US Plans to Rejoin ITER Collaboration

President Bush, heeding recommendations from the fusion science community, the National Research Council (NRC), and the Department of Energy (DOE), authorized the US to rejoin the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project. In a 30 January statement issued by the White House at the same time Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham was announcing the ITER decision at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Bush said, “The results of ITER will advance the effort to produce clean, safe, renewable, and commercially available fusion energy by the middle of this century.”

The decision is an apparent victory for Ray Orbach, director of DOE’s Office of Science, who has pushed hard for several months to get the administration to rejoin ITER. In a 3 February briefing announcing the president’s proposed fiscal year 2004 budget, Orbach described fusion as an “energy source with unlimited amounts of potential” that could produce both electricity for commercial use and, as a byproduct, hydrogen that could fuel the hydrogen-powered “freedom car.” The administration has proposed spending more than $720 million on R&D over five years to create the car.

In presentations last fall to the NRC’s burning plasma assessment committee and DOE’s independent Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC; see Physics Today, November 2002, page 28 ), Orbach said the development of commercial fusion power was critical to help solve the global warming problem. President Bush and other administration officials don’t share Orbach’s alarm over global warming, however, and instead have tied the ITER decision to the hydrogen car development program.

Citing ITER’s estimated cost of $10 billion, the US dropped out of the project in 1998. ITER was then scaled back to a projected $5 billion, which the administration deemed reasonable. The US expects to pay about 10% of the construction costs, or about $500 million over eight years. For the moment, administration officials are talking about a US cost of $50 million per year, but FESAC has estimated the US cost for becoming a full member to be about $100 million per year. In his budget briefing, Orbach said the difference in the two amounts is tied to distinctions between construction costs and operating costs. Construction isn’t expected to begin until at least 2006, he said, “so the really heavy expenditures are not in this year or even next, but in the ensuing years.” The earliest that ITER is expected to become operational is 2014. In the FY 2004 budget, the administration is asking for $12 million for “ITER negotiations and supporting R&D.”

“Remember that all we’ve done so far is to rejoin the negotiations,” Orbach said. “There are still going to be issues of site selection, the issues of what we will build, and so on. The $12 million will help us in those negotiations.” Orbach said other US fusion programs would continue, but those involving burning plasma would be refocused to better support the ITER initiative.

ITER’s current partners—Canada, the European Union, Japan, and Russia—have indicated that they expect to choose the ITER site by 2004. Proposed sites are in Canada, Europe, and Japan. China is also seeking to become a partner in ITER.