Everyone, As you may have heard (I know how the lab spies at HQ operate) - I have decided not to distribute any FY-10 funds for NEAMS in the October FINPLAN. The impact of doing this is that you are going to have to live off of carry-over for October. I anticipate that will not be a problem because we did not receive the bulk of the NEAMS funding until last May. Sorry for the short notice on this, but the situation required a "Command Decision" and hopefully it will not hurt us (specifically you) and in the end benefit us. The situation was that I was under pressure late last week and early this one to make a decision about the distribution of funds in the FINPLAN and start the preparation of the work-packages. I felt we were not prepared to do that because we are still under the $13M scenario for NEAMS. At $13M it certainly can deliver some important modeling and simulation support to the other Campaigns. However, we need to make it clear that our role is just a support role. At that level I strongly believe that NEAMS is not an activity that will be building advanced modeling and simulation capabilities. The good news is that this week things are looking much brighter on several fronts. There is discussion about shifting the recent "U enrichment" tax which could get us closer to $20M. We are also hearing that the House and Senate are preparing to conference the appropriations bills shortly after they return after Labor Day. This will provide clarity about the overall NE budget. Finally, Pete Miller and Pete Lyons are finally on board and that will provide some clarity about the role of modeling and simulation. So - where do we go from here? One thing that needs to happen right away is the NEAMS budget splits and high level scope planning (this was the subject of the canceled Seattle PMT meeting). Andrew is working on a process to get that information and I will let him explain what he wants to do. Once we have that in place, we will then have to prepare our work-packages and go through the process of getting those approved. Finally, based on the budget numbers that we finally get, they will be provided through the system to the FINPLAN and everyone will see new NEAMS funding on 1 November. Hopefully this is not too confusing and will not cause too many problems. Stand by for direction from Andrew on the planning process and please let me know if you have any questions, comments or problems. Regards, Alex ________________________________________________ Alex R. Larzelere Director, Advanced Modeling and Simulation Office of Nuclear Energy, Fuel Cycle Management (NE-5) U.S. Department of Energy 202-586-1906 [email protected]