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Remarks on the European fusion programme
Fusion Engineering and Design 22 (1993) 1-5 North-Holland
Opening Speech
Remarks on the European Fusion Programme U m b e r t o Colombo ENEA, Male Regina Margherita 125, 00198 Rome, Italy Submitted 14 September 1992, accepted 14 October 1992 Handling Editor: G. Casini
This is a critical time for fusion in Europe. While important progress is being achieved in fusion research (as demonstrated by the experiment at J E T last November where for the first time a significant quantity of energy deriving from fusion was obtained), we have not yet shortened the distance that separates us from commercial fusion energy. Fusion seems to be a moving target, and the evaluation by those who look behind us at the obstacles which we have overcome is more optimistic than the view of those who look forward at the road still ahead which also seems to be stretching onward. We have always known that the way to commercial fusion power would be long, difficult and expensive. This makes our task even more critical in a period in which money is very scarce, emphasis in allocation of resources is on short-term objectives, and fossil fuels are abundant and available at an all-time low price. It would be wrong and counterproductive if at this time we tried to "sell" fusion cheaply by understating its difficulties and overstating its potential advantages. We have to be completely honest and transparent in evaluating and presenting the problems and the perspectives of fusion energy, the time-scale, and the costs required. This is the attitude that we adopted two years ago in the Fusion Programme Evaluation Board. While we stressed that there was the potential for fusion to become a virtually inexhaustible, environmentally acceptable and economically viable energy source, we warned that "nuclear fusion is not around the corner". Our best estimate was that a prototype industrial fusion reactor, both environmentally and economically acceptable, and such that it could be considered "first of a series", would not operate before 2040. We should be aware that there are other long-term energy options, and that renewable energies in particular offer possibilities for environment-friendly and economically interesting systems. But we are also convinced that a future sustainable energy system should be based on a mix of distributed renewable energy sources (solar, biomass, w i n d . . . ) and of centralized, large-scale non-fossil energy sources such as nuclear fusion. The co-existence of these two kinds of sources is essential, and in order to get there, the financial efforts to develop fusion should not hamper the development of renewables, and vice versa. All this being considered, the Board recommended maintaining fusion as a priority in the Community's research programme, in consideration of its potential as a major component of the future world energy system, of the present and future energy deficit of the EC in terms of indigenous energy sources, and also in view of fusion's role as a leading edge technology in which Europe enjoys an advanced position worldwide. The Evaluation Board had taken a strong stand in support of the international solution for the Next Step machine, that is I T E R . This solution was to be preferred for both economic 0920-3796/93/$06.00 © 1993 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved
1
2
U. Colombo / Openblg Speech
and technical reasons. The pooling of resources from all the major fusion programmes in the world, in the mind of the Board, might alleviate the difficulties that each single programme had in deciding the construction of the large scale fusion experiment which is now required. The cross fertilization of ideas and expertise present in the various areas could also be beneficial in technical terms, and more than offset the greater complexity in organization and management and the many interface problems to be solved. Moreover, a long term research programme on an unprecedented scale, centred on ITER, could well become the symbol and the demonstration of what science and technology can achieve for Mankind if resources from the world's major industrial countries are pulled together. I am therefore very pleased to see that the agreement for the Engineering Design Activities (EDA) of the ITER machine has been signed, following on completion of the quadripartite conceptual design phase. This happened in July despite difficulties of various nature, and especially considering the turmoil in one of the partners, the Russian Federation. The Board had also recommended investigating the possibility of extending the scope of the international cooperation besides the ITER machine, that is, to embrace an articulated ITER programme in which the main functions of fusion reactor development would be shared by the partners in worldwide cooperation. In addition to the Next Step project, these would include a large neutron source for materials testing and a major investigation into the potential of alternative lines. Although this broadening of the quadripartite agreement is far from being decided, I have noted with pleasure that positive reactions to this proposal have been expressed by the various partners. JET, which occupies a central place in world fusion, will terminate its operation at the end of 1996, and its staff will then return to their parent institutions. Some of us in Europe have expressed preoccupations for the long time lag between the decomissioning of JET and the commissioning of ITER (not earlier than 2005), in which no large scale fusion experiment would be carried out in Europe nor, as a matter of fact, in the United States. The only large machine operating after the termination of JET will be the Japanese JT60 upgrade, however unable to use