Does Fusion Have a Future? U.S. funding reversal for ITER
suggests that fusion energy--"always just a few decades away
from reality" as the joke goes--may have finally run out of
decades 14 February 2008—The 2004 report ”Burning Plasma:
Bringing a Star to Earth,” from the U.S. National Research
Council, sold Washington on the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor (ITER), a massive R&D project that
proponents predict will be the breakthrough project for fusion
energy. In its fiscal 2008 budget, however, Congress drove the
United States’ role in ITER right into the ground, slashing US
$160 million promised for this year to $10.7 million. U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) officials are expected to provide an
update on how the United States plans to work around the budget
shortfall at a meeting of the agency’s Fusion Energy Sciences
Advisory Committee next Tuesday. But the United States’ paltry
participation has some wondering if fusion research, considered
since the 1960s one of the great long shots for