Scientific Challenges, Opportunities and Priorities for the U.S. Fusion Energy Sciences Program

In October 2003, Dr. Raymond Orbach, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, issued a charge to the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) “to identify the major science and technology issues that need to be addressed, recommend how to organize campaigns to address these issues, and recommend the priority order for these campaigns.” The sections in this report document the results of the Panel’s work. The first two sections describe the concepts of the overarching themes, topical scientific questions, and campaigns. The next six sections (Sections 3–8) describe in detail the six scientific campaigns. Section 9 describes some important enabling research activities necessary for the campaigns. Sections 10–12 describe the overarching themes, which provide a crosscutting perspective of the activities in the six campaigns. Finally, the Panel’s recommendations are set forth in Section 13. The charge letter to the panel is provided as Appendix A; the FESAC response letter is provided as Appendix D.