ITER Construction Phase Begins 2010

The Construction Phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility will not begin until spring 2010, roughly one year after preliminary work at the construction site has been finished, officials have announced. The delay was caused by the fact that the participants in the project had not yet decided how to pay their shares of the massive, multi-billion-euro initiative. The European Union, Japan, South Korea, Russia, the United States, China and India are the main contributors to the Reactor, which aims to demonstrate that nuclear fusion can, indeed, function as a cheap and renewable energy source, Nature News reports.

The stoppage is mostly owed to countries in the EU that have not yet decided how to pay their shares of the costs. Despite so many countries participating, the EU provides most of the funds required, in excess of 45 percent. It also provides the location for the facility, which will be constructed in St. Paul lez Durance, in southern France. Originally, the first digs were supposed to begin at the site this autumn, but the misunderstanding will see the work delayed to spring 2010 at least.

The contractors for ITER have a deadline to keep – the site is scheduled to become operational by 2018. Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for research on behalf of the European Commission, in Brussels, ensured the media that the project was not at a standstill, and added that the issues at hand were rather financial than political. “The project is not on standby,” she said. However, researchers with the program voiced concerns over the impasse. “I'm worried that whatever we lose now could delay the project's completion,” the Scientific Director of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, in Garching, Germany, added.

The original costs for the ITER were estimated in 2006 to be of about €5 billion ($7.4 billion), for the construction, and of €5 billion for operation, over a period of two decades. Following an extensive design review of the original plans, it was later on estimated that the costs would at least double. Therefore, countries that have pledged their support for the Reactor now need to come up with twice as much money for its completion. “The problem in the European situation is that they need the whole commitment for construction before they can award the contracts,” Ray added.