ABSTRACT
The end of 1976 saw the election of Jimmy Carter as President of the United States and extensive discussion of the need for a new federal agency dedicated to addressing national energy issues. Thus was created the U.S. Department of Energy on October 1, 1977, and its absorption of the FEA, the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), the Research Applied to National Needs (RANN) program of the NSF, and selected parts of the Department of the Interior (DOI). I was asked by the Carter Transition Team to comment on several energy-related issues, including management issues of a new department, and the advisability of continued funding of the federal government’s fusion energy R&D program. On the former I recommended a Deputy Secretary focused on management issues because departmental Secretaries often devote too little time to management given their other responsibilities. On the latter I recommended continued funding based on the long-term potential of fusion energy, despite its many technical barriers. If successfully harnessed it is essentially an unlimited energy source with fewer and shorter term radiation waste disposal problems than nuclear fission. I was unsuccessful with the first recommendation and successful with the second.
