In response to a blistering external review and congressional pressure for the US to end its participation in ITER, the international fusion test reactor being built in France, the project's top official and governing council are scrambling to implement major management reforms.
Robert Iotti, the US-appointed chairman of the ITER Council, says that each of the 11 recommendations made by an independent management review team last year is being implemented. Those steps include replacing Osamu Motojima, the current director general of the central ITER Organization (IO), and cutting the number of senior managers there by half or more.
“The project is in a malaise and could drift out of control,” warned the review team’s executive summary, which was leaked to and published by the New Yorker. The team was headed by William Madia, former director of Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest National Laboratories.
Motojima, who also says he agrees...
