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News & Analysis
The budgetary shortfalls that have
gripped the US over the past year
seem ready to claim a new victim:
the nuclear-physics programme. A
report released early last month,
by a subpanel of the government’s
Nuclear Science Advisory Committee
(NSAC) concluded that the
country will have to close one of its
three large nuclear-science facilities
unless the field receives at least a
small increase in government funding.
It opted for the axe to fall on
perhaps the best known facility –
the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
(RHIC) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory in New York.
The report had been commissioned
last April by William Brinkman,
head of the Office of Science
at the Department of Energy (DOE)
in response to indications that looming
austerity could freeze the department’s
$547m annual budget for
nuclear physics. The panel charged
with writing the report – led by
nuclear physicist Robert Tribble of
Texas A&M University – considered
three budget scenarios for the
next five years: zero growth, annual
growth at a level similar to inflation,
as well as a “modest increase” of
1.6% annually above inflation.
Only under the last scenario, the
panel concluded, could the country
operate all three of its major
nuclear-physics facilities. In addition
to the 13-year-old RHIC, these
are the Continuous Electron Beam
Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility in Virginia, which is
undergoing a $310m upgrade, and
the $615m Facility for Rare Isotope
Beams (FRIB) under construction at
Michigan State University (see box).
The panel concluded that CEBAF
should be maintained “under all
budget scenarios”, owing to the
amount already invested in it, which
included $65m from the 2009 American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
But choosing which of the other two
6
to sacrifice proved difficult. “If we
close the RHIC now, we cede all
collider leadership – and not just
the high-energy collider – to CERN
and we lose the scientific discoveries
that are enabled by the recent
intensity and detector upgrades at
the RHIC,” the report notes. “If we
terminate FRIB construction, future
leadership in the cornerstone area of
nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics
will be ceded to Europe and
Asia. In addition a window of opportunity
to construct the FRIB with
significant non-federal resources
pledged to the project will close and
is not likely to reopen.”
Close call
The panel finally opted to recommend
closing RHIC, which has an
annual budget of $160m, but admitted
that “losing any one of the components
will cause severe and lasting
damage to the field”. Tribble later
told Physics World that the vote was
“very close”, although the committee
decided not to publicly reveal the
actual count. The US nuclear-physics
community responded swiftly to the
report by vowing to fight for a budget
physicsworld.com
Nuclear physics faces loss of collider
A government panel in the US has recommended the closure of the hugely successful Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory if funding for nuclear physics is not increased,
as Peter Gwynne reports
Testing times
Brookhaven National
Laboratory’s
Relativistic Heavy
Ion Collider may have
to close if funding for
the US Department
of Energy is cut.
Brookhaven National Laboratory
increase, which Tribble himself will
support. “I will do whatever I can
to help in that regard,” he says. “All
panel members feel very strongly
that this could be a serious problem
for US nuclear physics.”
Even before the report was
released, the heads of the three
facilities had begun collaborative
efforts to counter the potential
loss of a major facility. “We all
appreciate that our general best
interests are served by a different
outcome than the cut,” says Doon
Gibbs, Brookhaven’s interim director.
Meanwhile, Robert McKe own,
deputy director for science at the Jefferson
lab, admits to being “relieved”
that his is not the facility likely to be
in jeopardy but adds that “losing
any one of our facilities would be a
very devastating blow to the field”.
Similarly, Konrad Gelbke, director
of the National Superconducting
Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan
State, which is overseeing planning
for the FRIB, points out “huge losses
to research in nuclear physics if the
more stringent budget scenario is
played out”.
Fighting on
Leaders of the nuclear-physics community,
however, emphasize that
the DOE and the government do
not have to accept the panel’s recommendations.
Indeed, Congress
has not even determined a budget
for the DOE for the current financial
year. The heads of all three
facilities, along with members of the
nuclear-physics community and scientific
societies such as the American
Physical Society, have already
begun a powerful effort to persuade
local representatives, senators and
Congress as a whole that US science
will suffer in both the short and the
long term without a small increase in
the nuclear physics budget.
The message has certainly reached
leaders at the DOE. “None of this
bodes well for science at the rate
Physics World March 2013