Serge Durand

Being host to ITER is an honour, a commitment and a great pleasure. We are doing our best, here at CEA Cadarache, to accommodate the Organization, assist it by providing services and support, and making its people part of our community.

The relationship we have built up with ITER over the past two years is a strong and trusting one. Every month, I meet with Kaname Ikeda and Norbert Holtkamp to discuss current issues. These issues span a very wide range, from organizing access to the various conference facilities at the Chateau to the specific skills we can bring to the programme. To me, they all come down to one question: How can we serve ITER the best we can?

We do it in all kinds of ways, big and small. Agence ITER France, which is part of CEA, is in charge of the construction site; we interfaced with the French Agence de Surete Nucleaire (ASN) in the early stages of the programme, and we keep contributing our expertise for matters related to safety regulations; we lay the ground, along with Aix-Marseilles universities, for the academic training of a new generation of fusion scientists; we bring to ITER our long experience in the engineering, organization and running of "big scientific programmes"...

There are tremendous benefits in this cooperation. With ITER, and along with our own programmes, such as the research reactor RJH, which will be operational in 2014, the new Cabri water loop and Tore Supra, Cadarache stands out as the largest civilian nuclear research platform in the world.

This is something we can all be proud of. Here at Cadarache, whether we work for ITER or CEA, we all share a common goal, which is to provide more efficient and more environmentally responsible energy sources. Few challenges, in today's world, are more meaningful and exciting.