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A key congressional budget committee will this week consider fresh and drastic cuts in fusion research which could lead to the abrupt withdrawal of the United States from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.

Early drafts of the appropriations bills for the 1998 financial year (starting in October), to be finalized on 11 July by the energy and water appropriations subcommittee in the House of Representatives, would cut the Department of Energy's fusion research programme from $225 million to $175 million, according to administration officials.

The proposal would take most of the $50 million cut from the US contribution of $55 million to ITER. That would effectively end US participation in the engineering design assessment phase of the project nine months before its completion next July (see Briefing, on page 115).

One administration official says that the corresponding Senate subcommittee is considering a similar cut, but many fusion supporters expect the Senate to be more supportive than the House.

Rumours of the proposed cut stunned the fusion community, which experienced deep budget cuts in 1995. “This is still a rumour, but we are taking it very seriously,” says Anne Davies, head of the fusion programme at the energy department. “I'm shocked that this could even be considered.”

Jack Gibbons, science adviser to President Bill Clinton, was this week making contact with Joe McDade (Republican, Pennsylvania), chair of the House subcommittee, and Pete Domenici (Republican, New Mexico), chair of the Senate panel, to appeal for the administration's $225 million request for fusion research to be met.

Staff on both subcommittees declined to comment in detail on their plans, but confirmed that they may pay particular attention to ITER because its construction has been delayed by the international partners (see Nature 387, 746; 1997).

In theory, the numbers drawn up by the staff have little significance until they are considered by the subcommittees. But in practice it can be difficult for members to find money to restore cuts proposed by staff.

Administration officials will argue that the United States has a commitment to its partners — Europe, Japan and Russia — to complete its share of ITER research. But this did not count for much in 1995, when the Congress cut the US contribution from $80 million to $55 million. Fusion lobbyists worry that few members of the appropriations panels are sufficiently committed to fusion, or to ITER, to find $50 million from other programmes to support it.