841 



contractual research. This generated considerable 

 hostility by the European consortium members who, 

 interested in diluting, not perpetuatmg, the American 

 monopoly, sought a broader and more equitable dis- 

 tribution formula. Efforts to get the Interim Com- 

 munications Satellite Committee of INTELSAT to 

 supervise COMSAT R&D and to give prior approval 

 to COMSAT awards were defeated, but over time the 

 percentage of contracts placed in-house began to 

 diminish and a more equitable distribution (roughly 

 50-50) emerged. Under the permanent arrangements, 

 contract responsibility passed to the secretariat. In- 

 terestingly, strong pressures have been placed on the 

 latter by the less-advanced member countries to base 

 contract placement not on a principle of equitable 

 distribution but rather on the criteria of technologi- 

 cal quality and least cost.'" 



The INTELSAT experience underscores the ex- 

 tent to which joint venture approaches can be taken. 

 It is characterized, as are many other successful 

 ventures, by clarity of purpose and specificity of 

 objectives. And as the contract criteria apparently 

 preferred by many members suggest, confidence in a 

 high technology organization may well depend on its 

 capacity to avoid formal national quotas in resource 

 allocation. This, however, has been a political liability 

 that most large-scale R&D organizations and ventures 

 have to bear. As the Euratom case demonstrated, not 

 all undertakings are always able to cope successfully 

 with that problem. 



ill.E. Urenco 



Urenco, the tripartite organization in which three 

 European countries (the United Kingdom, the FRG, 

 and the Netheriands) collaborate in the enrichment of 

 uranium, the manufacture of gas centrifuges, and the 

 conducting of related R&D, is perhaps the most far- 

 reaching of the joint arrangements dealt with in this 

 paper. It comes much closer to such other produc- 

 tion-oriented international technology projects as the 

 bilateral Concorde and the quadripartite Airbus, both 

 of which, like Urenco, have been technically success- 

 ful cooperative enterprises, than it does to either 

 CERN or Euratom. The success of Urenco may be all 

 the more surprising and encouraging as it involves a 

 technology that was and still is classified and involves 

 serious security issues. 



Urenco's organization is complex, involving four 

 contracting parties who equally share one-third 

 ownership and who have formed two companies to 

 handle international marketing and technology licens- 

 ing and two enterprises to handle design construction, 

 ownership, and operation. It is, however, run as a 

 single entity. One of the companies, Centec, is 

 charged with responsibility for coordinating a joint 

 tripartite R&D and information exchange program. A 

 joint committee composed of representatives of the 



Scheinman REFLECTIONS ON PAST EXPERIENCE 



contracting parties has authority to approve R&D- 

 programs, which are to be financed in whole or part 

 by joint government grants. It is this set of activities 

 that bears most directly on the fusion R&D question. 

 Over time, Urenco has undergone several organi- 

 zational adjustments, partly for operational, partly 

 for investment philosophy reasons, and partly for 

 reasons of technology choice. With respect to the 

 last, it was originally intended that Urenco would 

 develop a single centrifuge technology that would be 

 exploited on a common basis. All of the participants, 

 however, already had made substantial investments 

 in centrifuge technology by the time Urenco was 

 established, and they proved unwilling to forego this 

 investment in favor of a common technological ap- 

 proach. A new arrangement was negotiated whereby 

 each party is responsible for its own R&D program 

 and, as controlling shareholder in its own national 

 enterprise, determines which technology it will use. 

 Full exchange of technological information among 

 the shareholders makes possible the taking of an in- 

 formed decision. '^-'^ Other attributes of Urenco have 

 also undergone changes that tend to reinstate greater 

 national control over activities. Thus, whereas the 

 original investment pattern was to be one in which 

 Urenco plants were to be built on the principle of 

 equal ownership and investment, this has evolved 

 through several stages to a point where Urenco facili- 

 ties will be 907c nationally owned. The underlying 

 reasons relate to differences among shareholders re- 

 garding the timeliness of constructing new facilities 

 and the appropriate marketing philosophy. 



These experiences suggest some of the difficulties 

 that can arise in multilateral settlement on a common 

 technological strategy. How applicable this is to the 

 next stage in fusion R&D is for those most involved 

 in the technology and the alternative development 

 pathways to determine. At the same time, the ability 

 of different countries to converge in a common enter- 

 prise involving joint decisions where the commercial 

 and economic stakes are so high underscores the lat- 

 itude of action open to those who would consider a 

 common enterprise. 



IV. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS 



The record of international cooperation in scien- 

 tific and technological R&D is mixed, an outcome 

 that should not be surprising. Despite the intuitive 

 sense that cooperation, which can reduce costs, ex- 

 pand ideas, and enhance overall scientific and tech- 

 nological experience and competence, is the logical 

 and rational thing to do, it does not turn out to be an 

 instinctive characteristic of international behavior. 

 While governments understand that cooperative R&D 

 can bring economic and technological advantages, and 



NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY/FUSION VOL. 2 JULY 1982 



