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Energy Committee Votes In Favour Of ‘Strong Support’ For ITER Funding

By David Dalton
30 May 2013

Energy Committee Votes In Favour Of ‘Strong Support’ For ITER Funding
Construction at the ITER site in Cadarache earlier in 2013. Photo courtesy ITER.

30 May (NucNet): Members of the European Parliament’s energy committee have voted in favour of financing the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project “over and above” agreed Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) ceilings” for the next five years.

The committee said in a statement that it felt the European Union has the duty to guarantee that it will continue to “strongly support ITER in the coming decades”.

Committee members said this would ensure the control of ITER’s financing by both arms of the European Union’s budgetary authority while avoiding “any possible redeployments at the expense of other EU programmes”.

The European Commission has proposed setting up a supplementary research programme to cover contributions to the construction of the ITER facility. The energy committee said the programme should be financed from 2014 to 2018 through “a maximum contribution of” 2,573 million euros over and above the MFF ceilings.

The European Parliament will now be consulted on the committee’s decision and will vote during a plenary session in July.

The energy committee statement said funding for ITER should have sufficient financial resources while also setting “a ring-fenced maximum amount” for contributions from the EU budget for 2014 to 2018 in the MFF regulation.

MEPs recognise that despite containment measures ITER may continue to incur cost overruns due to its scientific nature and to its technological risk, the statement said.

Any cost overruns should not have any impact on the budgetary allocations for other projects financed from the EU budget and should be financed through “additional resources over and above the ceilings as appropriate”, the statement said.

The MFF is a spending plan that translates the EU priorities into financial terms. It limits expenditure over a fixed period and defines the maximum amounts available for each major category of spending. The European Commission says it provides a political as well as budgetary framework for “focusing resources and investments where needed”.

ITER – designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power – will be the world’s largest experimental fusion facility. Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. When light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released.

ITER is a first-of-a-kind global collaboration. Europe will contribute 45 percent of its construction costs, while the other six members to the venture (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US), will contribute equally to the rest.

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