#68 India Has Stopped Paying Cash Contributions for ITER Fusion Reactor
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June 16, 2021
By Steven B. Krivit
The government of India has not fully paid its cash contributions to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported yesterday.
Furthermore, IANS reported, India has not done so since 2017. India has, however, nearly fulfilled delivery of the reactor components it promised. IANS did not specify whether India had stopped paying all or only some of its cash commitment.
Something else happened in 2017. The ITER India domestic agency had displayed the following false statement from 2009 to 2017 on its Web site: “ITER will produce at least ten times more energy than the energy required to operate it.” The ITER design is, in fact, equivalent to a net-zero power output reactor. The reactor is not designed for any net energy.
On Dec. 17, 2017, I contacted Shishir Deshpande, then the project director for the ITER India domestic agency, and Arun Srivastava, the secretary of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. I advised them of the misunderstanding. The following month they removed the false statement.
