Progress in fusion, but not in its US funding

President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 is bad news for both the US domestic fusion program and ITER, the international fusion test reactor under construction in Cadarache, France. (See PHYSICS TODAY, April 2012, page 33 .) The domestic program’s $300 million would be cut by about $50 million, and an increase of roughly $45 million to ITER’s $100 million falls far short of the funding needed to keep up with US construction commitments—9% of the total machine—to meet the first plasma date of 2020.

In late April the Senate appropriations committee endorsed the president’s proposal. But the immediate outlook will improve if the House markup, which would provide $475 million—$77 million more than the proposed budget—leads to reprieve for FY 2013. The bigger problem “is the train wreck coming down the tracks,” says Raymond Fonck, a University of Wisconsin–Madison physicist and member of the US Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC). “If the program remains capped at $400 million, we either lose ITER or we lose the domestic program.”

“It’s an odd situation,” says Fonck. In the fusion community, “there is a sense of tremendous progress and promise, and that the program is ready to bust open into true energy.” At the same time, he notes, “We are struggling with what looks like not much commitment on the street. Losing $50 million will cost us hundreds of professionals. That’s what we are yelling about.”

Domestic casualties

The proposed cuts would shutter MIT’s tokamak, Alcator C-Mod, which is used by some 120 people, including students. The run time of the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics would be reduced by several weeks per year and a planned upgrade would be delayed. An upgrade to the National Spherical Torus Experiment at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory would also be slowed down, and the lab would lose some 80 out of 450 people. Under the proposed budget, says C-Mod project leader Earl Marmar, “nothing remains robust. Those three facilities are the only three major experimental facilities in the program. Theoretical and computational projects would also be cut back.”

At a February FESAC meeting, Marmar noted that “C-Mod is the only world-class program to study interactions between the hot plasma and the surrounding walls under plasma conditions and power densities required for ITER and for proposed fusion reactors.” He objected that the recommendation to close the facility was “abrupt” and came “in the absence of peer review, community input, or a FESAC plan.”

Graduate students in the MIT fusion program were so concerned by the president’s budget that they launched a website, fusionfuture.org, that combines educational outreach with political news about fusion. “The website gave us a way to feel like we could affect things,” says Bob Mumgaard, one of the site’s founders. “It’s an exciting time to be part of this field, but the budget overshadows that. It’s a cold welcome for incoming students.”

Exploiting ITER

“It’s critical to have a vibrant US program to contribute to the science in ITER, and to build on and take advantage of the science we get out of ITER,” says Richard Hawryluk, an ITER deputy director general from the US. “The real question is, Is the US going to maintain substantial intellectual leadership in the fusion program? Or are we going to have a very limited impact on fusion?”

“Some of the best fusion scientists in the world are in the US. There may be as many people from the US as from Europe on the ITER dream team,” says Steven Cowley, director of the UK fusion program, which hosts the Joint European Torus (JET), currently the only machine that can operate with deuterium and tritium. “But America can only sustain that if it has a good viable physics program in preparation for ITER. Otherwise people will drift away.”

For his part, Cowley says he is “picking out a team of people that are about the right age and making sure they learn as much as they can [at JET], so that in 10 years a bunch of British physicists will have a key role in ITER. If you don’t have physics experiments, then you won’t have the people who are part of the physics team to operate ITER.”

To meet its obligation, the US will have to ramp up spending on ITER. “In any reasonable funding scheme, it’s going to be $300 million to $400 million a year,” says Marmar. That money was never intended to come from the US domestic fusion program, but “that is where we are headed on a flat budget,” notes Marmar, and if it does “you would basically wipe out our community.” Although US ITER project manager Ned Sauthoff won’t put a figure to it, he says his team has less costly funding scenarios. “We are working hard to determine to what extent we can reduce costs while maintaining performance.” If funding falls short for only one year, the ITER organization expects it could shuffle things to avoid delays. “The US is the weakest link,” says Stewart Prager, director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. “It’s unbelievable.”

“The energy conversation”

Indeed, despite tight economies, Europe is on track with its ITER contributions, having recently allocated an additional €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) to the project; as host of ITER, Europe bears a 45% lion’s share. European money for national fusion programs has gone down, says Sibylle Günter, director of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. “Germany has a strong program, but it’s an ongoing discussion. The general problem of the economy hits all countries [in Europe]. The question is how the politics play out.” Like the US, the other partners—China, India, South Korea, Russia, and Japan—have each committed to providing 9% of ITER.

China, in particular, is moving aggressively ahead—covering not only its ITER commitments but also planning to build a next-step fusion facility on its own. If the US does not keep up in the field, says Marmar, “we could end up buying fusion reactors from Korea or China. I don’t want to see that happen.”

“The whole tenor of the energy conversation is vastly different now than it was three and a half years ago,” says Cowley. “Then, they were saying we have to find a solution to global warming.” But after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, “everything has cooled on fission. And although it’s clear that there is far more fossil fuel than we should burn, nobody has an appetite for environmental legislation during a recession.” As a result, he says, “low-carbon energy, including fusion, has become less and less of a priority.”

Still, says Cowley, “it’s amazing how much more attention you can get [for fusion] when you can quote that the Chinese are on the march.” The fusion community is at “a breaking point,” Cowley continues. “If we do not do ITER, we will degenerate. We will lose knowledge that we have built up over 50 years. We are just beginning to do fusion. It’s critical that we push on, make sure we do ITER, and move on to deliver commercial fusion energy.”

As for the US, some optimism may be drawn from the charge that William Brinkman, director of DOE’s Office of Science, put to FESAC on 13 April. He asked the advisory committee to set research priorities for the magnetic fusion energy science program. In doing so, Brinkman wrote, FESAC should assume “that the ITER project is ongoing, will be until the end of this decade, and is supported separately from the rest of the program.”