Fusion Reactor to be approved

December 21, 2003

The following is a press release issued today by Sierra Club of Canada and

NIRS. We encourage you to distribute it to your local media. Thanks!

SIERRA CLUB OF CANADA &

NUCLEAR INFORMATION & RESOURCE SERVICE (NIRS)

NEWS RELEASE

For Release: Friday December 19, 2003

DECISION IMMINENT ON ITER FUSION REACTOR BOONDOGGLE

Washington D.C. -- Energy Ministers from China, the European Union, Japan,

the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States of America

will meet in Washington on December 20th. The meeting, hosted by US Energy

Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to announce the selection of a site for

the

$12 billion (USD) experimental fusion reactor known as ITER (International

Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor). The candidate sites for the reactor are

Cadarache, France and Rokkasho-mura, Japan.

On December 8th, Canada formally withdrew its bid to build the ITER reactor

at the Darlington nuclear station in Clarington, Ontario. Canada also withdrew

from participant status. In November, the European Union agreed to drop a bid

proposal from Spain. At a preparatory meeting held in Vienna on December 4-5

in Vienna, it was agreed that the host country would have to pay 48% and 42%

respectively for construction and operating costs on the project. Assuming that

ITER will cost $12 billion (USD), split evenly between construction and

operating costs, the host country will have to pay about $5.5 billion and each

of

the other five countries will have to pay about $1.3 billion (USD) each.

A briefing paper prepared by the Canadian government last May stressed that

there will be a high risk of cost overruns for ITER. Environmentalists have

condemned the international project as a waste of money, a bad direction for

international energy policy, and not the " clean " energy that its supporters

claim.

The ITER reactor will use large amounts of radioactive tritium as fuel.

Ingestion of tritium will increase the risk of cancer and birth defects in

down-wind populations. The reactor will also produce 30,000 tonnes of

radioactive

waste deadly for at least 100 years.

" Congratulations to the Canadian government for refusing to waste billions of

tax dollars on the ITER fusion reactor " said H. , Policy Advisor

for the Sierra Club of Canada. " Fusion is a delusion. Even its supporters

admit that a commercial reactor to generate electricity is at least 50 years

away.

The ITER reactor will not produce any electricity, and there is no guarantee

that fusion will ever work. Fusion is not clean, and certainly not cheap. "

tte, Executive Director of the Washington-based Nuclear

Information & Resource Service (NIRS), said, " The ITER fusion reactor is a

big-science

boondoggle that has no energy payback. ITER will divert billions of dollars

away from real green energy solutions to the world's climate change crisis. "

For more information on ITER, please see: http://www.iter.ca

For comment, please contact:

H. , Policy Advisor, Sierra Club of Canada (Uxbridge, Ontario)

Cell phone: 647-224-3938 (Dec 19-20 only) Other times: 905-852-0571

tte

Executive Director, Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS),

Washington, DC

Tel: 202-328-0002

--30--

This is the NIRS E-Mail Alert list. You are on this list because you signed

up on our website, at a NIRS table at a concert, on a petition, or directly to

NIRS. Your name and address are never sold, rented, or traded with anyone for

any reason.

For address changes or to unsubscribe, just send an e-mail to

nirsnet@.... If you have friends or colleagues who would like to be on this

list, have

them send a note to nirsnet@...

Thank you! tte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 21, 2003