Nature News Blog – EU ITER funding proposals set to stir budget row
Nature News Blog – EU ITER funding proposals set to stir budget row
By Declan Butler | 13 December 2011 – 17:39
The European Commission today released proposals on the funding of the ITER nuclear fusion research project from 2014 to 2020 that seem certain to set the stage for a showdown with the European Union’s 27 member states next year, when discussions of future EU budgets enter their negotiating phase.
As expected, today’s proposals would remove the €2.7 billion EU funding for ITER — the international effort to build a fusion-energy test reactor — over that period from the EU general budget. The commission wants to reduce the exposure of the EU budget to the risks of any further repeats of the cost overruns that have plagued ITER’s construction – see my 29 November article in Nature on this all: “Outcry over EU budget plan.”
Under the new proposal, the funding vehicle for ITER – which is being constructed in Cadarache, France – would be a new “Supplementary Research Programme” that would be created within the EU’s nuclear body, Euratom. Funding for ITER itself would come from contributions by EU member states calculated on the basis of their Gross National Income (GNI).
To read the full article, click here.
