EU plans investment in nuclear fusion research

Date: 25/02/1999

By Peter Chapman

RESEARCH Commissioner Edith Cresson will next week unveil the work programme for the EU's €1.26-billion Euratom nuclear research effort over the next four years.

This follows last December's meeting of EU research ministers, which finally thrashed out the bare bones of the Union's €13.7-billion Fifth Framework Research and Development Programme.

“The work programme is just a bit more detailed than what was announced last December,” said a senior official in the Commission's Directorate-General for research (DGXII).

Under the scheme, which is set to get under way later this year, the Union will channel €788 million - the lion's share of its nuclear budget - into the search for the key to controlled nuclear fusion.

Fusion, which involves generating power by joining together nuclear material at massive temperatures, has eluded scientists for a generation. The EU's strategy appeared to be in doubt after the US said it planned to pull out of a key collaborative project aimed at building a test bed for a working fusion reactor in the summer because the research was too costly.

Officials said the EU, Russia and Japan would carry on with a scaled-back International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, but this will only yield a reactor capable of demonstrating the principles of fusion, producing thermal energy but not electricity.

Other targets for extra funding include plans to launch calls for tender worth €142 million in the fission sector. Fission R&D will focus on the safety of Europe's nuclear installations, helping to solve waste management problems and improving the competitiveness of Europe's nuclear industry. This includes efforts to cut the cost of existing nuclear power stations to enable them to compete safely with gas-powered stations.