Munich

Uncertain future: the Wendelstein 7-X fusion reactor would be redesigned under Green plans. Credit: BALKE–DÜRR AG

The Green Party, the junior partner in Germany's ruling coalition, is urging the government to slam the brakes on research into nuclear fusion. It wants Germany to cut its commitments to the national fusion research programme, and to withdraw support for the planned International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The Green Party's strategy paper on energy research, published last month, recommends that nuclear research be restricted to areas such as reactor safety. It says that money earmarked for research on new nuclear fusion and fission technologies should be used to increase the efficiency of technologies for renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy.

The German fusion community is reacting nervously to such suggestions, aware that energy policy is a core issue for the Greens, and that fusion research has still to demonstrate its feasibility. The Greens have already achieved the government's commitment to one of their major goals — phasing out atomic energy in Germany by 2019 — so the party's position on other energy-related issues has obvious political weight.

“Energy from nuclear fusion will only be available in half a century, if at all,” says Hans-Josef Fell, the Greens' parliamentary spokesman on research, and a member of the parliamentary committee on science and technology. “Given the urgency of replacing fossil and atomic energy by new climate-friendly and safe energy sources, it would be fatal to put trust in such a vague and distant option,” he says.

ITER, which was designed to study the physics of burning plasma and the engineering problems related to a future power-generating fusion reactor, is a proposed 3.5 billion euro (US$3.1 billion) collaborative project between Europe, Russia and Japan. Its design outline was slimmed down considerably last year, after the United States, concerned about the project's high costs and scientific uncertainty, withdrew support (see Nature 402, 570; 1999).

The Greens would like Germany to follow suit. They want the government to urge the European Commission not to co-fund ITER in its sixth Framework programme of research (FP6), due to start in 2003. Discussions about FP6 will begin this summer.

But the German government has given no signs that its support for fusion research is waning. The research minister, Edelgard Bulmahn, and her state secretary for research, Wolf-Michael Catenhusen, are known for their pragmatic views on scientific projects. It appears unlikely that Bulmahn will take the lead in any possible European opposition to ITER when the European science ministers meet next year to decide about future support for the project.

Fusion scientists in Germany hope that pragmatism will also thwart another of the Greens' proposals: a major redesign of the Wendelstein-7X, an experimental fusion reactor being built in Greifswald in eastern Germany by the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP).

The ‘stellarator’ reactor, which cost DM300 million (US$135 million), is eastern Germany's largest research facility. It is designed for a plasma-physics experiment using superconducting coils to produce the magnetic field necessary for sustained burn — an unsolved problem with regard to a functioning fusion power plant.

The Greens say the reactor should be built as planned, but that it should be used almost exclusively for research in conventional low-temperature plasma physics and on a few possible spin-offs from nuclear fusion research.

Alexander Bradshaw, scientific director of the IPP, calls the idea “scientifically and economically absurd, and technically impossible”. Bradshaw says he is particularly disappointed because he is sympathetic to Green policies in areas such as climate protection, and appreciates their generally positive attitude towards basic research.

“The Greens can prosper without hitting out at fusion research,” says Bradshaw. He adds that the US decision on ITER is irrelevant, as overall US spending on fusion technologies is increasing (see Nature 400, 394; 1999).

Bradshaw is confident that the government will base its energy research policy on proposals made last year by the Wissenschaftsrat, Germany's influential science council, rather than by the Greens. The Wissenschaftsrat recommended that all energy options should be left open, and called for a 30 per cent increase in energy research budgets (see Nature 397, 375, 1999).

The Greens' proposals will be discussed further in the federal parliament's committee on research.