The ITER Documentation

1. The ITER Documentation The actual agreement (item 2) has 29 articles + annexes etc…. as outlined above

2. The ITER Documentation • The common understandings seem to have taken the place of a more technical ‘baseline’ at present

3. The ITER Documentation • Side agreements

4. ITER Governance: The Organisation

5. ITER Governance: The Council • The Council …is the principle organ….. shall supervise the ITER Organisation ….. • (up to) 4 representatives from each member (EU, Ru, Jp, Ind, US, Kor, Cn). May decide to hold meeting at the Ministerial level. • A few decisions require unanimity, most decided on a weighted voting system with the weights determined by the contributions • Meet twice a year • Issues related to (essentially) ES&H require compliance with host state regulations e.g. French nuclear safety code • The ITER organisation has a legal personality i.e. can make contracts, licenses, legal proceedings, agreements • Agreement is initially for 35 years. • After 10 years members may withdraw, new members may join at any time subject to council determined conditions • Mechanism for settlement of disputes

6. The ITER Host Organisation • The Host organisation is centered in Barcelona – this seems to work O.K.

7. The ITER Host Organisation The Host Organisation seems perilously close to a parallel structure. At the very least it fuzzes up the roles & responsibilities

8. The ITER Host Site Support The Host shall provide at its own expense: Land, Services to the site boundary, Roads etc.., Transportation services to the site, temporary (project) accommodation as required, 120 MW (500 MW pulsed), cooling water, telecommunication & network connections Support staff (in addition to assigned staff) licensing safety language etc, medical, emergency services. Security. Cafeteria, site services, environmental International school

9. ITER privileges • IO shall enjoy immunity from jurisdiction … except for traffic offences (sic). This can be waived by the Council • No import duties • No direct taxes • No income taxes • Effective diplomatic status for council members • Rules apply to membership of EURATOM + members Seems very like CERN to me

10. The ITER Costs - Const Flexible arrangement allows both countries and regions to participate on a similar basis EU represented by the (existing) European Atomic Energy Community 12% cash fund controlled by the IO included in the construction costs 10% contingency

11. The ITER Costs - Example Purchases from the common fund are determined by the requirement of ‘strong design integration’ or ‘on-site installation’ Since most of the equipment is in-kind how can you have cost overruns ? right

12. The ITER Costs - Ops I have no idea why US & JA ended up with higher Ops contributions. Possibly GDP considerations

15. Discussion with Carl Strawbridge – US Deputy Project Manager International Agreement(s) • The agreements were negotiated by the wrong people i.e. lawyers, with little if any input from Project type people. The end result was a document where every disagreement must be taken to the Council for resolution i.e. a quasi legal type of solution rather than a pragmatic project type approach. The Project needs (and is trying) to get responsibility back from the Council in areas such as budgets and design. Llewellyn-Smith, the Council Chair, recognises this and is trying to help. This convoluted decision making process is obviously inefficient and precludes any fast decision making. The IO is thus responsible but not empowered. • Carl fovours agreements which are simple and broad. He points out that CERN has only modified its agreement once in 30 years and ITER is trying to change theirs almost before they have started • There are no accepted management tools (and indeed most members do not actually seem to understand the concept of modern management tools), and no good framework to implement them.

16. Discussion with Carl Strawbridge – US Deputy Project Manager In-Kind – This is obviously an attempt to avoid the complexities of money (unlike CERN with an annual budget) However: • The member technical contributions were done mindlessly with no sensible technical boundaries • Relative cost changes across the various systems cause real problems • Science committee would like to make some design changes and there is no real mechanism to do this other than renegotiations at the Council level • All countries want all technologies (in case it works and everyone wants to build one). This shouldn’t be as much of a problem for us if plug compatibility works • IUA’s (the currency units) seem O.K. to assess relative value but are not terribly good at tracking costs and are causing problems in industry with ‘design-to-cost’. The IUA value was set in FY88 and becomes more abstract every year. • The biggest problem to date is that there is minimal (no) technical integration across the various member contributions. The design is thus not viable without a capable central team which (of course) wasn’t planned for and doesn’t yet exist in a viable form.

17. Discussion with Carl Strawbridge – US Deputy Project Manager Governance • The IO and the Host Organisation (46%) are almost two projects in parallel • The IO is trying to re-invent the wheel in terms of lab organisation rules e.g. human resources, in a quasi green field site. Carl feels that the IO should have started with a framework and adopted the CEA (Cadarache) protocols. The business of setting up a lab is hindering doing the project. • None of the countries were really ready to start and some of them had to pass new laws. This really hindered the establishment of the member technical teams and has made the start-up slower than necessary • The concept of IO field teams has evaporated and resources are coming from the member national labs • The lack of industrial involvement at this point is apparent