tritium. Meanwhile, the extremely well trained and most efficient experimental team of JET risks being dispersed. Also in view of this concern, the E u r a t o m / E N E A Association has proposed to the Commission the IGNITOR project for a compact high field experiment to demonstrate ignition, to study the behaviour of ignited plasma, and in any case to supply information that could be of interest for the operation of ITER and for future developments. By fully associating industry to the design and possible construction of this device (as has already been the case for IGNITOR since the last phases of the conceptual design) European industry would endow itself with precious experience that would further qualify it for ITER. The technical examination of IGNITOR by the Consultative Committee on the Fusion Programme is suspended at this time, pending the presentation of a revised version of the machine and of the results of further calculations, which will be submitted soon. We hope that this new version, together with the in-depth analysis which has been carried out by Prof. Coppi and his collaborators on the operational scenarios of the machine, will help dissipate possible remaining doubts on the performance of IGNITOR. The active interest that such an experiment has raised also in the United States indicates the possibility of a wide international cooperation, which might also help to overcome the well-known financial constraints. ITER will change the priorities and ways of operation of the European fusion community. However, ITER is not going to absorb and condition all fusion activities. First of all, the ITER agreement signed in July only regards the design phase. A further agreement will be needed before passing to the construction phase. Although we hope that one phase will follow
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
the other, difficulties may arise in the meantime. The choice of the site is one of these potential difficulties, charged as it is with political as well as with technical problems. Moreover, the Board had recommended - and the Commission approved - that another in-depth evaluation of the Fusion Programme should be carried out at the European level before engaging in the construction of the ITER machine. Again, the Board recommended, and the Council decided in December 1991, that we should keep a fall-back solution open for Europe (represented by NET) in case of failure of the negotiations for the construction of ITER. The idea is that the Community should be able to master all key technologies of fusion, not only in the event that ITER should not proceed beyond the Engineering Design phase, but also in view of helping Eurpean industry to get ready for the calls for tender that would be launched by ITER, and for the more distant future in which international competition will replace international cooperation. It will then be important for European industry to be present in force at the level of systems as well as of subsystems and main components. The Commission, following the recommendations of the Board, has also indicated that long-term activities, aimed beyond ITER at DEMO and eventually at commercial reactors, should be carried out. In this frame, a reference design of a European Fusion Power Reactor will be developed and periodically updated as a guide to long-term research. The Commission has further decided that as a first step in this direction a safety and environmental assessment of fusion power must be carried out. This will presumably lead to directions of research, in particular concerning structural materials and high temperature breeding blankets, significantly different from those of ITER and beyond its scope. It is clear that the new phase into which European fusion is entering will markedly change the roles and the way of operation of the Associations and of industry. The role of the Associations will continue to be important in exploring alternative concepts in fusion, improving experimental and theoretical fusion physics and gaining fuller understanding of the most critical phenomena. "The Board recommended that the Associations should strengthen their links with the rest of the European scientific community, in particular with the universities. However, as the programme proceeds, a growing share of the overall effort is going to shift towards technology, both to satisfy the requests of ITER design activities and to respond to the needs of the long term programme. During ITER Engineering Design Activities, R & D tasks will be distributed to the Associations through the European Home Team. The overall European contribution to specific EDA technology activities will be about 100 Mecu, about half of which sustained by the Commission. During this phase, and even more during the subsequent construction phase, it is expected that an increasing part of the research and development objectives will be fixed by ITER, as a consequence of the need to assign the maximum priority to the prompt and effective development and utilization of this machine. In order to maximize their effectiveness and the possibility for them to master the situation, the various Associations should form "clusters" specialized in the different technological tasks, possibly with one or another Association taking the lead in a particular technology, according to its past experience and present expertise. As I have already mentioned, the role of industry in the fusion programme is going to grow and gain momentum in the future. This is especially needed in order to inject industrial expertise into the design and construction of the ITER device. It is a consequence of the shift of emphasis from physics towards technology, with attention to safety and environmental protection. It is also desirable in preparation for the next phases of the programme.
