The head of the Department of Energy's science office will visit Capitol Hill tomorrow, giving House lawmakers a chance to get answers on a budget plan that would steer money to basic research and shift the federal government's nuclear priorities.

William Brinkman, the acting undersecretary for science, will testify before a House Appropriations subcommittee on President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2013. The plan would increase the budget for the Office of Science by $127.5 million to $5 billion, a 2.6 percent increase from current levels.

Almost all of that increase would go toward basic energy sciences, which would see its budget increased by $111.5 million to $1.8 billion. The nuclear physics, high energy physics and fusion energy programs would lose $20.5 million, $14.3 million and $2.7 million, respectively, under the proposal.

That could spark some questions from Energy and Water Development Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey Republican and one of the House's most dedicated supporters of nuclear energy.

During a hearing last month on DOE's broader budget, he complimented Secretary Steven Chu for coming out with a proposed budget that funds nuclear security programs and small nuclear reactors. Even as he called for more spending to advance nuclear energy, Frelinghuysen joined other committee Republicans in slamming the Obama administration's focus on renewable energy, saying that the United States needs "sustainable jobs and opportunities, not jobs which rely on government largesse."

New clean energy technologies get the lion's share of their research funding through the basic energy sciences program, which focuses on new materials and chemical processes.

That has broader political support than other clean energy programs. But during several visits to Congress in the past month, Chu has had to defend a plan to cut funding for several high-profile nuclear energy projects while giving a boost to others, such as an international effort to build a fusion reactor.

On at least two occasions, Democrats have told Chu that they will try to fund projects back home by pulling funding from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, a project led by the European Union that is now under construction in the south of France. As part of a commitment made several years ago, the United States would give the ITER project $150 million in fiscal 2013, up from $105 million this year (E&E Daily, March 9).

Since the release of the budget, top agency officials have made the case for ITER by arguing that about 80 percent of the project's budget has been spent in the United States. Of the $168 million sent to national laboratories from 2006 to 2011, $32 million went to Frelinghuysen's home state of New Jersey, Brinkman said in a presentation last week.

The only two states to get more money from ITER were Tennessee, the home of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and New Mexico, the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Both of the laboratories have powerful political patrons in the Senate: Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) leads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, while Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) leads his party on the Senate Appropriations Committee panel that writes DOE's budget.

Brinkman, the only witness scheduled to testify at the hearing, has led the science office since November, when Obama's appointed science undersecretary Steven Koonin left for a post at a research group that does consulting for the federal government.

Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, March 20, at 2 p.m. in 2362-B Rayburn.

Witness: William Brinkman, acting undersecretary for science, DOE.