National Labs Face Cuts In Accelerator Programs

WASHINGTON--A panel of high-energy physicists has recommended slashing experimental programs at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Fermilab, and Brookhaven National Laboratory in response to expected budget cuts of up to 15 percent to be proposed by the Department of Energy (DOE). The cuts, if contained in the fiscal year 1993 budget that President Bush will submit in January to Congress, could mean layoffs of hundreds of scientists, the early termination of several research efforts, and the delay or cancellation of several facilities being planned. The comments of one member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP), meeting last month to suggest ways in which DOE could trim its $628 million annual budget for the field, reflected the feelings of the physicists about their uncomfortable task. "Whatever we do," declared Jonathan Dorfan, a researcher at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) at one point during the two-day meeting, "our preamble should contain an enormous primal scream of pain." Sitting in the audience, Melvin Schwartz, a 1988 Nobel laureate in physics who returned to Brookhaven lab this year to direct its high-energy and nuclear energy programs, didn't mince words in describing HEPAP's dilemma: "What you're seeing is the dismantling of 50 years' worth of high-energy physics in the United States. They're [HEPAP] being asked to make a $60 million cut in a $600 million program, and that's simply unacceptable. If I were on the committee I'd resign rather than participate in this farce." William Happer, director of DOE's Office of Energy Research, told the panel to assume a 1993 budget (to begin Oct. 1, 1992) that would be 10 percent below the 1992 budget enacted last month and does not account for an expected 5 percent rate of inflation. In response, the directors of the national labs and the university-based programs that are funded by DOE explained to the panel how the proposed cuts would devastate several existing programs. "You're looking at a formula for mediocrity by 1995," said Fermilab director John Peoples of the impact of the proposed $21 million cut in his lab's $225 million annual budget. Peoples's comments were echoed by each speaker. SLAC director Burton Richter figured that the proposed 12 percent cut in his $144 million budget would mean up to 250 layoffs, a premature end to research being carried out using one of the lab's main detectors, and delays in planning for the next-generation linear accelerator. Another DOE panel, chaired by physics professor Charles Townes of Princeton University, recommended last month that the department not continue with plans to build a machine that will examine the characteristics of subatomic particles known as beauty, or bottom, quarks, expected to be a major component of SLAC's research in the late 1990s. At Brookhaven, director Nicholas Samios said a 13 percent cut in his $82 million budget for high-energy physics would mean running the Advanced Gradient Synchrotron for only eight weeks, down from 12 weeks this year and a reduction of more than 75 percent from levels of only a few years ago. About 75 people would be laid off, Samios said, and work in several other areas--including generic research on superconducting magnets like the type to be used in the Texas superconducting supercollider (SSC)-- would be stopped. "We have little ability to take these cuts in a nice way," he told HEPAP members. Fermilab's Peoples outlined a scaling down of experimental programs, both in ongoing research and in ways to improve the capability of the lab's Tevatron accelerator. The panel did endorse, however, plans to upgrade the accelerator's main injector. That recommendation is expected to overturn a thumbs-down vote by the Townes panel. At the same time, HEPAP members debated how to provide the $15 million needed next year to begin building the $100 million Tevatron upgrade, and several voted in favor of taking a good chunk of the money from Fermilab's other programs. Happer instructed HEPAP not to consider cuts in "special presidential initiatives," a reference to the SSC. That has prompted some to accuse the administration of reneging on its promise not to build the $9 billion SSC at the expense of the rest of the government's physics research programs. Even so, the panel voted unanimously for keeping construction of the SSC on schedule, agreeing it is the field's top priority. In an effort at balance, however, HEPAP members decided that $3 million slotted for basic physics research at the SSC lab should suffer a proportionate share of the overall cuts.

National Labs Face Cuts In Accelerator Programs

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