3
4
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
European industry is indeed well qualified for this task, because it has already taken part in the development of the European fusion programme and in other relevant "big science" activities such as those at CERN, also because it has gained experience in the field of nuclear fission that can be put to work for fusion. Specific areas of expertise that qualify European industry for fusion, and that in great part derive from nuclear fission energy, include: manufacturing optimisation; compliance to licensing procedures; quality assurance; large project integration; plant layout; shielding; remote handling; robots; on-site fabrication; nuclear instrumentation. As stated in the Board's report, the enormous reserves of skill and imagination possessed by the European industry should gradually be brought into what is the Community's biggest research programme at an early stage of project definition. However, there is a number of problems to be solved in order to involve industry in fusion in the most effective way. The Evaluation Board recognized the existence of difficulties connected with the large discontinuities in orders for the fusion programme. This problem is likely to aggravate in the future, given the trend towards fewer and larger orders. The final commercial objective is too far away to attract industrial investment beyond the foreseeable orders for experimental devices, or to stimulate industries to maintain their own R & D in the field and so generate endogenous knowledge. There are indeed some spin-offs from fusion contracts to other sectors of commercial interest: fusion requires advanced technologies which can be applied to other purposes and which create a high-tech environment conducive to higher reliability and quality of production. But this incentive alone appears to be inadequate in providing continuing involvement of industry in fusion technologies. This situation points to the need for great flexibility by the Commission in managing the industrial contribution to the fusion programme. The procedure of open competition among firms who wish to bid for a fixed price standard contract in conditions of well-established technology may conflict with the Programme's overriding requirement of quality in a highly dynamic environment, as well as with industry's need for continuity. In this context, pre-financing of selected suppliers may be needed in order to ensure their ability to develop the required components and subsystems at the time these become critical. It will also be necessary to pool together the expertise and resources of different European industries with experience in fusion and related technologies. New rules should be worked out in Europe for the creation and management of consortia operating at the cutting edge of technology several decades before the commercial exploitation of fusion power. Again, it is comforting to see that these recommendations of the Board have been taken seriously, by both the Commission and industry. DG-XII is elaborating the guidelines and the ground rules to cope with this entirely new situation, while industry has already taken the first steps for the creation of a European consortium along the lines indicated above. I am happy to note that Italian companies have had an important role in initiating this process. As I said earlier, technology is gaining an increasing share in the European fusion programme, which makes the present Symposium central in the discussion on the development of fusion. The technological challenges to be overcome in order to arrive at a full-scale fusion reactor of commercial interest are tremendous. They range from very large, high-field superconducting magnets to the development and qualifications of new structural materials for the first wall and for other components subject to intense neutron and heat fluxes; to the development of suitable blankets that perform several quite different tasks at the same time (breeding, heat collection, shielding); to the mastering of safe and reliable technologies to handle tritium; to robotics and to pellet injection. All these subjects will be widely discussed here in the next few days with the presence of many top world experts.
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
Let me just stress once again how important it is that the development of fusion technologies goes hand in hand with the assessment of safety and of the environmental effects of fusion. The long-term prospects of fusion depend on its environmental performance and its degree of acceptability by the public. In the Board's report, we used the term "environmental feasibility" to convey the message that the solution of these problems is just as important for the final goal of fusion energy as solving the problems with respect to physics, technology or economics. The safety and environmental performance of the future fusion reactor will depend very much on the choice and on the line of development of the different fusion technologies which are being determined now. Appropriate engineering and selection of materials can avoid preoccupations connected with the release of heat after shut-down (which is one of the main weak points of fission reactors); it can substantially reduce the likelihood of disruptive accidents with radiological consequences and, together with improved containment, it should ensure that no malfunctioning can result in appreciable environmental effects outside the plant and therefore that no evacuation plan for population beyond the plant perimeter will be needed (incidentally, the need to consider evacuation is another of the main obstacles to the acceptability of nuclear fission). Appropriate design and material selection can greatly reduce the nuclear inventory and the release of radioactive materials (including tritium) during plant operation, decommissioning and disposal of parts. One of the main objectives should be to ensure that radioactive waste from a fusion plant will not require isolation from the environment for geological times and shall therefore not constitute a burden for future generations. It is important that clear safety and environmental goals be set well in advance, and that they influence the lines of development in physics and especially in technology. The development and characterization of a new material, to take an example, takes a very long time and large investment. It would make little sense to develop solutions that are interesting from the point of view of structural integrity but do not qualify from the environmental point of view. Therefore, the decision by the Commission to start urgently the Safety and Environmental Assessment of fusion, in which such guidelines will be set, is most welcome. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, your work in this Symposium is of the greatest importance for the fusion community as well as for policy makers. I wish you personally, as well as in the name of ENEA, a most profitable week.
