Posted on 02/07/2003 8:18:04 PM PST by Lessismore
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY--In, then out, then in again. In 1998, the United States withdrew from a previous incarnation of the $5 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) experiment, which will use a doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle to confine a superhot hydrogen plasma and induce it to undergo nuclear fusion. But last week, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced that the United States would seek to become a partner in ITERagain, as part of its push for long-term energy independence.
"I am pleased to announce today that President Bush has decided that the United States will join the international negotiations on ITER," the secretary told dignitaries and plasma physicists gathered at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
Other ITER partners greeted the announcement with enthusiasm. "ITER is supposed to be an international project, and this makes it truly international," says Satoru Ohtake, head of the Office of Fusion Energy at Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, whose country is contributing to the international bid. "If the [U.S.] president and the secretary of energy make it public, we can all be sure that they are committed, and we are happy," says Bernd Kramer, head of the Science, Technology, and Environment division of the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Conceived in 1986 as a massive research effort to pave the way for practical fusion power, ITER began with four equal partners: Japan, the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States. Congress pulled the U.S. out of the project in 1998, amid ballooning costs, declining budgets, and scientific doubts about the magnetic bottle's design. The remaining partners forged ahead on their own, redesigning the proposed experiment to make it considerably smaller and half as expensive. Since then, they've picked up commitments from Canada and China, along with an expression of interest from South Korea.
"Something has changed" to bring the United States on board, says Ray Orbach, head of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science. For one thing, most physicists now think the technology is mature. "Simulations, done here [at PPPL] for example, have given us confidence that ITER will work," Orbach says. Ned Sauthoff, a plasma physicist at PPPL, agrees. "I am more confident because there is much more consensus within the scientific community," he says, adding that some of the design flaws of the original ITER had been fixed.
Fusion research also meshes well with the Bush Administration's broader energy goals. For example, fusion plants might someday provide the power needed to turn water into hydrogen to fuel cars--part of the president's vision of a hydrogen-based economy.
The Administration had been dropping hints for months that it would be interested in pursuing fusion-power research. In May 2002, Abraham asked DOE "to seriously consider American participation" in ITER (Science, 10 May 2002, p. 999), and in July a gathering of fusion physicists concluded that there was a pressing need for a burning-plasma experiment such as ITER. In September, DOE's Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) proposed a two-pronged approach that included entering ITER negotiations (Science, 20 September 2002, p. 1977). And in December, the National Research Council released an interim report that also recommended the government rejoin ITER talks.
So did five members of the House Science Committee, including the chair, Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY). In a letter sent to DOE last week, they urged Abraham "to send a clear message to the ITER community that the U.S. plans to participate in the negotiations and the subsequent design, construction, and operation of the facility."
Abraham plans to represent the United States at a meeting that the ITER partners are holding later this month in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the intricate negotiations will continue. But the details of U.S. participation remain unclear. Observers expect the United States to match China's recent promise to contribute 10% of the overall costs, a figure that Murray Stewart of ITER Canada calls "the minimum requirement." According to a FESAC report presented last September, such a share represents an additional investment of about $100 million per year for nearly a decade. So far, however, Abraham has pledged only about $50 million a year over the same time period.
In his announcement at Princeton, Abraham stressed that the United States will maintain a strong domestic fusion program as well. "Our decision to join ITER in no way means a lesser role for the fusion programs we undertake here at home," he said, adding that this nation must "maintain and enhance" its domestic fusion research. It remains to be seen how the $257 million DOE fusion-energy sciences budget will be expanded and redistributed to make room for ITER on top of domestic fusion-research activities, such as the PPPL-based Fusion Ignition Research Experiment. "It's not [as if] money will come down like manna from heaven," says PPPL deputy director Richard Hawryluk. "But I'm very excited."
This week's presidential budget request doesn't contain any new money in 2004 for fusion research. But Abraham said that he expects the budget ramp-up to "move pretty quickly" as the 2006 construction date approaches. That number is the acid test, say ITER supporters, of whether the U.S. plans to fuse or to refuse.
With reporting by Dennis Normile.
The reason is simple--we can extract the heavy water needed for fusion powerplants from common seawater easily. In short, we have over 1 billion years of power available based on the world's current energy consumption if the world switches to fusion power.
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