ITER collaboration defuses standoff

“We should be trying to make fusion a commercial reality as soon as possible.” So says Steve Cowley, head of the UK fusion program, referring to the scheduling troubles facing ITER, the international project intended to prove the feasibility of fusion energy. “What worries me is, if you push ITER back, it becomes less relevant. Fusion must deliver on a time scale that is relevant for the energy debate.” Otherwise, he says, “we might opt for decisions in energy that we regret—like the long-term burning of coal. Things you would not do if you had fusion.”

Cowley’s comments came ahead of a meeting held in late February, at which ITER representatives breathed a collective sigh of relief upon reaching an understanding that puts them on the path to a binding agreement on the project’s schedule. In preparation for sealing such an agreement at the upcoming June ITER council meeting, the seven partners are combing through their individual production and budget plans to make sure they can commit to a schedule that would postpone first plasma to late 2019, more than a year later than the previous goal.

The European Union (EU) is hosting ITER in Cadarache, France, and is responsible for 45% of its value as divvied up in 2006. China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the US each have a 9% share. In settling on the 2019 goal, says Toshide Tsunematsu, a Japanese ITER council member, “Asia won out against Europe. Europe wanted to prolong.” He adds, “We have no concerns about Europe at this time. We have to go forward together, otherwise ITER will not be successful.”

The significance of first plasma, says Norbert Holtkamp, who as principal deputy director general of the ITER Organization (IO) is responsible for getting the project built, will be to mark the end of the construction period. “Having operated the first plasma proves that all parties to ITER have successfully constructed what they promised.”

Not in question are the 2026 goals of 500-MW fusion power and a 10-fold net power gain with deuterium-tritium plasmas. Further in the future, ITER aims to run with pulse lengths of several thousand seconds and perhaps approach ignition, or infinite gain, for which no external heating is required.

A weak link

Tensions within the collaboration came to a head at last November’s council meeting, when the EU proposed to delay ITER’s first plasma to as late as 2021; the partners had already agreed in 2008 to push the date from 2016 to 2018. Evgeny Velikhov of Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute, who has since become council chair, told Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a publicized conversation on 15 February, “Europe turned out [to be] a weak link…. Unfortunately, their organizational structure is very poor.” Or, as Cowley sums up: “The tension is that the EU wanted to go slower. [But] the partners said, ‘Look, you outbid the Japanese to host ITER. Now live up to it.’”

The EU had been dragging its feet because the cost of ITER has gone up. Contributing to the increase are inflation, design modifications, higher raw-material and labor costs, extra payroll due to delays, and inaccurate earlier estimates, among other things. Because of the high proportion—80%—of in-kind contributions and the partners’ different accounting methods, the total cost is hard to know, but it’s likely to be around $10 billion to $12 billion. The EU, shouldering the biggest chunk of ITER, has seen the tab for its contributions at least double since the 2006 agreement. The cost for other members has also risen, but less dramatically.

“If your cost is 20-30% higher [than in 2006], you had very good estimates; 30-50%, your estimates were okay; higher than that, you should look back at what you have done,” says South Korea’s Gyung-Su Lee, chair of the ITER management advisory committee.

Risk, time, and money

But Octavi Quintana Trias, European Commission director of nuclear energy research, says it’s unfair to blame the people who costed the EU’s portion of ITER. He points instead to the EU’s being responsible for “a major part of the critical path components,” including the vacuum vessel, magnets, buildings, and other items that determine the construction schedule. “All parties need to understand that since we have most of the components of the critical path, we need to make sure the delivery dates are realistic,” he says.

Since the November standoff, the ITER partners have worked to find ways to speed up construction. A few tricks involve building more parts in parallel—which, of course, brings more risk if something goes wrong—as well as sharing mockups among different countries and changing the order in which some components are installed. The IO needs to quantify the risks in terms of time, success, and resources, says Quintana Trias. The current working agreement, he says, “includes risk mitigation measures” and a “feasible schedule with acceptable risks and costs. We are committing to when we deliver.” The date of first plasma, he adds, can then be determined by the IO.

The partners are now crossing t’s and dotting i’s to make sure that the delivery dates are realistic. “There are 11 000 activities to synchronize” among the bodies in charge of procurement, says Holtkamp. “That includes every handoff point between us and domestic agencies, between domestic agencies, and within domestic agencies.”

“Put-up or shut-up time”

Some fusion physicists—both in the EU and elsewhere—point to flaws in the management model as contributing to the project’s woes. No one doubts that it would be easier to have a single body controlling the money for all parts of ITER, rather than the IO coordinating seven bodies, each responsible for their own contributions. But that’s a “cup half empty and half full” way of looking at things, Holtkamp says. Taking the half-empty view, he says, “this distributed model is more complicated. But on the half-full side, all members build up infrastructure in their own countries to build fusion technology themselves.”

People also say it’s a disadvantage that both the IO and Fusion for Energy (F4E), the body responsible for procurement in the EU, are new. “There is less continuity in Europe,” says Tsunematsu. “In these 20 years [that people have been trying to build ITER] it’s been the same group [in Japan], almost the same people, working on it. We know everything, so we can convince industry they can do things for a reasonable price.” In contrast, he says, “in Europe they changed systems between the engineering design and construction phases. They have now changed the leader of F4E. This makes [progress] harder.” European fusion scientists describe the IO as having a coordinating position without authority over the contributors. Lee scoffs: “They [the IO] keep saying they have no power. That’s not true at all. They need to provide leadership.”

Another possible red flag for ITER is the 41% funding decrease proposed for the project in the US fiscal year 2011 budget (see the special budget report on page 27). The US Department of Energy has told the fusion community that the cut is meant to send an “unambiguous message” to the EU “to get their house in order,” says fusion physicist James Van Dam of the University of Texas at Austin. But Ed Synakowski, the associate director for fusion energy at DOE’s Office of Science, says the “US is pleased with the progress the [ITER] members have made since November 2009 in moving towards a technically achievable integrated project schedule.… We hope [the members] can agree on cost and schedule by June 2010.” The reduced budget request, he says, is not about message-sending but about “responsible budgeting and investment of taxpayer dollars in science” and “reflects the pace of the project.” That’s how fusion scientists in Europe seem to interpret the cut in US support for ITER. But Lee says that right now, with the project “fragilely recuperating, showing confidence in ITER is really important.”

An agreement in June would mean “all this discussion is ended, and construction can begin in earnest,” says Holtkamp. And, although finances—in particular, where the EU would find the extra money it needs—won’t be clarified by then, such an agreement would mean that each member obligates itself to cover its own commitments. Says Quintana Trias, “ITER may seem expensive and long term and difficult. But Europe unanimously reaffirmed its support [for the project].” He cites German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comment during a 1 February visit to the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald: “Although nuclear fusion is still at a research stage without certainty of success, it would be disastrous not to further explore its potential.”

If the agreement falls through, “the obvious and minimal” consequence would be delays, Holtkamp says. Cowley is blunter: “Europe cannot let ITER fall apart. It’s put-up or shut-up time for fusion.”