Continued US support of ITER could drain funding from domestic projects

Nature : Under the pressure of current budget constraints , US support for ITER, the international fusion-energy reactor being built in France, may be waning. Since 2003, when US fusion researchers signed on to ITER, the project’s cost has quadrupled. Meanwhile, three existing US facilitiesâmdash;MIT’s Alcator C-Mod ; the DIII-D in San Diego, California; and the National Spherical Torus Experiment in Princeton, New Jerseyâmdash;are feeling the pinch. A Department of Energy group met last week to discuss the US fusion program in light of President Obama’s proposed budget cuts for 2013. Although US fusion researchers voiced their continued support of ITER, they pointed out the importance of maintaining domestic projects: “Otherwise, the results from ITER will only benefit the rest of the world,” said Stewart Prager, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.