§ Lord Kennetasked Her Majesty's Government:
What are the sums presently being spent by (a) the United Kingdom, (b) the European Community, (c) Japan, (d) the United States, (e) the Soviet Union, and (f) the entire international community, on fusion research, and what are the grounds on which they have decided to reduce British investment.
586WA
§ Baroness HooperThe Government have agreed with their European partners to extend the life of the Joint European Torus Project by two years to the end of 1992, to enable it to complete its agreed scientific objectives. We shall therefore continue to support fusion research through the current Community Fusion Programme, but have decided that the prospects for fusion power are so distant that it no longer justifies continuing as broad a domestic programme of research as we have had in the past. The present level of funding by the Department of Energy of fusion research in the UK is around £26m a year, which includes a contribution, via the UKAEA, to the JET project, whose total expenditure is around £75 m a year. Euratom funding of fusion research throughout the Community, including JET, to which the UK also contributes through its overall contribution to the EC budget, amounts to about £130m a year, to which are added the various national expenditures. The United States Department of Energy budget for magnetic fusion research for fiscal year 1989 is $351m (about £196m at the current rate of exchange). Comparable information on the sums being spent by Japan, the Soviet Union and the entire international community is not available to my department, though in 1987 the US Congress' Office of Technology Assessment estimated that Japan had spent the equivalent of $381m (about £213m) on its fusion programme in 1986.