7th June 1998
Davidson C
Opryland Hotel Convention Center, Nashville, Tennessee
Members Present: W. Hogan (Chair), W. Houlberg, C. Wong, G. Logan, D. Dudziak, K. McCarthy, M. Bourham
Members Present via TeleCon: none
Others Present: R. Miller, K. Schultz, G. Kulcinski, P. Wilson, A. Kadak, K. Umstadter, A. Kadak, S. Brereton, G. Miley
Executive Committee Members Absent: Y. Seki, D. Ruzic, R. Santoro, T. Dolan, C. Bathke, L. Bogart
The FED Executive Committee (ExCom) meeting was called to order at 3:00 p.m. by FED chair W. Hogan. Agenda is attached). (A-1)
The minutes of Nov.1997 were prepared by C. Wong, reviewed via-e-mail by W. Hogan and were e-mailed to ExCom members. They were subsequently sent to ANS headquarters and distributed to ExCom members with additional attachments. This was verified with T. Bishop of ANS headquarter after the conference call. Since we did not have enough copies at the meeting for further review, C. Wong was instructed to distribute the minutes to the ExCom members again. We will then consider the approval of the Nov. 1997 minutes by e-mail at the next ExCom conference call.
C. Wong reported that our income from membership for 1997 is $612, adding to $6925 from carry over plus projected revenue of $1800 from the 1998 Fusion Topical meeting, our total balance as of June 1998 is $9337. For CY98, our executive committee has approved spending as follows: $1500 for awards $800 for national meeting expenses and $2000 for student travels support. With these income and spending, the projected balance at the end of CY98 is $5037. An Excel table of the FED budget is attached (A-2).
J. Hofstetter of Savannah River Section presented a short history of the International Conference on Tritium in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications. The next conference, the 6th topical meeting is proposed for March 27-31, year 2000 to be held in Augusta, GA. The conference was proposed to the ANS program committee. Approval is expected at the ANS Winter meeting this fall. FED was asked to co-sponsor the meeting. Executive committee voted to give provisional support to the 6th Tritium Topical meeting. W. Houlberg will check the coordination with other meeting schedule. The 6th Tritium Topical Meeting Information Questionnaire is attached with this meeting minutes. (A-3)
W. Hogan reported on the activities of the ANS president's task force on infrastructure. The approach is to down size the Board of directors and to energize membership by showing the value of participation in ANS. Completion of the restructuring will take another 6 months. It is envisioned, however, that after that period the Board and the appropriate national committees will consider whether and how to restructure the Committee and Professional Divisions of ANS. Thus the complete restructuring could go on for a couple of years. We supported the activities of the infrastructure task. We then had discussions on the support of ANS provided to the Fusion Energy Division. In general, we questioned the adequacy of the support that Fusion Topical Meeting has been receiving. For the meeting at Nashville, we feel that the hotel is too expensive and the registration fee is too high compared to what we are getting in return. A. Kadak of ANS listened to our complaints and he will report them to ANS. He further suggested that comments could be sent to Kadak@LOA.com. A copy of the "President’s Task Force on Infrastructure," is attached. (A-4)
K. Schultz re-stated the results of the letter survey on why members failed to renew their membership. Not many people had responded. It was suggested that K. Schulz could do another survey by e-mail. Schultz will try to get the membership drop list from ANS.
W. Hogan generated discussion on whether FED should consider enlarging our scope and/or merging with another ANS division to give us a larger interest pool? Just as the new ANS statement of purpose has focused upon nuclear science and technology instead of just nuclear energy, and OFE has now become OFES, the FED could consider expanding our scope beyond fusion energy. The general consensus was that we do not feel the need to merge with another ANS division, but we should find a way to encourage the participation of plasma technologists. A suggestion is to change the name of the next fusion topical meeting from "Topical Meeting, Technology of Fusion Energy" to "Topical Meeting of Fusion and Plasma Technology". If an e-mail survey on membership is to be carried out, a survey on the scope of the Division can be added. The Executive Committee should play a role in developing the questions to be asked if this survey is to be done. It was also suggested, to increase membership, we should continue to encourage ICF/IFE colleagues to join ANS and participate in our division.
P. Wilson of the ANS EC&P task group praised our leadership in the use of electronics newsletter and conference calls. His committee is going to provide guidelines on the use of electronics communication and publication. He then listened to our discussion on improving ANS publications. Suggestions include making use of the Web page for publication, the use of an electronics publication template, and photo ready input. With regard to the meeting information on the Web, J. Haines was asked to look into the reason why our 1998 Topical Meeting session's agenda was not accessible through the ANS Web page.
