President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 is bad news for both the US domestic fusion program and ITER, the international fusion test reactor under construction in Cadarache, France. (See PHYSICS TODAY, April 2012, page 33.) The domestic program’s $300 million would be cut by about $50 million, and an increase of roughly $45 million to ITER’s $100 million falls far short of the funding needed to keep up with US construction commitments—9% of the total machine—to meet the first plasma date of 2020.
In late April the Senate appropriations committee endorsed the president’s proposal. But the immediate outlook will improve if the House markup, which would provide $475 million—$77 million more than the proposed budget—leads to reprieve for FY 2013. The bigger problem “is the train wreck coming down the tracks,” says Raymond Fonck, a University of Wisconsin–Madison physicist and member of the US Department of Energy’s...
