Why So Many Delays and Cost Overruns?

Abstract

Although few people are well informed about the progress of fusion, many are aware of ITER’s delays. Commissioning of the tokamak was first scheduled for 2016. The ITER Council postponed that date to November 2019 and in 2015 the date of First Plasma was rescheduled for December 2025 with D–T operations by the end of 2035. Similarly, the ITER budget is quadruple its original size (according to the latest estimates the construction alone will cost more than EUR20 billion, although as we will see the concept of “cost” here is meaningless). In fact, ITER is exposed to every possible potential cause of delay you could imagine such as technological showstoppers, design changes of the machine and buildings, late signature of contracts, manufacturing difficulties, late deliveries, quality problems, detection of nonconformities, underestimated risks, and contingencies. You could argue that most of the big technological projects of recent years have accumulated operational delays and budget increases. However, such an attitude is not acceptable when dealing with public money. A better approach would be to address program-specific management issues and risks at all stages of production. These are two areas that the ITER Organization failed to address until one or two years ago. Everybody is ready to accept that the unprecedented complexity of ITER and its first-of-a-kind nature may cause delays in manufacturing and construction—let alone the financial and political context. However, with more than 100 tokamaks operating in the world it can hardly be said that ITER is “first-of-a-kind.” So, does the problem lie in its management?