Spain Offers ITER Site

The site of a nuclear power plant that is being dismantled in Vandallós, south of Barcelona on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, is in the running to become home to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

Spain submitted its bid to host ITER, a joint European-Japanese-Russian-Canadian project intended to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy, to the European Commission on 17 April. Canada had earlier offered to host ITER outside Toronto, and Japan and France are preparing site bids. The impending site decision “will be very competitive,” says Carlos Alejaldre, director of the fusion lab at CIEMAT, Spain’s national center for energy research, and a member of the ITER negotiating team. “But we can fight. We have a chance.”

ITER’s funding scheme is still under discussion, but the host country will likely have to ante up around one-fifth of the roughly $4 billion to build ITER; if Spain or France hosts ITER, that amount would be split with the European Commission. The host would also contribute to ITER’s remaining construction and operating costs.

In other ITER news, the possibility of the US’s rejoining the project after having pulled out a few years ago is sounding increasingly plausible. In his keynote speech at a 2 May meeting of G8 energy ministers in Detroit, Michigan, US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said, “President Bush is particularly interested in the potential of the international effort known as ITER and has asked us to seriously consider American participation.” For its part, the US fusion community plans to decide in August whether to back ITER or one of two smaller burning plasma experiments. —TF