U.S. Department of Energy, Oakland Operations Office, 1301 Clay Street, Room 700N, Oakland, CA 94612-5208

A -- ADVANCED FUSION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT POC Aundra Richards, Contracting Officer, (510) 637-1901 The Department of Energy (DOE), Oakland Operations Office, intends to award a contract on a sole source basis to General Atomics (GA) to continue research and development activities in the area of advanced fusion technology. This contract will compliment and be coordinated with two ongoing DOE funded efforts at GA: research on and operation of the DIII-D Tokamak device; and advanced toroidal fusion theory studies. GA's aggregate set of capabilities in fusion is required to promote innovation and progress in critical enabling fusion technologies. This research will permit the US Fusion Program to develop the necessary knowledge base and advance the state of fusion science for economically and environmentally attractive future fusion energy sources. GA will perform tasks in several interdependent areas of fusion technology, integrate that work with recent and ongoing fusion research, and test concepts, where applicable, on the existing DIII-D Tokamak and other fusion research devices. The four areas of fusion technology are: 1) Advanced design and system analysis for fusion power plants (e.g. ARIES, PULSAR, ARIES-RS); 2) Plasma heating and current drive techniques (e.g. advanced Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequency (ICRF) and Electron Cyclotron Range of Frequency (ECRF) concepts); 3) Advanced plasma fueling systems for testing on DIII-D; and 4) Technology development for alternative concepts (e.g. Inertial Fusion Energy target studies). A fifth task will be to continue GA's coordination of International Collaborations. The knowledge gained from the work to be performed by GA will also compliment the engineering design activities for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Project currently in progress. **** (0148)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0004 19970530\A-0004.SOL)