It has been widely reported that the US failed to fund our part of the international collaborative fusion research project known as ITER. But now it turns out that we might owe a hefty $750m penalty for not keeping up our end of the deal.
For those of you not familiar with the project, ITER is a long-term plasma physics program involving 7 countries aimed at making fundamental discoveries that might lead to creating fusion power plants. The deal for ITER was only cut in 2006, but the US already balked when Congress cut $160m for ITER out of the mega appropriations bill that passed last December. Plenty has been written on that and what it will do to Fermi lab.
Well, the American Institute of Physics now reports that there is a clause in the ITER deal that says that we would owe a $750m penalty if we backed out. Indeed. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tn) made comments on the matter in a April 9 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, addressed to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
“So my question to you, Madam Secretary is wouldn’t it be wiser for us to live up to our commitment to clean the air, to advance this ultimate solar energy and to spend $160 million this year in support of the international thermonuclear experimental reactor, the fusion project, rather than back down from something we’ve agreed to do and cost us potentially $750 million a year?”
Classic.
Most people have come to accept that the last appropriations bill was a gross display of Congressional incompetence, but this takes the cake. We are unlikely to see Congress finish their appropriations work during an election year, but it seems hard to fathom how such a screw up could have happened. Now, I don’t think anyone believes that the US would actually pay the $750m penalty, but it does serve as further reminder and an appropriate embarrassment for not keeping up our end of the deal. Expect to see that $160m back in the supplemental appropriations bill.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 am
With alternatives like this one:
WB-7 First Plasma
Why waste money on ITER which will likely never show results.
The ELM problem was not even addressed until construction was already underway, despite the fact that the ELM problem has been known for 20 years.
Where I come from operating like that is called FRAUD.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:53 am
I think you missed the point. The time to make such decisions, however you feel about ITER, was before we signed a deal that would penalize us $750m if we back out. Also, someone over at the State Department or in Congress should have made appropriators well aware of the penalty clause before they dropped it from last December’s appropriations bill.