Utility Week – Brussels plots more ITER funding
Utility Week – Brussels plots more ITER funding
18 January 2012
THE European Commission has drafted a plan ensuring cash-strapped international nuclear fusion project ITER would have funding of Euro EUR2.573 billion from 2014 to 2018.
European Union (EU) ministers in December approved emergency spending for ITER to see the France-based research project through 2012 and 2013, and now the Commission is looking ahead for four more years’ money.
It has proposed the creation of a ‘Supplementary Research Programme’, funded via the EU’s nuclear energy wing Euratom, which would ensure Europe kept its funding bargain for ITER with the project’s six other parties: China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the USA. ITER’s aim is to produce a fully-functioning nuclear fusion reactor capable or commercial replication and development. However, with EU budgets under pressure, and ITER’s projected costs spiralling beyond the initial EU cost contribution estimate of EUR 6.6 billion, the EU has struggled to find the necessary budgets.
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