5
Opening Speech
Remarks on the European Fusion Programme U m b e r t o Colombo ENEA, Male Regina Margherita 125, 00198 Rome, Italy Submitted 14 September 1992, accepted 14 October 1992 Handling Editor: G. Casini
This is a critical time for fusion in Europe. While important progress is being achieved in fusion research (as demonstrated by the experiment at J E T last November where for the first time a significant quantity of energy deriving from fusion was obtained), we have not yet shortened the distance that separates us from commercial fusion energy. Fusion seems to be a moving target, and the evaluation by those who look behind us at the obstacles which we have overcome is more optimistic than the view of those who look forward at the road still ahead which also seems to be stretching onward. We have always known that the way to commercial fusion power would be long, difficult and expensive. This makes our task even more critical in a period in which money is very scarce, emphasis in allocation of resources is on short-term objectives, and fossil fuels are abundant and available at an all-time low price. It would be wrong and counterproductive if at this time we tried to "sell" fusion cheaply by understating its difficulties and overstating its potential advantages. We have to be completely honest and transparent in evaluating and presenting the problems and the perspectives of fusion energy, the time-scale, and the costs required. This is the attitude that we adopted two years ago in the Fusion Programme Evaluation Board. While we stressed that there was the potential for fusion to become a virtually inexhaustible, environmentally acceptable and economically viable energy source, we warned that "nuclear fusion is not around the corner". Our best estimate was that a prototype industrial fusion reactor, both environmentally and economically acceptable, and such that it could be considered "first of a series", would not operate before 2040. We should be aware that there are other long-term energy options, and that renewable energies in particular offer possibilities for environment-friendly and economically interesting systems. But we are also convinced that a future sustainable energy system should be based on a mix of distributed renewable energy sources (solar, biomass, w i n d . . . ) and of centralized, large-scale non-fossil energy sources such as nuclear fusion. The co-existence of these two kinds of sources is essential, and in order to get there, the financial efforts to develop fusion should not hamper the development of renewables, and vice versa. All this being considered, the Board recommended maintaining fusion as a priority in the Community's research programme, in consideration of its potential as a major component of the future world energy system, of the present and future energy deficit of the EC in terms of indigenous energy sources, and also in view of fusion's role as a leading edge technology in which Europe enjoys an advanced position worldwide. The Evaluation Board had taken a strong stand in support of the international solution for the Next Step machine, that is I T E R . This solution was to be preferred for both economic 0920-3796/93/$06.00 © 1993 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved
1
2
U. Colombo / Openblg Speech
and technical reasons. The pooling of resources from all the major fusion programmes in the world, in the mind of the Board, might alleviate the difficulties that each single programme had in deciding the construction of the large scale fusion experiment which is now required. The cross fertilization of ideas and expertise present in the various areas could also be beneficial in technical terms, and more than offset the greater complexity in organization and management and the many interface problems to be solved. Moreover, a long term research programme on an unprecedented scale, centred on ITER, could well become the symbol and the demonstration of what science and technology can achieve for Mankind if resources from the world's major industrial countries are pulled together. I am therefore very pleased to see that the agreement for the Engineering Design Activities (EDA) of the ITER machine has been signed, following on completion of the quadripartite conceptual design phase. This happened in July despite difficulties of various nature, and especially considering the turmoil in one of the partners, the Russian Federation. The Board had also recommended investigating the possibility of extending the scope of the international cooperation besides the ITER machine, that is, to embrace an articulated ITER programme in which the main functions of fusion reactor development would be shared by the partners in worldwide cooperation. In addition to the Next Step project, these would include a large neutron source for materials testing and a major investigation into the potential of alternative lines. Although this broadening of the quadripartite agreement is far from being decided, I have noted with pleasure that positive reactions to this proposal have been expressed by the various partners. JET, which occupies a central place in world fusion, will terminate its operation at the end of 1996, and its staff will then return to their parent institutions. Some of us in Europe have expressed preoccupations for the long time lag between the decomissioning of JET and the commissioning of ITER (not earlier than 2005), in which no large scale fusion experiment would be carried out in Europe nor, as a matter of fact, in the United States. The only large machine operating after the termination of JET will be the Japanese JT60 upgrade, however unable to use tritium. Meanwhile, the extremely well trained and most efficient experimental