Home Away From Home Pays Off for DOE Physicists

Four physicists from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey racked up more than $1.5 million in lodging subsidies while on
"temporary" assignment to other labs, according to a

report released last week by the Department of Energy (DOE), which owns the lab. Those assignments lasted as long as 14 years, meaning that at least some researchers were no longer commuting but had moved to their
new work sites.

In his report, DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman called the costs "questionable" and "unreasonable." Princeton University, which manages the nuclear
fusion lab under a contract with DOE, has agreed to return $1 million to the department and has ended the subsidies.

On 18 May,

a front-page story in The Washington Post hinted at malfeasance, saying that the four unnamed physicists "had found a way to turn 'per diem' funds for a temporary assignment into a steady flow of extra income."
However, Robert Durkee, vice president and secretary of Princeton University, says the researchers did nothing wrong and were simply beneficiaries of an
overly generous policy to promote collaboration between labs. "We realize that [the program] could have been done for less, and that is why we were willing
to return the $1 million," Durkee says.