction of some key conventional construction, and enable work to start on the cryogenics plant and distribution system. Work on the technical systems would also continue.

The facility has the support of Michigan’s congressional delegation. In a letter to Moniz last year, Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters said getting $100 million for 2017 is “essential to keeping plans and construction on time and on budget.”

Burnham said MSU will work with the delegation to get the full $100 million approved by Congress.