Fusion project looks for savings (Nature)

Geoff Brumfiel

The world's most expensive science experiment is on the hunt for savings. ITER, a fusion test reactor under construction near Cadarache, France, is looking to trim around €500 million (US$688 million) from its massive construction budget — which informal estimates place as high as €15 billion.

At a council meeting next week, Osamu Motojima, the project's director-general, is planning to ask for approval of more than 20 cost-saving measures. The proposed savings are a fraction of what will ultimately be required and come amid enormous pressure from ITER's seven partners — the European Union, the United States, Russia, China, South Korea, India and Japan — to bring down the price of the machine.

The cuts include plans to consolidate contracts and reduce staff costs. But one proposal in particular — to reduce testing on critical superconducting magnets — has raised eyebrows outside the collaboration. "Saving in tests is the straight way to buy trouble later on," says Lucio Rossi, a physicist at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland. Rossi oversaw construction of superconducting magnets for the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

ITER's goals are as sky-high as its price tag. The machine hopes to trap and squeeze hydrogen isotopes until they fuse together to form helium, releasing energy. If all goes to plan, ITER will release ten times the power it consumes, sometime after 2026.
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more: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101112/full/news.2010.609.html

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