January 9, 2008.  The FY 2008 appropriations for BES (H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, signed into law by the President on December 26, 2007) included no funding for this solicitation.  All of the proposals are now declined due to lack of funds. Principal investigators will receive written notification of the declination and anonymous reviews of their proposals.

The President's 2007 Budget Request included an increase of $12.4 million for FY 2007 Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (ANES) funding in the Basic Energy Science (BES) program. The ANES solicitation was developed in response to this opportunity. Pre-applications were requested to address one of the four priority research need areas (see table below). The applications will be evaluated by peer review and DOE staff according to established guidelines. The deadline for mandatory pre-proposals was November 22, 2006. The solicitations are CLOSED to everyone except those who received encouragement from DOE on their pre-proposal submission.

BES received 209 pre-applications and pre-proposals in response to FY 2007 Office of Science Notice 07-04 and DOE Laboratory Program Announcement 07-04, Basic Research for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. Each of these submissions was independently reviewed by at least three DOE program managers. Two criteria were used in this review process: (i) whether the proposed activities represented basic research, and (ii) whether the proposed research was responsive to the specific research goals described in the Notice. Based on the recommendations of DOE program mangers, principal investigators of 126 submissions have been encouraged to submit full proposals. A breakdown by research category is given in the table below. According to the rules set forth in the Notices, discouraged pre-applications or pre-proposals cannot be used to submit full proposals. Email messages informing the principal investigator of the encouragement or discouragement of a full proposal were sent prior to January 5, 2007.  The deadline for receipt of full proposals was March 14, 2007.

	Received	Encouraged
Understanding nanoscale interactions under extreme conditions	72	40
Mastering the behavior of actinides and fission products	87	59
Solution behavior under extreme conditions of radiation and temperature	15	8
Interfacial behavior under extreme environmental conditions	35	19
Totals	209	126

The joint Congressional resolution (H.J.R. 20) funding BES in FY2007 does not provide funding for Notice 07-04, Basic Research for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (ANES).  No awards will be made in ANES in FY2007.  The proposed FY2008 budget contained full funding for this initiative ($12.4M).  Accordingly, all full applications submitted in response to Notice 07-04 were held in consideration for funding in FY2008.  However, the FY 2008 appropriations for BES (H.R. 2764, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, signed into law by the President on December 26, 2007) included no funding for this solicitation.  All of the proposals are now declined due to lack of funds. Principal investigators will receive written notification of the declination and anonymous reviews of their proposals.