[Moller_L2] MOLLER funding needs

[James Fast]

All,
The Inflation Reduction Act was passed late Friday.  It contains $217M in FY22 funding for DOE Nuclear Physics projects and MIEs that must be spent by 2027.

There are currently 5 such projects:
EIC
GRETA
MOLLER
HRS
0vbb

First the good news:
Based on what both David Dean and I have heard from HQ recently there is a good chance MOLLER will get most, if not all, of the remaining ~$36M in funding from this pot of money and that the funds would arrive by the middle of FY23.  GRETA is already fully funded to completion in the FY23 regular funding process and 0vbb is so early in the process that they won’t be able to use more than $10-12M of this.  HRS is similar to MOLLER in terms of cost and where they are in the process.  I think some will go to EIC, but the regular FY23 EIC budgets already look strong in the House and Senate marks.

And now the less pleasant realities this shines a light on:
Unfortunately our progress on nailing down physics design and requirements (SRD/ICD – recall I set a due date of last April) has lagged over the past year despite my many attempts to urge this along.  We have also been under-staffed on engineering so that has lagged as well.  We are not in a good position now to pass a full CD-2/3 Directors Review in January (recall that was planned for September) to get through the other reviews that would lead to full construction authorization when these funds arrive.  I am working on alternatives that minimize the self-inflicted delays to MOLLER, but we need to accept that we have fallen well behind where we needed to be by now.

For the scientific team, the focus must be to have a complete TDR draft written ASAP.  If that is not ready for review in September then the entire FDR/IDR schedule is at risk, which could push CD-2/3 even further out. The JLab engineers have demonstrated that they are on track to face these reviews in the fall.  I am less confident that the US Toroid will converge in time, but the main concern I have is getting the TDR done.  It [draft up to select missing engineering drawing] cannot slip past the end of September.  I am disappointed how little progress seems to have been made this summer when people were free of teaching commitments.

The second issue is that we cannot have lingering open questions popping up (latest being the dump pipe size, DS coil 3 belly plate thickness, uncertainty of collimator 5 and 6 geometries are really fixed).  This is costing us real effort that could have gone elsewhere when we have to retreat back, make new designs, repeat engineering analyses and redo drawings we have already started on.  When questions do arise, we need to be able to make decisions quickly – they can no longer sit for a month to be considered.  It also gets noticed by ONP and TJSO that we seem to have many open questions and new things popping up regularity.  They are not wrong – we simply have too many uncertainties for this point in the project.  I warned everyone over a year ago that the tempo was going to get alarming – that time has arrived.

For the CAMs and engineering staff – please keep pressing on.  The challenge for all of us is to get the project plan in P6 fully reviewed and updated by the end of the September processing and then turn attention to revamping the Cost Books.  As we get budgetary estimates from vendors we can update costs and delivery timelines in the fall, but otherwise the planning represented in P6 has to get frozen in October.  The other concern is the late arrival of prototypes, particularly the MPS.

This is a great team and we will get MOLLER over the finish line.
The question is when.  At worst, I see CD-2/3 slipping to summer and starting construction at the start of FY24.  That will be about a 6 month delay compared to our current “success oriented” schedule.  Hall A is already assuming we will be late and is starting to plan in earnest the next set of experiments that will fill this period (and maybe more).  If we want to avoid that, it is up to us to get a daunting amount of work done by end of September.

Bear in mind, ONP, TJSO, the lab and I all have to look at readiness for reviews 6-7 months out and have 90%+ confidence we will pass with flying colors before we will schedule a review with OPA.  I was just asked about whether we could be ready for CD-2/3 in March and after careful consideration had to say no given the schedule risk related to failure (OPA will say “see you in a year”).  I will have to answer that question again in November to see if we can really be ready in Summer 2023.

Regards,
Jim

James Fast
MOLLER Project Manager
Jefferson Lab
757-230-6833 (cell)
757-269-5324 (office)

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