Fusion Committee Set to Act on ITER Report

The Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) will meet in Maryland on January 22. The agenda will be dominated by discussion of international collaborations in fusion energy R&D.

The primary international fusion collaboration is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), intended to demonstrate a self-sustaining fusion reaction. The Engineering Design Activity (EDA) phase of ITER will be completed this year. However, so far none of the four international partners - the U.S., the European Union, Japan, and Russia - has offered to be the host site for the facility. Agreement was reached to delay, for three years, any decision on going forward with construction.

At the request of Martha Krebs, DOE’s Director of Energy Research, FESAC formed an expert panel to consider the level and scope of the U.S.'s role in ITER during the three-year transition period, and if a decision is made to construct the facility. An interim response was provided to Krebs after an October 1997 FESAC meeting, and, according to reports, the final version is likely to be endorsed by FESAC at the upcoming January meeting. No substantive changes have been made to the recommendations in the interim report, which are provided below.

In addition to the FESAC panel’s interim report, two other documents relating to the U.S. fusion energy sciences program and its international collaborations were also completed last fall. The President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) completed a review of the nation’s entire energy R&D portfolio, which included recommendations for fusion funding. Additionally, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) updated a report on DOE’s magnetic fusion energy program to incorporate the results of the FY 1998 appropriations process. The five-page FESAC interim report is summarized below; the CRS and PCAST documents will be covered in FYI #7 .

FESAC transmitted the interim recommendations of its expert panel, chaired by Hermann Grunder, to Krebs on October 23, 1997. In his accompanying letter, FESAC chair John Sheffield said the full committee endorsed the panel’s recommendations, and also emphasized that the section of the PCAST report dealing with fusion “was very important in our deliberations.” The FESAC and PCAST reports contain many similar suggestions.

The primary recommendation of the Grunder panel, endorsed by FESAC, is as follows:

“In concert with our international partners, a burning plasma facility should be built at the earliest possible time.” As Sheffield explained in his letter to Krebs, FESAC “considers it critically important that DOE enter future international negotiations with a high level, long-range commitment to support a next step facility aimed at a mutually agreed upon set of scientific objectives,” such as ITER or some more modest form of burning plasma experiment.

The Grunder panel supports the ITER goal of “demonstration of a self-heated, energy producing fusion plasma,” and accepts the conclusions of prior reviews that “the ITER engineering design is a sound basis for the project and for DOE to enter negotiations with the Parties regarding construction.” However, if financial considerations prevent ITER from being built, the panel believes - as does the PCAST panel - that the U.S. and its international partners “should be willing to consider a modification of the ITER mission” in order to continue progress toward a burning plasma facility.

For the three-year transition period between completion of EDA and a decision on construction, the panel proposes the following elements “to implement the central recommendation,” and provides suggested annual funding levels for each element, beginning with FY 1999:

1. “Pursue near-term opportunities for research supporting energy-producing fusion plasma science using existing unique large-scale facilities abroad.” ($10-20 million.) The FESAC panel suggests increasing U.S. participation in existing foreign experiments, such as the Joint European Torus (JET) and Japan’s JT-60U. The PCAST report makes the same recommendation.

2. “Restructure the fusion energy technology development effort to more broadly support the fusion energy objective of the program.” ($20-25 million.) The panel suggests that the U.S. continue research in fusion energy technology that is dual-purpose rather than just that which is ITER-specific. Similarly,PCAST urges that ITER-specific development be subsumed within a broader technology development program.

3. “Continue to participate in and support the ongoing ITER joint design work at a lower level.” ($15 million.) The panel finds that continued U.S. involvement in ITER “would clearly be beneficial,” and encourages joint design work that might lead to “opportunities for cost reduction and for enhanced scientific flexibility within the ITER scope.”

4. “Undertake design efforts on lower cost fusion- energy-producing plasma concepts.” ($5-10 million.) The panel urges the international partners to explore “lower-cost, reduced scope options” as “a contingency plan... in the event that the financial commitments cannot be secured for the full-mission ITER machine.”

The total cost of the FESAC panel’s recommendations, all related to ITER, ranges from $50 million to $70 million per year. Current funding for the ITER portion of DOE’s fusion energy effort is $55 million; the current budget for the total fusion energy sciences program is $232 million.

Sources at DOE indicate that, as stated above, FESAC plans to approve a final version containing no major changes from this interim report. A future FYI will report on other agenda items from the January 22 FESAC meeting.

The Interim Report of the FESAC Expert Review Panel can be found on the Internet at: http://wwwofe.er.doe.gov/more_html/pdffiles/octfesac.pdf