Remarks on US Costing Activities
for the US ITER-TBM
Mohamed Abdou
Conference Call, June 23, 2005
US ITER-TBM Activities
Primary Activities
1.
2.
Continue to contribute to TBWG activities

Active participants

Encourage international collaboration
Continue Modeling and Experiments (R&D) for key issues of US
ITER-TBM
(This is the larger part of our activities)
3.
Initiating “TBM Costing Activity”
Additional Activities
A.
Explore partnerships and task sharing with each of the ITER Parties
B.
Encourage TBWG to go through an exercise of how to coordinate all
Parties’ TBM activities and have strong collaborations
C.
Work with DOE, ITER Project Office, and US Community to recognize,
formalize, and organize the US ITER-TBM Program
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Costing Activities for US ITER-TBM

We are initiating the cost activities following Nardella’s guidelines

Beyond this Call, there will be a meeting in August to discuss plans for the
activities, issues, organizations, etc.

Time Schedule:
 Mid-August: Finalize plan and responsibilities for the Costing Activity
 December 15, 2005: Distribute a near-final report of the Costing Activity for
comments by the team, DOE, ITER Project Office, VLT, and others
 February 1, 2006: Submit Costing Activity Report to DOE
ORGANIZATION of the Cost Activity:
 Coordinator (TBD)
 Cost of R&D (Neil Morley)
 Cost of Mockup Facilities (TBD)
 Cost of the Test Articles to be delivered to ITER (Clement Wong)
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Framework for the US ITER-TBM Costing Activities

Develop the Costs for two scenarios:
A. Good ITER utilization (Moderate Cost Scenario)
B. Optimum ITER Utilization (Full Resource Scenario)
(Details of the cost scenarios were discussed in the March 2005 meeting, were summarized
by Morley in this Call, and are summarized on a separate vugraph here)

The Cost is to be developed for the next 10-year period, with more details and clarity
for the first 5-year period

Some key points of the general approach:
 Start by agreeing on the FULL list of R&D required to deliver the ITER-TBMs
 Identify which R&D tasks are being done by other parties. The ones not being done by




other Parties are then listed as “POTENTIAL US Responsibility”.
Explore which of these tasks (“Potential US Responsibility”) can/should be negotiated with
other ITER Partners for possible task/cost sharing
Consider various strategies for ITER testing (temporal and spatial) and try to identify two
strategies, one for the Moderate Cost Scenario and the other for the Full Resource
Scenario
We need to develop COST PROFILES, not just total cost (When do we start paying
for mockup facilities? When do we start paying for fabricating the test articles? And
at what rate?
We need to obtain cost estimates from EU and Japan and use them to calibrate our cost
estimates
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Some General Remarks

The US ITER-TBM team has consistently made the point that the ITERTBM activities is a joint effort among the Plasma Chamber , Materials,
PFC, Safety, and Tritium Programs. We have always operated this way
and this has tremendously benefited the US effort.
This joint partnership needs to continue and to be strengthened

International collaboration is a “necessity” and is very consistent with the
“spirit of the ITER project”. The US must continue to lead in the push
toward more international collaboration on ITER TBM

We should remember that we have evolved a strategy for the US ITER-TBM
with considerable "flexibility" in adjusting to different budget scenarios.
Examples of variables that help provide such flexibility are:
a) phasing / scheduling of the test articles insertions into ITER during its 10-20
years of operation;
b) collaboration with other partners;
c) technically effective back-up plan if technical results are negative (e.g., if the
insert in the DCLL does not work, we have developed a set of meaningful other
tests with the same test articles)
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INFORMAL “Guess” and observations on the likely Costs

The Cost of ITER-TBM Program consists of three parts:
1. Cost of R&D
2. Cost of Mockup Facilities
3. Cost of the Test Articles to be delivered to ITER (including engineering design)

Educated Guess (based on EU and Japanese “informal” estimates, prior exercises,etc)
 Cost of R&D: $50M- $75M total over 10 years ( $5M - $7.5M per year)
 Cost of Mockup Facilities: $20M-$30M total over 3-5 years beginning a few years
from now
 Cost of Test Articles: $15M - $30M total over 3-4 years beginning 5-7 years from now

The R&D cost will be the larger part of the total cost. But this R&D is actually the
core of the base program anyway. ITER-TBM is the most important focus of Fusion
Nuclear Technology over the next 30 years or so. Therefore, it should logically be the
highest priority for the base program. Therefore, I expect most of the R&D can and
should be covered by the base technology (but we have to examine of course whether
current budgets for the base program are adequate). We need to prioritize the R&D,
estimate the cost of the R&D over the next 10 years and compare it to
current/projected base technology program funding.

The "Real new & additional" cost is the cost of mock up facilities, plus the cost of the
"test articles" themselves. Spending on these does not start until a few years from
now.
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