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THE FUSION PROGRAM OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY 



In the words of the most recent proposed five-year plan, for 1985-B9, 



...the Conununity Fusion Program is a long-term cooperative program 

 embracing all the work carried out in the Member States in the 

 field of controlled thermonuclear fusion. It is designed to lead 

 in due course to the joint construction of prototype reactors with 

 a view to their industrial production and marketing (emphasis 

 added) . 



— Commission of the European Communities, 1984b 



The EC program is about two-thirds of the size of the U.S. program, 

 with the tokamak as the dominant approach. The overall program is 

 staffed by about 3500 people, slightly over 1000 of whom are 

 professionals. There is no mirror confinement and little inertial 

 confinement work going on. Alternative confinement schemes being 

 studied are the stellarator and the reversed-f ield pinch, together 

 representing roughly 10 percent of the program. Almost all of the 

 work is carried out in national laboratories rather than in 

 universities. 



Roughly half the support comes from the EC, the other half coming 

 from separate national budgets of Member States. 



The flagship of the program is the large Joint European Torus (JET) 

 tokamak (about twice the volume of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor) , 

 installed adjacent to Culham Laboratory. JET is funded 80 percent by 

 the EC and 20 percent by EC Member States individually. Budgets for 

 the whole EC program are prepared and funded on a five-year basis and 

 are reformulated after three years. The project is staffed by 

 personnel drawn from all the European national laboratories, for 

 example, Culham, Garching (Federal Republic of Germany) , Fontenay 

 (France) , Frascati (Italy) , and Jutphas (Netherlands) . JET is now in 

 the early operational phase. Successful completion of the facility 

 represented a major success for European cooperation. 



In addition to JET there are three large ($40 million to $100 

 million) tokamaks being built at Caderache, France (TORE SUPRA); 

 Garching (ASDEX Upgrade); and Frascati (FTU) . The TEXTOR device at 

 Julich, Federal Republic of Germany, continues operation. Each of 

 these four tokamaks is expected to stress a different aspect of 

 tokamak physics while at the same time serving to maintain the 

 national capability and national objectives of the participating EC 

 countries. 



The EC program is coordinated by the EC staff in Brussels, 

 utilizing a "consultative committee" drawn from all member states. 

 Each national program (or "Association") is managed by a steering 

 committee drawn from both the EC and the particular association. 



Future planning is centered on the Next European Torus (NET). The 

 new tokamaks (previously mentioned) will probably go into operation in 

 1987, and JET is expected to attain operation with tritium in 1989. 

 Assuming favorable results from these experiments, NET might move from 



