France Gets ITER Fusion Energy Project, Japan Gets Set Asides

The popular image of physicists is one of wild hair, lab coats, and a total lack of political sense. The recent battles over the location of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor [Iter] belie that image. The project has been held up 18 months while France and Japan haggled over where the €10 billion project (and 10,000 jobs) get placed. A compromise leaves the facility in France, with lots of consolation prizes for Japan.

Iter is slated to be the most expensive scientific project after the International Space Station, but unlike the ISS, the Iter program may yield some useful science. The six member consortium funding it (composed of the EU, US, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea) wants to create a fusion nuclear reactor – the Holy Grail of energy production in which hydrogen atoms combine to form helium and release a lot of energy. Mankind has known how to make a fusion reaction ever since the first H-Bomb exploded, but harnessing that energy into something less destructive is tricky. The first power plant isn’t expected to come online until 2050 – if it can be done at all.

The beauty of fusion, of course, is that there are no nuclear by-products that have to be stored for eons (as one must with fission nuclear plants), there is no pollution (as with fossil fuel), and there is an endless supply of fuel (water will do, and one kilo of hydrogen should produce the same energy as 10,000,000 kilos of fossil fuel).

So, the Iter is a big deal scientifically, and putting it in France is a feather in President Chirac’s badly battered cap. The site at Caradache, about 35 miles from Marseilles, has been the heart of the French nuclear energy program since its inception in 1959. Construction will take about 7 years, which means union scale construction jobs for that long, and some good maintenance jobs after that.

Japan also had a site at Rokkasho in the running but withdrew after being promised 20% of the 200 research posts while ponying up only 10% of the costs. The EU will cough up 50% of the funds, and the other 40% will be divided among the other partner nations. And when the Japanese scientists saw that they would get 40 jobs in the south of France while their government had to put up on 10% of the money (meaning the Japanese government’s research budgets for other things will be bigger than otherwise, meaning more jobs on other projects), there wasn’t much to it. As in other political battles, victory comes from giving everybody something to take home.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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