November 13, 1996

The DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) has scheduled a meeting in San Diego for January 21-24, 1997. The focus of the meeting will be on a FESAC review of the ITER Detailed Design Report (DDR), requested in a charge letter from DOE Director of Energy Research Martha Krebs dated September 23. Krebs asked FESAC to "provide its view of the adequacy of the DDR as part of the basis for a United States decision to enter negotiations (of the terms and conditions for an agreement for the construction, operations, exploitation and decommissioning of ITER). Krebs also asked FESAC "to provide me its view of the technical adequacy of the DDR as part of the basis for a United States decision to sign a negotiated agreement (on ITER construction)." The FESAC report is not due until May 1, 1997 but FESAC chairman John Sheffield plans to have the response much earlier, though not at the January meeting. At the January meeting, Sheffield intends to provide time for any comments on ITER that members of the fusion community or the public may want to make as input to the review process. The review itself will be carried out by a set of subpanels of technical specialists on various ITER subsystems and an integration subpanel. The subpanels are just now in the process of formation. The review is not expected to begin until the DDR is made available, probably in the latter half of December.

The DDR has just been finished by the ITER Joint Central Team. It is reported to be about 1000 pages in length. It will first be made available to the ITER Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). TAC will formally comment on the report at its meeting December 3-7 in Naka, Japan. The report of the TAC goes to the ITER Council (IC) at its meeting December 17-18 in Tokyo. The IC, presuming it accepts the DDR, will then release it to the Parties for national reviews, of which the FESAC review will be the U.S. counterpart to reviews which will occur in Europe, Russian and Japan. Based on the results of these national reviews (to their respective governments) the governments will decide whether to enter into negotiations, which would probably begin next summer. That will give the governments about 1 year to negotiate the agreement for ITER construction, since the current Engineering Design Activities (EDA) agreement expires in July 1998.

Note to the Fusion Community: If you have an opinion on ITER construction, the January meeting of FESAC is the time to express it. If you cannot attend the meeting in person, send written comments to John Sheffield (sheffieldj@ornl.gov).

Errata on FPN-22: In FPN-22 we said that a principal candidate to replace Energy Secretary O'Leary was "former" congressman from New Mexico Bill Richardson. Our apologies to Rep. Richardson. He ran and was re-elected in the recent election. Also we said that Rep. Harold Volkmer was a Republican. Again our apologies. He is a Democrat. We were correct, however, in saying he lost his bid for reelection. Other members of the House Science Committee who were defeated in the elections were Andrea Seastrand (R-CA) and Mike Ward (D-KY). Also Steve Stockman (R-TX) is facing a December 10 runoff election.

For more information, contact: Stephen O. Dean