Rejoin ITER

In response to a request in September by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science for a quick opinion, the National Research Council’s burning plasma assessment committee has issued an interim report recommending that the US enter negotiations to rejoin the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. At the same time, the report says, a strategy for expanding the US fusion program should be “further defined and evaluated.”

The NRC committee, cochaired by physicists John Ahearn and Raymond Fonck, said in its report that “a strategically balanced fusion program, including meaningful US participation in ITER and a strong domestic fusion science program, must be maintained, recognizing that this will eventually require a substantial augmentation in fusion program funding in addition to the direct financial commitment to ITER construction.” The committee’s recommendation follows a similar endorsement, made last fall by DOE’s independent fusion energy sciences advisory committee, to rejoin ITER (see Physics Today, November 2002, page 28 ).

Office of Science Director Ray Orbach had asked the NRC committee this past fall for the quick recommendation so he could use it to support his case within the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill that the US rejoin the fusion project. ITER’s current partners—Canada, Europe, Japan, and Russia—expect to decide by 2004 on the site of the facility. The US dropped out of ITER in 1998, citing the project’s estimated cost of $10 billion. ITER has been scaled back to a projected $5 billion, of which about $100 million would be contributed by the US.