Brussels, 29/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - ITER's seven international partners announced on Wednesday 28 July that they had reached agreement on the timetable and funding arrangements for the thermonuclear fusion project based in Cadarache, France. The announcement would seem to indicate that ITER is back on track, but European countries will now have to find €540 in additional funding to provide short-term support for the project. At the meeting in Cadarache, the ITER Council also approved Professor Osamu Motojima as Kaname Ikeda's successor in the post of Director General of the organisation.
Soaring costs. Ultimately, the experimental 500 megawatt ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) will test the feasibility of nuclear fusion, which could, in theory, provide clean and virtually unlimited energy in similar fashion to the energy generated at the heart of the sun. The European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States agreed in 2006 to construct a prototype reactor, as a step towards a pre-industrial facility. Costs, however, have soared since then, from €8 billion to €16 billion, as a result notably of increases in the prices of raw materials and engineering costs. As a result, the project has fallen behind schedule: the first plasma production will only be in 2019.
ITER can grow. The seven international partners meeting in Cadarache on Wednesday confirmed the “baseline scenario” which will act as the roadmap for the project, due to move into the construction phase this summer. “We are entering a decisive phase for the ITER project. We now have a very solid base from which to build the programme,” said ITER Council Chairman Evgueni Velikhov after the meeting. “The Commission is very pleased with the signing of the baseline scenario. We now have a solid base from which to carry on this project,” said Mark English, spokesman for the European research commissioner. Europe, which did not have a mandate at the last Council meeting in China in June, undertook to provide additional funding of up to a maximum of €6.6 billion, rather than the €2.7 billion initially planned, given that the EU has somewhere around a 45% share. In terms of the timetable, in line with what was agreed in June, the date for obtaining the first plasma (first attempt at fusion of hydrogen atoms) has been set for November 2019 - it was initially scheduled for 2018. The final process of fusion using tritium and deuterium, two hydrogen isotopes, will only begin in March 2027, though the ITER Council hopes that this stage may be started in 2026. Virtually inexhaustible, deuterium can be easily extracted from water, which contains up to 40 milligrams of the substance per litre.
€540 million still have to be found for short-term needs. In May, the EU Council confirmed the need for additional short-term funding of €1.4 billion in commitment appropriations at current prices: €800 million in 2012 and €600 million in 2013 (see EUROPE 10146). To find this money, the Commission proposes: (1) to release €400 million through a review of the multiannual financial framework for 2007-2013, drawing the money from unused agricultural spending in 2010; (2) to find an additional €460 by redeploying credits from the 7th research framework programme in Heading 1a (competitiveness). A commitment on funding the remaining amount (€540 million) will be given at a later date, the Commission hopes (after the next budget reconciliation in November 2010). The European Parliament and Council have now to agree to the proposal on the amendment of the multiannual financial framework for 2007-2013. The Commission has taken note of the Council request to limit the financial resources of the Fusion for Energy (F4E) for the European contribution to the ITER construction phase (2007-2020) to €6.6 billion (at 2008 values) rather than €7.2 billion (at 2008 values). This sum of €6.6 billion is the reference amount for the ITER construction phase (see EUROPE 10185). Green MEP Yannick Jadot (France) said the massive increase in the ITER budget was totally “incredible and irrational in view of the energy crisis, the climate crisis and the budget crisis”. The construction phase of the ITER project will begin in August and continue for some 10 years. A further period of around 10 years of experimentation will be needed before the production phase can begin. If things go to plan in these various phases, energy from nuclear fusion will come on stream from 2050 at the earliest. (B.C./L.C./transl.rt)