Relation to Existing Fusion Energy Science Program Moving to Reenter Negotiations for Iter Participation Scientific and Technological Value and Interest

At its meeting on September 17, 2002, you asked the National Research Council’s Burning Plasma Assessment Committee (BPAC) to report in December on two aspects of its charge and to comment on whether the United States should reenter the negotiations on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), an international burning plasma experiment. This interim report, submitted in response to that urgent request, addresses only two aspects—the importance of a burning plasma experiment for fusion energy and the scientific and technical readiness to undertake a burning plasma experiment—and offers advice on entering ITER negotiations. The issues discussed here will be amplified in the course of the study, and the final report will address the wider aspects of the burning plasma issue and their relation to the fusion energy science program. In particular, considerations of the broader scientific value of burning plasma science and of the Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee’s (FESAC’s) proposed dual-track strategy for developing a burning plasma experimental program are deferred to the committee’s final report. With these caveats, the committee offers the following recommendations: