ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ

While on Capitol Hill in Washington the Federal Budget (and thus the budgets for many American scientific endeavors) was eagerly disputed this week, only a stone's throw away in the Rayburn Building the ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ Project stepped onto an exceptional stage by inviting members of the US Congress to an evening reception.

Amongst the guests that evening was Congressman Rush Holt from New Jersey, introduced as having "a long history in fusion" by Thom Mason, Director of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). "A long history...and I hope a future too!" countered Holt.

The evening reception was hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and its partners in the US ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ project: Stewart Prager, Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Terry Michalske, Director of the Savannah River National Laboratory. The event gathered many key people within the US fusion community such as William Brinkman, the Director of the Office of Science within the Department of Energy; Ed Synakowski, the Associate Director for Fusion Energy Sciences within the Office of Science; US ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ Project Director, Ned Sauthoff; Fusion Power Associates Dale Meade and Stephen Dean; representatives from US ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ suppliers AREVA Federal Services, Luvata Waterbury and Oxford Superconducting Technology USA; and—last but not least—the Director-General of the ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ Organization, Osamu Motojima.

The gathering aimed to "provide the delegates with information about the ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ Project and the important role of the United States in this next step toward fusion energy as a power source". As Thom Mason put it: "ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ is a challenging project fuelled by high tech and smart brains. A project that will move us toward a promising long-term solution to the energy challenge. Fusion energy has the potential to be a major contributor to the global supply of energy."