On 8 July, just days after the parties to ITER agreed to site the fusion energy test facility in Cadarache, France (see Physics Today, August 2005, page 26), India expressed interest in joining the international project.
India’s joining ITER will require unanimous endorsement by the project’s six current partners. The European Union is “favorably disposed,” says Susana Clement-Lorenzo, an official at the European Commission’s research directorate. She notes that India is building a superconducting tokamak and could contribute use-fully to ITER. As of press time, other partners had not weighed in.
The ITER partners aim to iron out the details of their collaboration by the first part of next year. International ITER team leader Yasuo Shimomura says that some partners, worried about delaying the project, would prefer to complete the negotiations before opening up the collaboration.
