INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SCIENCE 



THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1985 



House of Representatives, 

 Committee on Science and Technology, 



Task Force on Science Policy, 



Washington, DC. 

 The task force met, pursuant to notice, at 8:30 a.m., in room 

 2325, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Don Fuqua (chairman 

 of the task force) presiding. 



Mr. Fuqua. Today's witness is the distinguished director of the 

 Joint European Torus [JETl Joint Undertaking Project, Dr. Hans- 

 Otto Wiister. Prior to his appointment as director of the JET 

 Project in December 1977, Dr. Wiister served as deputy director 

 general of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. 



We are very pleased to have you here today as we conclude the 

 fourth hearing on international cooperation in science. 



STATEMENT OF DR. HANS-OTTO WtSTER, DIRECTOR, JOINT EU- 

 ROPEAN TORUS [JET] JOINT UNDERTAKING, ABINGDON, OX 

 FORDSHIRE, GREAT BRITAIN 



Dr. WusTER. Thank you, sir. 



I have sent over a written statement, which I would not like to 

 go through in detail, but it is maybe appropriate to make a few 

 points which are partially in the statement, partially not. The first 

 point is certainly not. 



Also in Europe, international collaboration in its formalized in- 

 stitutionalized form is not an organizational scheme with which 

 you start normally. International collaboration on the scale as we 

 have it in our laboratory is the result of general insight that re- 

 search in separate national laboratories could not, for reasons of 

 resources, be as much in the forefront of science as a joint effort. 



The fusion research in Europe, as you well know, is a program 

 which is coordinated by the European political body, the Commis- 

 sion of the European Communities. But it started out in financing 

 research — co-financing research in national laboratories. 



However, in the early seventies, when size seemed to be neces- 

 sary to make progress, and things got bigger and bigger, it became 

 clear such an apparatus could not be financed and also staffed in 

 the framework of a single national laboratory. This was the hour of 

 birth of the idea of the JET Joint Undertaking. It has taken consid- 

 erable time to get this project off the ground, 5 years of design 

 study of which 2 years were certainly mainly based on the problem 

 to agree on a site for the project. 



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