28 Aug (NucNet): UK prime minister Theresa May is risking the development of fusion energy by putting up a “new political wall” between researchers, the programme manager for European fusion Research (Eurofusion) told The Independent. Professor Tony Donné said Brexit and the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU’s Euratom atomic agency would mean a “strong negative impact” on fusion research. Eurofusion is the umbrella organisation of Europe’s fusion research laboratories. UK and EU scientists are collaborating under the Eurofusion programme to be the first to make a major breakthrough on fusion technology, which mimics processes at the core of the sun and promises a new era of clean, safe and cheap energy. Prof Donné told The Independent that Brexit had “only losers in fusion research”. He defended EU free movement as a way of harnessing the collective knowledge needed to make its success a reality. One project Prof Donné claims is immediately threatened when the UK falls out of Euratom and the EU is the Joint European Torus (Jet) scheme hosted in the UK at Culham near Oxford. According to Eurofusion, researchers, engineers and technicians working at Jet come from all over Europe and Jet operations receive funding of €69m, 87.5% of which is provided by the European Commission and 12.5% by the UK. Jet is the only existing fusion device capable of operating with the deuterium-tritium fuel, which will be the fusion fuel of the future. The interview is online: http://ind.pn/2gfoerW
