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l INTRODUCTION The United States, the European Community (EC), Japan, and the Soviet Union are all vigorously pursuing magnetic fusion as a preeminent scientific challenge and an energy source of tremendous potential benefit. The U.S., EC, and Japanese programs are each being conducted at the level of several hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The next stage of development will require sharply increased effort, and power-producing test or demonstration reactors after that will call for investments of billions of dollars. These demands, if placed on each program, will strain the available human and material resources, with the possible consequences of delayed results, limited scope, and greater risk. Given these prospects, in combination with the history of prior successful international cooperation on a more modest scale, might a significantly greater level of cooperation bring a number of worthwhile returns? FUSION ENERGY AND THE QUESTION OF GREATER COOPERATION Magnetic fusion refers to the large-scale production of nuclear reactions involving the lighter elements, using magnetic fields to attain the necessary density and duration of confinement of the reacting nuclei as components of a fully ionized gas, called a plasma. Magnetic fusion research began some 30 years ago with independent classified programs in the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. In l958 these programs were declassified and an era of information and personnel exchange began. In the intervening years separate programs in the United States, the EC, Japan, and the USSR have grown to their current substantial status. The Path to Fusion Energy The United States, the EC, Japan, and the USSR are each committed to pursue fusion as a potential element in their energy futures, although l3
14 the degree of the commitment differs. It is not possible, however, to proceed forthwith toward the objective of widespread availability of fusion energy in the same way one might proceed directly toward the design, construction, and deployment of a new aircraft. The reason is that much of the necessary science and technology has yet to be developed. (See Conn, l983.) The technical path to fusion requires showing its scientific feasibility through convincing theory and substantiating experiments that the laws of nature will allow more energy to be produced from the plasma than is necessary to supply to it to induce the fusion reactions. Next, engineering feasibiity must be established through the choice of a suitable design concept for a reactor and the development of advanced technologies necessary for the production and extraction of useful amounts of power. In actuality, significant overlap exists between the two feasibility conditions, so that the terms are really more useful as simplifying concepts than as distinct developmental stages. A demonstration of power production on a commercial scale will probably be considered necessary to convince users that some form of commercialization is possible. Finally, attainment of economic viability in comparison with alternate technologies for generation of power will be required. Currently, investigations are at the stage where scientific feasibility is expected to be shown within a few years. The strength of the commitment to fusion energy in the several world programs varies because of varied national circumstances. Japan, for example, has few indigenous energy sources and has decided to explore both fusion energy and fission breeder reactors to meet its forseeable needs. The EC must similarly explore alternative technologies, although its energy needs are neither so immediate nor so acute as those of Japan. The United States, currently enjoying greater reserves of coal and uranium, probably feels the least urgency about fusion. The USSR has its own objectives for a substantial program in magnetic fusion energy. This report is concerned with the programs of the EC and Japan as the most likely candidates for cooperation, and it has comparatively little to say about the USSR program. The four world programs are certainly competitive in the technical sense with both implicit and explicit rivalry for technical accomplishment. The current stakes are the natural ones of professional recognition and national accomplishment. There seem to be no prominent overtones of any national race to arrive first at some sharply defined fusion goal, such as there was with respect to a moon landing or such as there is with respect to the development of a supercomputer of a specified speed. Structure of the Question In principle it would be logical first to examine the technical program substance for cooperative opportunities, then to examine the
l5 advantages and disadvantages of particular candidate projects, and lastly to examine various kinds of agreements capable of reaching the desired ends. In practice, however, both the incentives for cooperating and the constraints thereon will feed into the policies governing cooperation. Accordingly, the nature of these incentives and constraints, as they appear to all of the cooperating parties, is of first concern, assuming for the moment that there are ample technical opportunities for cooperation and that there are also ample ways to agree how to carry it out. One important incentive is achieving needed program results sooner or more completely through joint efforts than is possible by any single partner without cooperation. Another incentive is expanding, and capturing, long-term economic benefits from eventual commercial application of fusion to a greater extent than might be realized from a separate program. Saving research and development costs is often mentioned as an incentive, a feature of particular interest to finance ministries and to officials who must allocate resources over the whole range of competing national needs. Similarly, diversity of technical approach can spread the risks, with possible avoidance of costs. Political objectives, such as the strengthening of economic alliances, have been served in the past by cooperation in fusion and may provide future incentives. Another incentive to cooperation is to broaden the base of interest in fusion. A broader base of interest may help electric utilities, as potential users, to arrive at decisions regarding their own role and may, in addition, involve more manufacturers as suppliers of both experimental and commercial equipment. Public awareness of the technology may also be enhanced, a necessary condition, at least, for eventual public acceptance. The foregoing incentives for cooperation are overlaid with constraining policy objectives. Each country will have some preconceptions as to the proper degree of its national program strength and independence. Other policy objectives will be to attain national prestige through technical leadership and to avoid the impairment of national security through, say, undesirable technology transfer. The technical needs and opportunities for cooperation fall into three categories: basic information in plasma science; fusion technology, including engineering component development; and construction and operation of major experimental facilities. The modes of technical cooperation may be conveniently divided into five categories: exchanges of information at meetings and workshops, exchanges of personnel at research facilities, joint planning for effective collaboration on and increasing the complementarity of new facilities, joint programs on unique national facilities, and the joint undertaking of all aspects of major facilities.* *In this report the term "cooperation" is used in the general sense of acting with others on either a small or a large scale. Where the more specific sense of working actively together as approximately equal partners in sizeable enterprises is intended, the term "collaboration" is used.