team of JET risks being dispersed. Also in view of this concern, the E u r a t o m / E N E A Association has proposed to the Commission the IGNITOR project for a compact high field experiment to demonstrate ignition, to study the behaviour of ignited plasma, and in any case to supply information that could be of interest for the operation of ITER and for future developments. By fully associating industry to the design and possible construction of this device (as has already been the case for IGNITOR since the last phases of the conceptual design) European industry would endow itself with precious experience that would further qualify it for ITER. The technical examination of IGNITOR by the Consultative Committee on the Fusion Programme is suspended at this time, pending the presentation of a revised version of the machine and of the results of further calculations, which will be submitted soon. We hope that this new version, together with the in-depth analysis which has been carried out by Prof. Coppi and his collaborators on the operational scenarios of the machine, will help dissipate possible remaining doubts on the performance of IGNITOR. The active interest that such an experiment has raised also in the United States indicates the possibility of a wide international cooperation, which might also help to overcome the well-known financial constraints. ITER will change the priorities and ways of operation of the European fusion community. However, ITER is not going to absorb and condition all fusion activities. First of all, the ITER agreement signed in July only regards the design phase. A further agreement will be needed before passing to the construction phase. Although we hope that one phase will follow
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
the other, difficulties may arise in the meantime. The choice of the site is one of these potential difficulties, charged as it is with political as well as with technical problems. Moreover, the Board had recommended - and the Commission approved - that another in-depth evaluation of the Fusion Programme should be carried out at the European level before engaging in the construction of the ITER machine. Again, the Board recommended, and the Council decided in December 1991, that we should keep a fall-back solution open for Europe (represented by NET) in case of failure of the negotiations for the construction of ITER. The idea is that the Community should be able to master all key technologies of fusion, not only in the event that ITER should not proceed beyond the Engineering Design phase, but also in view of helping Eurpean industry to get ready for the calls for tender that would be launched by ITER, and for the more distant future in which international competition will replace international cooperation. It will then be important for European industry to be present in force at the level of systems as well as of subsystems and main components. The Commission, following the recommendations of the Board, has also indicated that long-term activities, aimed beyond ITER at DEMO and eventually at commercial reactors, should be carried out. In this frame, a reference design of a European Fusion Power Reactor will be developed and periodically updated as a guide to long-term research. The Commission has further decided that as a first step in this direction a safety and environmental assessment of fusion power must be carried out. This will presumably lead to directions of research, in particular concerning structural materials and high temperature breeding blankets, significantly different from those of ITER and beyond its scope. It is clear that the new phase into which European fusion is entering will markedly change the roles and the way of operation of the Associations and of industry. The role of the Associations will continue to be important in exploring alternative concepts in fusion, improving experimental and theoretical fusion physics and gaining fuller understanding of the most critical phenomena. "The Board recommended that the Associations should strengthen their links with the rest of the European scientific community, in particular with the universities. However, as the programme proceeds, a growing share of the overall effort is going to shift towards technology, both to satisfy the requests of ITER design activities and to respond to the needs of the long term programme. During ITER Engineering Design Activities, R & D tasks will be distributed to the Associations through the European Home Team. The overall European contribution to specific EDA technology activities will be about 100 Mecu, about half of which sustained by the Commission. During this phase, and even more during the subsequent construction phase, it is expected that an increasing part of the research and development objectives will be fixed by ITER, as a consequence of the need to assign the maximum priority to the prompt and effective development and utilization of this machine. In order to maximize their effectiveness and the possibility for them to master the situation, the various Associations should form "clusters" specialized in the different technological tasks, possibly with one or another Association taking the lead in a particular technology, according to its past experience and present expertise. As I have already mentioned, the role of industry in the fusion programme is going to grow and gain momentum in the future. This is especially needed in order to inject industrial expertise into the design and construction of the ITER device. It is a consequence of the shift of emphasis from physics towards technology, with attention to safety and environmental protection. It is also desirable in preparation for the next phases of the programme.
