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Non-military science programmes at the US Department of Energy (DOE) will enjoy a 10 per cent increase under the budget proposal — but much of the money will be consumed by the start of construction at the $1.3 billion Advanced Neutron Spallation Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee (see Nature 391, 421; 1998).

DOE's programme in high-energy physics will get an increase of just 2 per cent to $690 million, and programmes in biological and environmental research, fusion and nuclear physics will also see little change from their 1998 budgets.

But Martha Krebs, assistant secretary for energy research, says that, within these constraints, the funds for actually operating DOE's major scientific facilities will expand by $85 million to $1 billion.

On the applied research side, the department pledged an extra $338 million for work to assist in the reduction of carbon emissions. Most of this will be spent on research into renewable energy sources and energy efficiency.

No new funds would be made available for fusion energy, however. After the design phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ends in July, DOE will spend just $12 million a year on the collaboration, diverting the other $39 million it was spending on the project to domestic fusion programmes. “We've tried to maintain our commitment to fusion, but we saw other areas in which we want to invest,” says Federico Peña, the energy secretary.

Peña will put an extra $330 million into the science-based Stockpile Stewardship programme at the department's nuclear weapons laboratories, increasing its budget to $4.5 billion. He denied that the programme is out of control: “We think the Congress will understand, and we don't anticipate going above the $4.5 billion mark,” he says.

Clinton was due to visit the Los Alamos laboratory with Peña this week to inspect the progress of stockpile stewardship and talk about its relationship to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.