Paris

Iter means ‘the way’ in Latin — but ‘lost its way’ might be a more apt description of the international fusion project that bears the name.

A technical assessment intended to break a stalemate over where to site the facility has itself ended in deadlock, with the six partners blaming each other for the lack of progress.

Negotiations over ITER's site have been stalled since a ministerial meeting in Washington last December, when the United States and South Korea backed the Japanese site at Rokkasho, and China and Russia supported the European Union's site at Cadarache in France. The US$5-billion project seeks to show that heating plasma in a magnetic field can produce fusion energy.

But a meeting of experts in Vienna, Austria, on 12 and 13 March ended in discord. Supporters of the European site insisted that the meeting should publish a technical comparison of the two sites — which they claim would have shown up their strengths.

Supporters of the Japanese site, including the United States, countered that the technical discussions were meant to feed into a wider political decision on a site.

The outcome of the meeting — privately described as ‘fiery’ by participants — was a bland statement that it had agreed to disagree. No further meetings have been scheduled to decide on a site, and plans to consider making the experimental reactor part of a broader, international fusion-research package remain just plans.

One Japanese government official put a brave face on the situation. “We're going up the stairs one step at a time,” he says. “There's no such thing as an endless staircase, so eventually we'll get there.” A European fusion scientist close to the talks disagreed: “We're not going anywhere.”

US sources familiar with the negotiations say that the government there wants to take a backseat, in the hope that Europe and Japan can come to an agreement. But many researchers wonder if an accord can be reached. “People in the United States have no idea how this will get resolved,” says Stephen Dean, head of Fusion Power Associates, a Washington-based advocacy group for fusion research.

Others worry that a decision on location will not be reached by the summer, when US researchers are set to re-evaluate the nation's role in the project. “Europe and Japan have to arrive at a decision, otherwise this could go on forever,” says Dale Meade, a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey.

An eight-person European Union delegation went to Tokyo this week to seek agreement with Japanese experts and government officials. One European scientist privately branded the trip “mission impossible”.

But despite the deadlock, India last week became the latest nation to say it might join the project. According to science secretary Valangiman Ramamurthy, it accepted an offer from David King, science adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, to join ITER as a partner of Britain, which will cost India less than joining the project as a full partner.

Additional reporting by Geoff Brumfiel, David Cyranoski and K. S. Jayaraman.