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| FYI: Science Policy News from AIP |
| THIS WEEK |
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| What’s Ahead |
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| McMurdo Station in August 2023. (Karen Pszonka) |
NSF Board Delving into Antarctic Harassment Response
The National Science Board, the governing body for the National Science Foundation, is devoting a large portion of its quarterly meeting on Wednesday and Thursday to reviewing NSF’s response to sexual assault and harassment in Antarctica. The topic has been a priority for the board since an independent audit in 2022 documented widespread harassment within the NSF-led U.S. Antarctic Program. In closed sessions, the board will hear “firsthand accounts of experiences in Antarctica” and receive updates on NSF’s recent actions, including the Office of Inspector General’s investigations in Antarctica. The House Science Committee is also investigating the matter and recently sent a letter to NSF critiquing its response to date. The committee urged the agency to do more to reform the culture of the Antarctic program and improve contractor oversight.
Senators Size Up Hurdles to Advanced Reactor Deployment
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will discuss opportunities and challenges associated with commercializing advanced nuclear reactors at a hearing on Thursday. Senators are likely to bring up the company NuScale’s recent termination of plans to build the first commercial small modular reactor power plant in the United States. The project was backed through a cost-share award by the Department of Energy and would have been built at Idaho National Lab but was abandoned due to diminishing economic viability. The hearing witnesses are John Wagner, director of Idaho National Lab; Jeff Waksman, an official in the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office; Edward Stones, vice president of energy and climate at the Dow chemical company; and Jeffrey Merrifield, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. DOE is receiving almost $2.5 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to support two advanced reactor demonstration projects, one at a Dow facility in Texas and the other in Wyoming, the home state of Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY). Separately, DOD is funding development of a transportable microreactor capable of powering military bases. The effort, called Project Pele, is aiming to start testing its first reactor at Idaho National Lab in 2025 but is facing safety and nonproliferation concerns that may cause delays.
Critical Minerals Supply Chains in the Spotlight
The House Science Committee will hold a hearing Thursday morning on federal research initiatives to strengthen the critical mineral supply chains. The hearing witnesses include Ryan Peay, the head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Resource Sustainability, which is exploring ways to extract critical minerals from byproducts of fossil fuel production. Also appearing are CEOs from supply chain investment and risk management companies and academic experts in critical minerals. On Thursday afternoon, the House Oversight Committee will hold a separate hearing on securing critical mineral supply chains with witnesses from DOE’s Office of International Affairs, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Interior.The events follow a slate of actions announced by the White House on Monday that are aimed at improving supply chain resilience, including for critical minerals. Among them, DOE has begun negotiations to award $275 million from its Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Recycling program. The interagency National Science and Technology Council also plans to launch the website criticalminerals.gov in January that will highlight initiatives to strengthen supply chains, and a new White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience will produce its first quadrennial supply chain review by December 2024.
Research Security Roundtable to Meet
The National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable organized by the National Academies will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington, DC. FBI intelligence analyst Priscilla Yeon-Vogelheim will open the meeting with a talk on how the bureau’s engagement with universities on research security has evolved in recent years. The roundtable will then discuss ways of providing due process to university researchers who are accused of wrongdoing, especially in cases where the allegations are adjudicated via administrative procedures rather than criminal proceedings. Subsequent sessions will review the Chinese government’s science and technology ambitions, research security practices at the federal contractor MITRE, and a research security framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The meeting will conclude with a session on “creating a culture of research security in the age of open science” featuring Kelvin Droegemeier, who directed the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Trump administration.
COP28 Climate Conference Kicks Off, Kerry to Announce Fusion Strategy
Delegates from 199 countries will converge in Dubai this week for the start of COP28, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. This year’s conference will mark the conclusion of the first-ever “global stocktake,” an assessment of countries’ progress toward meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. A technical report released in September as part of the stocktake found that the world will not meet the Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius unless countries accelerate their mitigation efforts. COP28 will provide an opportunity for governments to renegotiate targets for their next round of climate action plans, which are due by 2025. Unlike the previous two years, President Joe Biden is not expected to attend this year’s conference, though Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry and other senior administration officials will participate. Kerry told reporters he plans to unveil the first international strategy for commercializing fusion energy during the conference. Earlier this month, the U.S. and UK announced a new partnership built around advancing the U.S. Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy and the UK’s Fusion Strategy.
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| In Case You Missed It |
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| An illustration used to promote the Biden administration’s “year of open science.” (NSF) |
OSTP Explores Cost of Open Access Publishing
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy published a report on Nov. 22 that explores the impact of different mechanisms for covering the cost of openly publishing federally-funded research. The report outlines multiple challenges in calculating total article processing fees (APCs) borne by federal grantees and intramural researchers, but estimates that in 2021 the cost was roughly $378 million. Congress requested the report through its appropriations legislation for fiscal year 2023, citing concerns that some open access publishing financing mechanisms, particularly APCs and transformative agreements, may “present growing barriers to knowledge generation and sharing.” Congress specifically asked OSTP to estimate how much of the costs of both APCs and transformative agreements were borne by federal grantees. OSTP states it is unable to offer an accurate estimate of the costs of transformative agreements, citing complexities in how they are financed. The report builds on an economic analysis OSTP released in August 2022 alongside a directive that requires federally funded research publications to be free to read immediately upon publication, starting in 2026.
Vision Sketched for $3 Billion CHIPS Packaging Program
The CHIPS R&D Office published a 10-page document last week that offers its vision for the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, which will build U.S. capabilities for placing semiconductor chips in densely interconnected groupings. The office stated the program will support “an advanced packaging piloting facility for validating and transitioning new technologies to U.S. manufacturers [and] workforce training programs to ensure that new processes and tools are capably staffed.” The program will also fund projects focused on “materials and substrates, equipment, tools and processes, power delivery and thermal management, photonics and connectors, a chiplet ecosystem, and co-design for test, repair, security, interoperability and reliability.” The program will receive roughly $3 billion over five years from the CHIPS and Science Act as part of the $11 billion in R&D-focused semiconductor programs created by the law, with the first funding opportunity expected in early 2024. In a speech at Morgan State University announcing the vision document, National Institute of Standards and Technology Director Laurie Locascio noted that as of 2021 the U.S. was estimated to only have 3% of the global capabilities for semiconductor packaging.
Slowdown of Mars Sample Return Protested by California Lawmakers
A bipartisan group of six California lawmakers led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) sent a letter to NASA last week urging the agency to reverse its instruction to slow down work on the Mars Sample Return mission. The group expresses concern the move will make it impossible to meet a launch window in 2030, jeopardize billions of dollars in contracts, and cost California hundreds of jobs. They also assert it breaches the law, stating, “NASA’s deeply short-sighted and misguided decision to unilaterally adjust the funding allocation granted to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to carry out the MSR mission violates Congress’ appropriations authority.” MSR has recently faced stiff headwinds, with an independent review board report finding the mission will require billions of dollars more than previously anticipated and NASA now considering new changes to its architecture. NASA’s slowdown of work on MSR is a response to a proposal for steep cuts in the Senate’s fiscal year 2024 spending legislation, which is in tension with the House’s proposal to meet NASA’s requested amount. Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) and Reps. Judy Chu (D-CA), Mike Garcia (R-CA), and Young Kim (R-CA) also signed the letter.
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| Upcoming Events |
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Know of an upcoming science policy event either inside or outside the Beltway? Email us at fyi@aip.org.
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