Negotiations on the Joint Implementation of ITER

In June 2001, four-Party meetings on "Negotiations" on the Joint Implementation of ITER began between Canada, Euratom, Japan and the Russian Federation. In February 2003, the USA and China joined the negotiations. At the end of May, 2003, the Republic of Korea also joined the negotiations, and India joined in December 2005. Negotiations were concluded in March 2006, with a recommendation to proceed to initialling of the agreement and subsequent signature and ratification.

The tasks of the Negotiators included the following:

• drafting the ITER Joint Implementation Agreement (JIA);
• selecting the ITER construction site;
• agreeing who will provide the various ITER components/systems and how the costs will be shared;
• identifying the Director General for the ITER Legal Entity (ILE) and the organisation of its work.

The Negotiators were originally supported on technical aspects by Coordinated Technical Activities (CTA) and were supported by the continuation of that work under the ITER Transitional Arrangements.

A "Standing Sub-group" of the Negotiators could call on expertise in all other relevant areas necessary to draw up the Joint Implementation Agreement.

The original timescale for the negotiations foresaw that the government of each Party interested in hosting ITER would offer a site in 2001, leading to a preferred site before the middle of 2002, and further development of design adaptations for the preferred site up to the end of the Coordinated Technical Activities at the end of 2002. In practice, the ITER site offers were not complete until mid-2002, introducing a delay of about 6 months in the Joint Assessment of Specific Sites (JASS). The JASS was completed in February 2003, concluding that all sites proposed had the capability to host ITER.

The Negotiations then entered a phase of high-level political discussions. Europe made the decision to choose Cadarache over Vandellòs as its sole proposal. There was an attempt to reach a site decision at ministerial level in Washington in December 2003. This resulted in deadlock, with Cadarache having the support of Europe, China and the Russian Federation, and Rokkasho-Mura the support of Japan, Korea and the USA. Additional questions were asked of the two potential hosts by the Participants, to see whether there were non-technical reasons to prefer one site or another, but none were found. The project was also asked to examine possibilities of broadening the scope of ITER beyond the construction project itself. Canada withdrew its site bid and participation in ITER at the end of 2003.

After a protracted further period of high-level political negotiations, the decision on siting ITER in Cadarache was reached by six-party agreement on 28th June 2005, based on a bilateral agreement between Europe and Japan over cost sharing and the broader approach.

After the site decision, the negotiations returned to finalising the Joint Implementation Agreement and the choice of Director-General. Progress on both topics had been impossible without a choice of construction site. Three meetings of the Negotiators took place between September and December 2005. Discussion on the wording of the agreement was essentially finished in December, but a further period of three months was needed for checking the final texts with the legal services of each Participant.

Following the successful completion of that work, it was agreed by negotiators in March 2006 that the agreement was ready for initialling by ministers of each participant. Initialling is a necessary precursor to subsequent signature and ratification (where needed) by the participants governments. This step will allow the ratification/signature process of this international agreement to proceed in 2006. It will only be possible to establish the ITER Organisation and start recruitment and the construction phase once that process is completed.