The future of ITER

Fusion has long been an interest of mine, and I have followed closely the progress of ITER, the international prototype fusion reactor project. I found David Kramer’s story (Physics Today, May 2015, page 21 ) particularly revealing.

I began my career as a program manager and had the good fortune to serve under a group of managers who worked together on the Apollo program, where many of the tools for program management were developed. Coincidentally, the programs I took part in were primarily fusion related, including the Large Coil Project intended to develop prototype toroidal field coils for tokamaks.

The current state of ITER is easy to understand. None of the basic tenets of program management—well-defined specifications and budgets, effective change control, clear lines of authority, and a manager with the ability to promptly make key decisions—have been applied to it. The optimism apparently associated with the recent appointment of Bernard Bigot as director general is laughable. Until the participants are committed to converting ITER from a technopolitical hodgepodge into a real project, the US is completely justified in its skepticism. ITER has no chance of success under the current conditions.