The international fusion experiment ITER finally has a home. But don't assume there's a smooth ride ahead. Before a formal agreement is signed and construction can begin, ITER members must win the money that they have pledged from their respective governments.
Scientists hope this will happen by the end of the year, but several obstacles must be overcome. “Just because a site has been selected doesn't mean we're finished,” says Gerald Navratil of the US ITER team.
The European Commission has committed money for 2006, for example, but it will need to double that in the budgets for 2007–13. There's no doubt that the commission sees ITER as a priority, but as budget negotiations for Europe's Framework 7 research programme have stalled, the way ahead is less than clear.
The situation is more hopeful in Japan, where officials say they can easily come up with the desired funds. But in the United States legislation could delay participation in ITER by almost a year: the House of Representatives passed an amendment to that effect that could become law. And in Russia, reports say the trade ministry has proposed that no new money go towards the fusion project in 2006.
After 20 years of fraught negotiations, it is crucial that governments agree on funding fast in order to keep political momentum behind the project, says David Baldwin, director of fusion programmes at General Atomics in San Diego. “Otherwise, the negotiators will die of old age.”
Geoff Brumfiel
The promise of fusion is well known. Using the same reactions that power the stars, hydrogen nuclei can be fused to produce helium, releasing huge amounts of energy — and no high-level radioactive waste. But the line that usable fusion power is 40 years away, and always will be, is sadly just as familiar.
Victorious: Cadarache, in southern France, has been selected to host the ITER fusion project.
Credit: ITER
Recent progress has been promising, however, especially for tokamak reactors, in which hot plasma is confined in a floating doughnut shape by superconducting magnets. Both Europe's JET and Japan's JT-60 tokamaks have achieved short periods in which the energy released approaches the energy put in: JET holds the record, with a maximum power output of 16 megawatts. At more than 12 metres across, the plasma ring in ITER will be about twice as big as JET's, and will hopefully generate 400–700 megawatts of power.
Negotiations over ITER's home have been deadlocked since December 2003. The United States and South Korea backed a Japanese site at Rokkasho, while China and Russia supported the European Union's bid for Cadarache in southern France. But at Tuesday's meeting of ITER's six international partners in Moscow, ministers finally agreed.
It's a deal
The European Union will now pay half of ITER's US$5.5-billion construction costs, much of it coming from France. The other five partners will contribute 10% each, mostly in the form of equipment and components. Japan will win 20% of the manufacturing orders despite its 10% share. The European Union has also agreed to support a Japanese candidate for ITER's director-general, and Japan will provide 20% of the project's scientists, instead of the 10% to which it is entitled.
Up to 8% of the ITER construction budget will go towards partner facilities. These will now be built in Japan, and three likely candidates are a supercomputing centre, an upgrade of the JT-60 and a materials testing facility.
Such centres would carry out research in parallel with ITER, so that if it is successful, work can start straight away on the next step — a prototype fusion reactor called DEMO. For example, the testing facility would use accelerators to find building materials that will stand the extreme conditions of a fusion power plant. Some even say that DEMO could be operational by 2030.
The Europeans are, of course, ecstatic. “There is no equivalent to this site anywhere in the world,” says Jean Jacquinot, a plasma physicist who played a leading role in the Cadarache bid.
Cadarache is already home to more than 2,000 nuclear engineers and scientists, he points out. Most of them work on fission energy, but Jacquinot says ITER could still use their expertise. The site's use as a nuclear research facility means the project will have the necessary access to large amounts of electricity and water-cooling facilities, Jacquinot adds.
Meanwhile, Japan's researchers are looking for someone to blame. “Japanese scientists think it very regrettable,” says one senior fusion scientist, who asked not to be named. He says one theory about why France won is that the choice of Rokkasho, which is fairly isolated, gave the impression that Japan was not serious about the project.
Others blame Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for being unable to match his French counterpart's charm. “Jacques Chirac could get up and talk for 30 minutes about the value of ITER and its significance for the future,” Nature was told. “Koizumi would just throw out one sentence: ‘We really want to get ITER’.”
Representatives from China and South Korea are said to be irked by the fact that Japan is getting so many perks despite their equal contributions. But the Americans just seem happy to have a decision. “I think the response from the community is one of relief,” says Gerald Navratil, a plasma physicist from New York's Columbia University.
Additional reporting by David Cyranoski in Tokyo and Geoff Brumfiel in Washington DC.
