US fusion plan under fire from research community

Science : In September, the Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) outlined a 10-year plan for fusion research in the US. The plan called for immediately shutting down one and later maybe a second of the three current midsize fusion projects to allow for the construction of new facilities and the alteration or upgrading of projects at other existing facilities. Most significantly, it changed nothing in regard to the US’s contribution to ITER. Most of the criticisms the report has received have been about the process behind the drafting of the document. The short time that was allotted for the creation of the report meant that the panel, which included no researchers from major fusion projects, had very little time to collect input from the fusion research community. The amount of time given to the community to then review the document was very short, which led to a delay in the committee’s vote on the report. And for the FESAC vote, 14 of the 23 members recused themselves because they were connected to either a major fusion lab or another lab that would benefit from the proposals in the report.