EU agency rejects criticism of fusion reactor ITER by German MPs

The EU agency Fusion for Energy (F4E) has rejected calls by German MPs to cut funding for the fusion reactor ITER and use the money for research on conventional energy transition technologies instead, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. “We Europeans spend about a billion euros a day on energy imports,” F4E director Johannes Schwemmer said, adding that the sums spent on ITER were comparatively modest. The nuclear fusion reactor, currently under construction in southern France, is slated to cost the EU more than eleven billion euros, Wetzel writes. Nuclear experts of the German Green Party and the Left Party said the EU ought to leave the international project as ITER was “a waste of taxpayer’s money” and a “nonstarter.”

Read the article in German here.