European Commission welcomes outcome of ITER Council

IP/09/964

Brussels, 18 June 2009

European Commission welcomes outcome of ITER Council

The European Commission welcomes the outcome of today's ITER Council - the Governing Body of ITER. The European Commission attended this two-day meeting in Mito (Japan) together with representatives from the other 6 ITER members: China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. In order to substantially reduce overall risk, the Parties endorsed the phased approach to the completion of ITER construction as a working basis for development of the project baseline. The Commission supported the appointment of an assessor to conduct a management assessment of the ITER Organization. The European Commission particularly welcomes the request to finalize a realistic schedule. This is key to ensure a sound management of the project, which in turn will warrant running ITER in the most cost-effective and efficient way.

EU Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potočnik said: "ITER is a pioneering global scientific project with many challenges. Europe, as the host, is a fully committed partner and wants to ensure the success of the project. The outcome of today's Council is an important step in the right direction but a number of conditions still has to be met to reach this goal. Together with our international partners, we will intensify our work to obtain credible costs assessment, including means to contain them and to find ways to further improve the efficiency of the project's management at international and EU level".

The phased approach to the completion of ITER construction means that the major components of the ITER machine, such as the magnets and the vacuum vessel, will be assembled and tested before the progressive installation of in-vessel components continues. A similar approach has been adopted during the construction of all major tokamaks. It offers the advantage of substantially reducing overall technical risk . The target date of 2018 has been endorsed as a working basis for the first operation of the machine.

A realistic schedule for this phased approach still needs to be finalized in particular to take account of the capacity of the various Domestic Agencies and integrate all their inter-dependent actions with the ITER Organization. This integrated schedule constitutes an essential element of the project baseline – i.e. scope, schedule and cost - which still needs to be fixed among the ITER Parties.

Background

ITER is an international project of scientific collaboration designed to build an experimental reactor which will reproduce the physical reaction - fusion - that occurs in the sun and stars. ITER aims to do this at a scale and in conditions that will demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as an energy source for the future.

The agreement between the 7 Parties – Europe (EURATOM), China, US, Japan, Korea, India and Russia – was signed on 26 November 2006 and came into force on 24 October 2007.

Europe's (EURATOM's) contribution is managed by the European Domestic Agency, "Fusion for Energy" established in March 2007.

ITER is part of the EU strategy to address security of energy supply and climate change. It has been identified in the Strategic Energy Technology Plan as one of the long-term key technology milestones to meet the 2050 objectives of reducing CO2 emissions and energy dependency.

For more information:

ITER Organization website:

www.iter.org

Link to Fusion for Energy website

http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/