Europe chooses France for nuclear-reactor bid
Spain loses chance to bring ITER jobs and investment home.
27 November 2003
DECLAN BUTLER

ITER partners are expected to vote on the final winner next month.
© ITER

France has won the long battle to be the European Union’s candidate site to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The US$5-billion facility may be the last big experiment needed before a working nuclear-fusion power plant becomes possible.

The Cadarache site in southeast France will now go into a final showdown against Japan’s Rokkasho candidate. The reactor will bring thousands of jobs and investment to the winner. Canada has also proposed Clarington as a site, but now seems to be out of the race, as support for the project has run into domestic political and financial difficulties. ITER partners – the European Union (EU), Japan, Russia, Canada, China, South Korea and the United States – should vote on the final winner next month.

The ITER reactor aims to reproduce on Earth the process that powers our Sun and other stars: thermonuclear fusion. It will heat a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, to 200 million ºC. The plasma will be held in mid-air by huge superconducting magnets inside a doughnut-shaped reactor called a tokamak. The magnets also induce the electrical current that heats the plasma.

ITER will be the first fusion reactor to generate thermal power comparable to that pumped out by electricity-producing power stations. Deuterium and tritium are abundant and cheap fuels – deuterium is extracted from seawater and tritium is made from the common element lithium.

Europe’s bid to host the facility has been marred for months by its inability to agree on a single candidate site. Spain wanted both the French site and its own at Vandellòs near Barcelona to go into the final round. Europe’s research ministers felt that a united front was preferable. At a meeting in Brussels this week they unanimously backed the French site, offering Spain just the hosting of the administrative offices.

Earlier this year the EU commissioned a panel, chaired by Sir David King, chief scientific advisor to the British Government, to assess the sites. It concluded that either site “would be likely to win the international selection”.

We’ve taken the decision that unites us most
Juan Costa Climent

Last week, sensing that the tide of opinion was turning in France’s favour, Spain promised to double its contribution to the project, to E900 million (US$1.1 billion). Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio went to Rome to lobby Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, which holds the EU presidency. Spain’s science minister Juan Costa Climent toured European capitals, and prime minister Jose Maria Aznar pressed the case when he met his British counterpart Tony Blair on Monday.

Speaking at the Brussels meeting, French science minister Claudie Haigneré described the choice as “good news for France, for Europe, and for research”. Costa Climent added that from a European point of view “we’ve taken the best possible decision, the decision that unites us most”.

Declan Butler is Senior European Correspondent for the journal Nature.

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003