709 



the major devices and facilities that would be needed, as well as the 

 critical criteria and decision points that would be involved in the 

 go-ahead decisions. 



There are new agreements in preparation that will keep the 

 possibility of cooperation active at medium levels of effort, at 

 least. However, what is lacking now is an international joint 

 planning team to consider concepts for TFCX or equivalent, NET, and 

 the Fusion Experimental Reactor proposed by Japan and how these 

 machines might be modified to give optimum phased advances. German 

 officials thought that joint planning would be feasible only for the 

 period from 1988 onward, since plans until 1988 are rather firm. It 

 was conceded that there is some flexibility in the EC program for NET, 

 through joint planning, to take advantage of whatever physics results 

 might be provided by TFCX. U.K. ministers would countenance some 

 exploration of the possibility of bringing the world-class fusion 

 programs together. A U.K. official noted it was still an open 

 question of whether EC will go forward to NET and DEMO by itself, with 

 only the incidental help of others, or will seek a truly joint 

 undertaking with Japan or the United States. The former course has 

 the advantage of making sure the technology is acquired by the EC, and 

 the latter course has the advantage of probable savings in cost and 

 time. 



A JET official noted that an outside country could participate in a 

 large EC project, like NET, say, without participating in all the rest 

 of the EC program. A U.K. official would like to see as much 

 collaboration as possible on smaller projects to gain experience and 

 confidence. 



Site selection for NET will remain a difficult issue, as judged by 

 prior insistence to exclude the site of JET and by the competition 

 among Cadarache, Garching, and Ispra as candidate sites. 



It seems that, given a strong and well presented U.S. initiative, 

 an international agreement on joint program planning and collaboration 

 at intermediate project sizes could be achieved. However, there would 

 be substantial obstacles, problems, and friction in reaching agreement 

 and in implementation. The question is: Is it worth it? 