3
4
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
European industry is indeed well qualified for this task, because it has already taken part in the development of the European fusion programme and in other relevant "big science" activities such as those at CERN, also because it has gained experience in the field of nuclear fission that can be put to work for fusion. Specific areas of expertise that qualify European industry for fusion, and that in great part derive from nuclear fission energy, include: manufacturing optimisation; compliance to licensing procedures; quality assurance; large project integration; plant layout; shielding; remote handling; robots; on-site fabrication; nuclear instrumentation. As stated in the Board's report, the enormous reserves of skill and imagination possessed by the European industry should gradually be brought into what is the Community's biggest research programme at an early stage of project definition. However, there is a number of problems to be solved in order to involve industry in fusion in the most effective way. The Evaluation Board recognized the existence of difficulties connected with the large discontinuities in orders for the fusion programme. This problem is likely to aggravate in the future, given the trend towards fewer and larger orders. The final commercial objective is too far away to attract industrial investment beyond the foreseeable orders for experimental devices, or to stimulate industries to maintain their own R & D in the field and so generate endogenous knowledge. There are indeed some spin-offs from fusion contracts to other sectors of commercial interest: fusion requires advanced technologies which can be applied to other purposes and which create a high-tech environment conducive to higher reliability and quality of production. But this incentive alone appears to be inadequate in providing continuing involvement of industry in fusion technologies. This situation points to the need for great flexibility by the Commission in managing the industrial contribution to the fusion programme. The procedure of open competition among firms who wish to bid for a fixed price standard contract in conditions of well-established technology may conflict with the Programme's overriding requirement of quality in a highly dynamic environment, as well as with industry's need for continuity. In this context, pre-financing of selected suppliers may be needed in order to ensure their ability to develop the required components and subsystems at the time these become critical. It will also be necessary to pool together the expertise and resources of different European industries with experience in fusion and related technologies. New rules should be worked out in Europe for the creation and management of consortia operating at the cutting edge of technology several decades before the commercial exploitation of fusion power. Again, it is comforting to see that these recommendations of the Board have been taken seriously, by both the Commission and industry. DG-XII is elaborating the guidelines and the ground rules to cope with this entirely new situation, while industry has already taken the first steps for the creation of a European consortium along the lines indicated above. I am happy to note that Italian companies have had an important role in initiating this process. As I said earlier, technology is gaining an increasing share in the European fusion programme, which makes the present Symposium central in the discussion on the development of fusion. The technological challenges to be overcome in order to arrive at a full-scale fusion reactor of commercial interest are tremendous. They range from very large, high-field superconducting magnets to the development and qualifications of new structural materials for the first wall and for other components subject to intense neutron and heat fluxes; to the development of suitable blankets that perform several quite different tasks at the same time (breeding, heat collection, shielding); to the mastering of safe and reliable technologies to handle tritium; to robotics and to pellet injection. All these subjects will be widely discussed here in the next few days with the presence of many top world experts.
U. Colombo / Opening Speech
Let me just stress once again how important it is that the development of fusion technologies goes hand in hand with the assessment of safety and of the environmental effects of fusion. The long-term prospects of fusion depend on its environmental performance and its degree of acceptability by the public. In the Board's report, we used the term "environmental feasibility" to convey the message that the solution of these problems is just as important for the final goal of fusion energy as solving the problems with respect to physics, technology or economics. The safety and environmental performance of the future fusion reactor will depend very much on the choice and on the line of development of the different fusion technologies which are being determined now. Appropriate engineering and selection of materials can avoid preoccupations connected with the release of heat after shut-down (which is one of the main weak points of fission reactors); it can substantially reduce the likelihood of disruptive accidents with radiological consequences and, together with improved containment, it should ensure that no malfunctioning can result in appreciable environmental effects outside the plant and therefore that no evacuation plan for population beyond the plant perimeter will be needed (incidentally, the need to consider evacuation is another of the main obstacles to the acceptability of nuclear fission). Appropriate design and material selection can greatly reduce the nuclear inventory and the release of radioactive materials (including tritium) during plant operation, decommissioning and disposal of parts. One of the main objectives should be to ensure that radioactive waste from a fusion plant will not require isolation from the environment for geological times and shall therefore not constitute a burden for future generations. It is important that clear safety and environmental goals be set well in advance, and that they influence the lines of development in physics and especially in technology. The development and characterization of a new material, to take an example, takes a very long time and large investment. It would make little sense to develop solutions that are interesting from the point of view of structural integrity but do not qualify from the environmental point of view. Therefore, the decision by the Commission to start urgently the Safety and Environmental Assessment of fusion, in which such guidelines will be set, is most welcome. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, your work in this Symposium is of the greatest importance for the fusion community as well as for policy makers. I wish you personally, as well as in the name of ENEA, a most profitable week.
5