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Hundreds of scientists and engineers at the world’s biggest fusion reactor,
the Joint European Torus (JET) at Culham near Oxford, will be laid off later
this year unless a solution is found to a long-running dispute over the
treatment of Britons working on the project.

The row has been brought to a head by the European Parliament which,
in an attempt to force an end to the dispute, voted in December to block
30 per cent of Europe’s fusion budget until talks on a compromise begin.
Last week, JET had its budget cut by the same proportion: a cut which Martin
Keilhacker, the director of JET, says will ‘bring the project to a standstill
in May or June’.

JET is widely regarded as the most successful fusion machine in the
world and one of the best examples of what European scientific collaboration
can achieve. The project’s original objectives have already been exceeded
and JET’s main function now is as a test-bed for the next-generation machine,
a joint project between Europe, Russia, Japan and the US called the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Any delays at JET could make designing
ITER more difficult. ‘How can you close it and still be credible worldwide?’
asks Keilhacker.

The crisis stems from the fact that around 220 British researchers at
JET, who work for the Atomic Energy Authority, are paid between 30 and 40
per cent less than their Continental colleagues, who are employed by the
European Commission. More importantly, says John Billard of the IPMS, the
union that represents staff at JET, the AEA workers have no guarantee of
jobs after JET closes. By contrast, those employed by the Commission are
assured of jobs with their former employers or on other European projects,
such as ITER.

British staff have taken their case to the European Court without success
and, in 1990, appealed to the European Parliament. In 1992, an inquiry requested
by the MEPs proposed two solutions: either give all workers at JET a Commission
contract, or convince the AEA to give its staff more money while at the
same time persuading the Commission to give preferential treatment to British
staff applying for jobs on other European projects.

Option one was rejected by JET’s ruling council, which is made up of
representatives of the nuclear research organisations that pay part of JET’s
budget. Giving all workers Commission contracts would mean rewriting JET’s
constitution, a task the council considered too onerous and costly. The
council said there was nothing unusual about local people on a Commission
project being paid less than foreign workers.

The inquiry’s second proposal also ended in deadlock. The AEA has always
maintained that its JET staff are paid fairly compared with its other workers.
In fact, AEA staff who have been at JET for more than five years receive
a 15 per cent bonus. The AEA now says it cannot pay more because it is ‘constrained
by the government’s pay ceiling for workers in the public sector’.

Likewise, the Commission argues that it cannot favour British staff
hunting for jobs. ‘It is a fundamental principle of Community law that we
don’t discriminate against people from member states,’ says an official
in Brussels. ‘If we overtly gave them preferential treatment and are taken
to the European Court we would lose.’

With no settlement in sight, the European Parliament’s budgets committee
voted in December to dock 59 million Ecus ( £44 million) from this
year’s fusion programme. In a letter to the Commission’s Consultative Committee
for the Fusion Programme (CCFP), Annemarie Goedmakers, a Dutch MEP and budgets
committee member, says parliament will release funds when all parties begin
working to solve the dispute.

Last week, the CCFP decided that the debt should be spread evenly across
the fusion programme, except for ITER projects. If these are delayed, Europe
will leave itself open to criticism from its international partners. But
JET will suffer a cut of 28 million Ecus in its expected budget of 100 million
Ecus. Keilhacker says JET already has liabilities of 27 million Ecus. ‘With
45 million Ecus, we cannot keep this place safe and all the staff to the
end of the year.’

As well as the AEA staff, JET has about 150 Commission workers and 350
contractors. If things stay as they are, Keilhacker says about 200 people
will have to be given notice in April. ‘We are really stuck,’ he says. ‘I
don’t believe there is a solution.’

The AEA, which has representatives on the JET Council and the CCFP,
is trying to distance itself from the gathering storm. ‘Closure of JET is
a matter for the JET Council,’ says a spokesman. The Department of Trade
and Industry, which is represented on the CCFP, says the decision to close
the project will be taken ‘by the European bodies that run the fusion programme’.