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. 



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