691 



106 



form of collaboration proposed by JAIF was to let Japanese vendors 

 supply components for U.S. fusion experiments. 



A concern about the reliability of the United States as a partner 

 in international collaborative ventures was forcefully expressed by 

 almost all groups. Volatility and instability in U.S. policy and 

 inadequate planning and erratic changes in direction at the fusion 

 program management level were cited as major concerns, under the 

 polite term of "flexibility." It was made clear that the strongest 

 possible implementing agreement, perhaps a treaty, would be necessary 

 if the Japanese were to undertake a major collaboration with the 

 United States. 



In discussions with the JAERI program leaders a distinction was 

 drawn between collaboration and cooperation . JAERI officials defined 

 collaboration as each partner contributing about 50 percent (in a 

 bilateral undertaking) and having a proportional voice in the 

 decisions about objectives, design features, and so forth. 

 Alternatively, cooperation was defined as one partner contributing 

 about 10 percent towards the cost of the other partner's experiment in 

 return for the opportunity to make some input to these decisions. 

 Under this view, collaboration on a major project must start with 

 joint formulation of the objectives, schedule, design features, and so 

 forth. Under the other view, one country may appropriately ask 

 another country to cooperate in a project which the former has 

 defined, provided that the latter country is given the opportunity to 

 make input to the final project definition. 



The Japanese emphasized that a decision to cooperate on a 

 particular activity must be developed "from the bottom up" in their 

 system. This practice means that the activity must make technical and 

 programmatic sense to everyone involved. As if to illustrate the 

 point, our discussions about international collaboration went much 

 better at the level of working scientists, who knew each other and 

 were comfortable in mutual discussion, than at the level of ministry 

 administrators, who were generally noncommittal. 



If nuclear fusion were anywhere near the application stage, we 

 doubt that there would be any Japanese interest at all in cooperating 

 with the United States or anyone else. However, the practical or 

 commercial application of nuclear fusion is decades away, and the 

 total development costs may run into tens of billions of dollars. 

 Under these circumstances it is hard for anyone to be against 

 international cooperation in fusion research, especially since federal 

 funding of nuclear fusion research seems to have stabilized in both 

 the United States and Japan. Program administrators see international 

 cooperation as a means of conserving scarce resources. Scientists see 

 cooperation as a means of expanding or accelerating their program. In 

 the real world, international cooperation may actually slow down a 

 project and increase the total cost beyound what it would have been 

 for one country. 



All groups with which we spoke endorsed international collaboration 

 in principle as desirable or necessary for technical progress, risk 



