Several essays to this part of the Snowmass web site have argued that the United State should rejoin ITER. With a large part of the world coming together to build CERN, and to negotiate the Montreal Protocol, why can't the same thing happen with ITER? The purpose of this web submission is to argue that the world will not come together to build ITER, and should not.

Let's first consider CERN and the Montreal Protocol. Regarding the former, its goal was the study of high energy physics at a price beyond what any of the partners could have individually afforded. It has been extremely successful. While I do not know the number, it must have been responsible for many Nobel Prizes. Regarding the latter, the scientific, diplomatic and political leadership of the world came together to deal with a common and imminent danger. (For a description of the negotiation process see Richard Benedict [one of the American negotiators], Forum on Physics and Society, October, 2001. He emphasizes the remarkable cooperation between science and diplomacy.) Regarding fusion, the ultimate goal is to build power plants. This simply cannot be viable as a world wide effort, each country will ultimately build its own power plants. If this is so, and it obviously is, why do we need a world wide consortium to build a single prototype? Furthermore, at $10B, it is simply too expensive for what it delivers. Leonid Zakharov's essay in these pages gives an excellent description of what is expected for $10B.

Regarding ITER, too much time and effort will always be gobbled up with international squabbles and negotiations with nothing ever getting decided on or done. The overhead work alone would eat us alive. After all, it has been more than 15 years since ITER (I think it started out as INTOR) was first proposed. Also, even approved, it would always be vulnerable to the politics and whims of a single partner. We are certainly an example of that; there is no reason other partners cannot do what we did. Over the years ITER has had many ups and downs. Now Europe, Japan and Russia seem to be going ahead with a half sized version, and there are currently nibbles from the USA at the highest levels of political leadership. However ITER can be killed as easily as reborn at the highest levels. Hopefully not sounding too cynical, I would claim that the Bush administration is now totally preoccupied with a war on terrorism, a war against a determined and well funded enemy; and its own political survival in the nation, which seems to be divided almost exactly 50-50% between political supporters and opponents. It just cannot be paying much attention to an energy source for the twenty-second century. One can easily think of all sorts of reasons why ITER's fortunes might fluctuate within the administration. However, when it comes time to really commit dollars, it will almost certainly refuse, especially where the budget deficit has returned.

Rather than the rest of the world shaming us into ITER, I think the international dynamics are more likely to flow in the other direction. When it comes time for Europe, Japan and Russia to really come up with their $$, they will see no American support and will likely pull out themselves. They might well see it as another supersonic transport; we sensibly pulled out, the British and French went ahead and lost billions.