Nuclear mattersNew funding, schedule agreed for nuclear fusion project
The governing council of ITER, Europe’s fusion reactor project, reached the deal on the financing and timetable for the experimental reactor after a two-day meeting in Cadarache; Europe pledged to provide additional financing of a maximum €6.6 billion ($8.5 billion); the total estimated bill for the EU has doubled to €7.2 billion ($9.2 billion), with the overall cost now reckoned to be around €15 billion; the reactor will become operational in November 2019
The European Union and six states backing a multi-billion-dollar nuclear fusion project said late last week they had reached a deal on the financing and timetable for the experimental reactor.
An explosion in costs had cast a cloud over the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which aims to make the nuclear fusion process that fuels the sun a practical energy source on Earth (“EC to decide on how to advance ITER nuclear fusion project,” 26 July 2010 HSNW).
ITER, based at Cadarache in southern France, was set up by the EU, which has a 45 percent share, China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves.
AFP reports that ITER’s governing council reached the deal after a two-day meeting in Cadarache at which Europe pledged to provide additional financing of a maximum €6.6 billion ($8.5 billion), it said in a statement.
It also formalized a decision to abandon its goal of 2018 to obtain the first plasma and set November 2019 as its new target.
Nuclear fusion entails forcing together the nuclei of light atomic elements in a super-heated plasma, held in a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak, so that they make heavier elements and in so doing release energy.
“We are now entering a decisive phase in the ITER project,” said Evgeny Velikhov of the ITER governing council.
The meeting also named Japanese physicist Osamu Motojima as ITER’s new director-general, to replace his compatriot Kaname Ikeda.
The total estimated bill for the EU has doubled to €7.2 billion ($9.2 billion), with the overall cost now reckoned to be around €15 billion.