l6 Agreements for implementation of cooperative projects must deal satisfactorily with a number of factors that bear on policy objectives, mutuality of purpose, and conditions for working together. The principal factors are timing, compatibility of goals, stability in the partnership, technology transfer, flow of funds among partners, equitable distribution of the benefits of cooperation, suitability of institutional framework, and workability of the arrangments for project management. It is in these terms that the report discusses whether greater cooperation is desirable and, if so, what might be undertaken and how. THE WORK OF THE COMMITTEE The main task set for the committee was to recommend, for the consideration of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), courses of action for international cooperation, analyzed with regard to technical need, relevant national policies, workability, long-term implications, and other criteria of suitability. (See Appendix A for a fuller description of the Scope of Work.) It was expected that the committee would not advise on the content of particular technical projects and programs but would merely identify topics as candidates for cooperative program definition. However, as the committee approached its task, it soon perceived a lack of complete world readiness for large-scale cooperation. Hence the problem of the committee was more one of finding ways to move toward that readiness than of straightforwardly analyzing technical proposals in terms of well established criteria. Committee Inquiries The first step of the committee was to explore in some depth viewpoints within the United States in order to fill out the structure of the problem described in the preceding section. Thus, two workshops were conducted to gather domestic views. It was thought impossible to separate cleanly the technical, policy, and organizational aspects of the question so that these might be dealt with in different workshops. Consequently, all three aspects were treated together. Two workshops, covering the same ground but with different participants, were conducted in order to reap a diversity of viewpoints and to ascertain those viewpoints that both groups agreed on. These workshops solicited prepared inputs over a wide range of experience. We heard from management levels of the fusion program of DOE and from the various parts of the technical fusion community itself. We heard from other parts of U.S. governmentâin particular, from the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and from Congressional staff. We heard individuals who had lived through prior
17 examples of international cooperation in fusion as well as other technologies quite unrelated to fusion. Individuals with experience in the later stages of commercial development of technologies, such as jet engines, computers, and semiconductors, gave us the benefit of their experience. We also obtained the viewpoints of individuals from electric utilities as ultimate users of fusion technology and from the financial community as a source of investment in commercial fusion. Finally, we sought the ideas of those experienced in diplomacy and international law, such as negotiators of the Treaty of the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the Law of the Sea. Of course, it was essential to make first hand contact with scientists and policy level officials in Japan and in countries of the EC. Accordingly, committee members traveled to Japan and to Western Europe to address many of the subjects covered in the domestic workshops, although necessarily in less depth. The travelers attempted to discover compatibility of the various national goals, or the lack thereof. Foreign officials were asked about the intended development of the role of their domestic industry; and their attitudes were sought on cooperation with the United States, which in the last analysis, may determine the response to any U.S. initiatives. These meetings also inquired into the technical needs and opportunities for cooperation at several levels of effort: modest scientific exchange, organized cooperative planning and study, plasma physics experimentation, large technology test facilities, and major experimental fusion facilities. The discussions also covered the types of agreements, organizations, and management arrangements that might be adapted to implement cooperative efforts. On the trips, the group examined the characteristics of successful efforts at cooperation, such as the Doublet III experiment, jointly funded by Japan and the United States; the Rotating Target Neutron Source II experiment, similarily conducted; the studies on the German TEXTOR tokamak of impurity control and physics of the plasma edge, under the auspices of the International Energy Agency; and the Joint European Torus, an example of successful resolution of divergent national and cultural interests. The group heard also about other projects such as the Large Coil Test Facility, which has been troubled by scheduling delays, and the Fusion Materials Irradiation Test Facility, for which the United States has not yet been able to conclude an agreement on joint participation. Organization of the Report In the remainder of the report, Chapter 2 deals with the incentives and constraints that constitute the policies governing international cooperation and from which will flow the criteria for judging international cooperative initiatives. Chapter 3 discusses the technical needs and opportunities from which the substance of
18 cooperation may be drawn. Chapter 4 examines factors affecting agreement on and implementation of cooperation. Finally, Chapter 5 contains our conclusions and our recommendations for the near future together with the rationale supporting them. Several appendixes, providing more detail on topics discussed in the main body of the report, are included.