G. Miley reported that Fusion Technology is doing well in general. However, he expected further reduction on the number of contributed papers, and suggested that we drop back one issue this year. The ANS publication board will have to consider this suggestion. Library subscription has also dropped 12-15%. G. Miley re-iterated to us the four ways to support Fusion Technology: To encourage library subscriptions, pay page charges, subscribe personally and contribute articles. G. Miley also reported that a new Russian Editor would need to be identified. Dr. Yuri A. Sokolov, the present editor, haschanged jobs.
W. Hogan reported the recommendations from the FESAC Fusion Material Research Subpanel. There was a strong consensus on the subpanel that the current program is focused too narrowly on the experimental investigation of radiation effects on three specific materials (Ferritic steel, Vanadium, and SiC). It was felt that, in view of the current program situation, it is premature to narrow the focus of this research so much. Therefore, the report from the subpanel contains recommendations to broaden the effort on materials to include materials damage issues relevant to a wider variety of fusion power plant concepts, including both alternative MFE concepts and IFE concepts. Secondly, the panel was impressed with the progress on modeling damage in various materials and encouraged OFES to increase the level of effort on modeling compared to the experimental effort. Recognizing how easy it is to recommend increased funding, the panel went further and suggested that if new funds are not available, the OFES should redirect existing funds within the current $6 million per year materials development program.
G. Miley questioned the report at the FPA meeting that there was a motion to transfer the fusion budget from the Energy Account to the Science Account. The general concern is the possible agenda of reducing the fusion budget further. ExCom members recommended writing a letter to OFES and/or DOE to express our concern that we should have been consulted before switching the fusion program budget from the Energy Account to the Science Account. W. Hogan will draft the letter and W. Houlberg will review and send the letter.
The 1997 Edward Teller award that was acted on during the last Executive committee meeting was proposed and accepted by the ANS Honors and Awards committee. The Teller award is to be presented at a series of international conferences, the first of which is the 1st International Conference on Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications (IFSA), September 12-17, 1999, at University Bordeaux 1, Bordeaux, France. This conference series is organized by LLNL, LULI (Laboratorie pour Utilization des Laser Intense, in France and Osaka University). The ANS approved content of the final draft on what we had agreed on. A copy of the document is included as attachment (A-5). This award is given to recognize pioneering work in the area of laser and ion-particle beams to produce unique high-density matter for scientific research and for controlled thermonuclear fusion. ANS headquarters was asked to set up an account to collect the endowment and hold the money for FED. FED chair will have the authority to seek expert advice on the nominee and to approve the nominee.
The Executive Committee had agreed on the following statement concerning the award:
"FED agrees to be the ANS host for the Edward Teller award and to recommend to ANS that they be the conduit for donated funds to be disbursed to the organizers of the IFSA International conference for the purpose of making the Edward Teller Medal and any accompanying cash prize. The FED Executive Committee will advise the ANS Honors and Awards Committee on the acceptability of the candidate."
G. Kulcinski, Chair of Honors and Awards committee, announced the recipients of the three 1998 FED Awards. Dr. John Wesley (GA) has received the Outstanding Technical Accomplishment Award for his work on the design of ITER divertor poloidal field system. Prof. Nasr Ghoniem has received the Outstanding Achievement Award for his work in developing low activation ferritic steels and basic damage analysis of fusion materials. The Best Student Paper Award was presented to Dr. John Menard (PPPL, formerly at Princeton University) for his paper "Ideal MHD Stability Limits of Low Aspect Ratio Tokamak Plasmas" published in Journal of Nuclear Fusion, Vol. 37, 595 (1997).
C. Wong presented the suggestion by Dr. Y. Seki of JAERI for the Fusion Engineering Division of Atomic Energy Society of Japan to co-sponsor the next Fusion Topical Meeting for the year 2000. The ExCom members welcomed this suggestion and voted unanimously to approve this co-sponsorship proposal. The Coordinator from the Japanese side will be Professor S. Tanaka of University of Tokyo. In the mean time FED will investigate again the possibility of have an non-imbedded Fusion Topical Meeting for the year 2000. K. McCathy of INEEL was asked to check the interest of INEEL to be the local host of this 14th Topical Meeting of Fusion and Plasma Technology. Eastern Carolina Local ANS Section with support from NCSU may also be interested in hosting the meeting. W. Houlberg will work with ANS for the planning of this non-embedded meeting.
W. Hogan welcomed the following new elected members to the FED.
Executive Committee Members:
The FED Excecutive committee would like to thank the outgoing officers for their efforts in the last several years:
We would also like to acknowledge the work of those who have helped greatly without an elected position:
"Should FED increase its scope and/or merge with another ANS division?"