• April 1st, 2006:

ITER Project Leader named

At a meeting in Tokyo on the 1st of April, the chief ITER negotiators from the seven international parties (European Union, India, Japan, Korea, China, the Russian Federation and the USA), identified the top management team that will manage this major international fusion energy research project. The parties to ITER accepted the European Union´s proposal to designate Dr. Norbert R. Holtkamp as nominee Principal Deputy Director-General and Project Construction Leader of the prospective ITER Organization. With the previous appointment of Kaname Ikeda as nominee Director-General in November 2005, the top management team of the prospective ITER Organization is now complete.

Dr. Holtkamp (1961) graduated in Physics from the University of Darmstadt in 1990. Previously Head of the Linear Collider Research Group at DESY, Hamburg, since 2001 he has been Director of the Accelerator Systems Division of the Spallation Neutron Source being constructed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, and due to operate in June 2006. In this position he was responsible for the management of cost, schedule and technical coordination, and directing approximately 500 people.

The representatives of the seven parties also endorsed the results of the negotiations on the international agreement that will govern the project, which will now be passed to ministerial level for its initialling. That meeting will be held on the 24th of May in Brussels and will be hosted by Janez Potocnik, European Commissioner for Science and Research.

In an announcement following the Tokyo meeting, the ITER parties stated that "the ITER Project is well on the way to becoming a reality with construction due to start soon at the agreed site of Cadarache in Southern France. The top management team will now press forward with building the international ITER Team," the announcement said. Nominee Director General Ikeda has already taken up residence in Cadarache.

BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS RELEASE

ITER will be a major experimental facility to demonstrate the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power. The construction costs of ITER are estimated at 4.7 billion Euro over ten years, a large part of which will be awarded in the form of contracts to industrial companies and fusion research institutions. Another five billion Euros are foreseen for the twenty-year exploitation period. Europe will contribute 45% of the costs, while the other six parties to this joint international venture (Japan, China, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, India, and the USA), will contribute the rest. In June 2005, the partners decided unanimously to choose the European site at Cadarache, in the South of France, as the location for the construction of ITER.

Around half of the hardware in the ITER construction programme will be supplied by Europe through a European Domestic Agency named "Fusion for Energy", which will be, amongst other things, responsible for the supply of the European contribution to ITER and for the co-ordination of related R&D. The Fusion for Energy organisation will be located in Barcelona.

Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. When light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released. Fusion research is aimed at developing a prototype fusion power plant that is safe and reliable, environmentally responsible, economically viable, with abundant and widespread fuel resources. In Europe, fusion research is organised in a coordinated research programme, which provides for an intensive use of all relevant R&D resources in pan-European collaborations on all the major research topics.