Comments on FY08 Budget Implications for NPP and Personal Safety

1
Comments on FY08 Budget Implications for NPP and
Personal Safety

• Steve Vigdor
• Physics All-Hands Meeting
• January 24, 2008

2
FY08 ONP Budget News

• DOE ONP budget 2.3 with respect to FY07, but
  protection of construction research budgets ?
  facility operations flat-flat at FY07 levels
  across the program
• RHIC accelerator expt support operations
  reduced by 10.5M with respect to Presidents
  FY08 request
• IMPACT 30 cryoweeks ? 19 cryoweeks ? short pp
  run 2nd straight year with no new data relevant
  to gluon polarization possibility of very long
  (9-month) shutdown if CR in early FY09
• Plans for future relatively protected stochastic
  cooling development proceeds as planned detector
  RD reduced from 1.5M to 1.2M experiment
  capital equipment reduced from 3.2M to 3.0M
  PHENIX FVTX and NCC upgrades start.
• Planning for how to incorporate budget reductions
  and prioritize RHIC running needs was done with
  experiment input to extent possible, given rapid
  time scales and holidays.

3
Plan for Rest of RHIC Run 8

• Very good machine performance reliability ?
  PHENIX, STAR should complete dAu goals earlier
  than planned
• Switch from dAu to 200 GeV pp on 1/28/08, run
  for 6 weeks (? 4 physics weeks, into mid-March)

• Emphasize fwd. hadron correla-tions, as pp
  reference for dAu gluon saturation tests
  transverse spin asymmetries in region where
  inclusive spin effects sizable.
• Allow 2-day test at end for AuAu below
  Einjection

4
RHIC Budget Impact Statement Provided to Marge
Lynch at CEGPA

• Overall, we have lost 30 weeks of RHIC operations
  during FY06-08, and we did this well only because
  of the FY06 grant from Jim Simons. This is
  stretching out the RHIC physics program, placing
  us at a competitive disadvantage with respect to
  new facilities being commissioned (LHC) or
  planned (FAIR at GSI in Germany). It is making
  RHIC operation fall far below optimal efficiency,
  and is gradually demoralizing the user base and
  delaying the production of Ph.D. scientists. It
  is making heavily invested foreign partners
  (especially the RIKEN Institute in Japan) doubt
  U.S. reliability as a scientific partner. RHIC
  has absolutely world-leading capabilities, but
  continuing budgeting problems limit their
  exploitation.
• Working to optimize the impact of RHIC physics
  even under challenging budgets. Accelerated
  upgrade plans help to ensure future impact.

5
OHEP Budget Impacts at BNL

• National disaster feeds through to BNL mostly via
  ILC stop-work impact on SMD (?800K, mostly on
  labor)
• Other HEP core funding protected at initial
  program guidance levels, except for -0.9
  across-the-board rescission.
• Daya Bay project gets increase of 1.0M, US ATLAS
  kept at initial guidance level, as DOE tries to
  protect programs that will produce high-impact
  data over coming 5 years.
• While things will be tight in HEP at BNL, overall
  problem far less severe than at FNAL, SLAC
• Extra 1.7M requested for expanded RACF
  infrastructure not available in FY08 DOE will
  try for FY09 increment.

6
Collateral Damage

• Squeezing out a minimally useful pp RHIC run
  under the omnibus bill requires belt-tightening
  elsewhere in NPP.
• Reduced GPP and GPE funds from ONP require some
  descoping of RACF expansion and of
  Instrumentation Division capital equipment
  upgrades.

7
Where Does Personal Safety Come In?

• Optimizing science impact ? minimizing lost time
  and lost credibility with DOE from staff
  accidents site-wide
• BNL work planning is very effective in reducing
  accidents in professional activities, but
  lifestyle accidents have increased -- nobody
  really understands why!
• A little extra common-sense attention paid by
  each of us to second-nature activities cant
  hurt, and is likely to help reduce reportable
  incidents.

E.g. Place safety above multi-tasking! Be alert
to crumbling infrastructure!