Pact to Center Fusion Efforts in San Diego : Science: International accord is being signed today in effort to develop a reactor to harness fusion energy.

A six-year, $1.2-billion agreement to be signed today will bring an international effort to harness fusion energy to San Diego.

After a lag of more than a year, representatives of the European Community, Japan, Russia and the United States will sign an accord this afternoon to cooperate in the engineering design phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. or ITER.

The pact clears the way for scientists here and at the two other co-centers in Garching, Germany and Naka, Japan, to kick into gear and hammer out an actual design for a reactor that would provide unlimited, inexpensive energy without peril of pollution.

The $1.2 billion allocated for the engineering design phase of the project will be divvied equally among the four partners. In San Diego, the project had been welcomed with open arms as experts estimated that it will pump $200 million into the local economy.

But more than once, it has seemed that ITER would be permanently derailed as politicians fought for a big slice of the international pie. Then, as the Soviet Union crumbled, scientists worried that Russia would no longer participate--a fear that proved unfounded.

Local industry--including General Atomics, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), and General Dynamics--as well as UC San Diego fought hard to bring the project to the city.

“It’s been long and hard to get to this point,” said Maurice Sabado, general manager of SAIC’s support services for the San Diego co-center. “In the history of international projects, there is always this period of sorting out everything. Now, I anticipate this will move very quickly.”

Many say that the ITER project may provide a blueprint for international mega-science projects, illustrating the arduous process of getting scientists and politicians from more than one country to agree on a recipe for progress.

“ITER may be a model of how big science will be done in the future. For the present, it will bring significant economic, social and intellectual benefits to the San Diego community, the nation, and the world,” said Richard C. Atkinson, chancellor of UCSD.

San Diego’s involvement in the much ballyhooed project has been touted as an opportunity to boost the city into the world’s spotlight for scientific research. The San Diego co-center will be responsible for integrating the work of all three co-centers.

There was fierce competition among U.S. cities for the American center. But, after the announcement last summer that San Diego had won, the ITER project scarcely inched forward.

“We have all been sitting here, twiddling our thumbs, waiting to work,” said Doug Post, a physicist with Princeton University’s Plasma Physics Laboratory and a head of a physics team also working on ITER. “It illustrates that political difficulties in these international things are comparable to the technological difficulties.”

But the technological hurdles are formidable as scientists attempt to mimic the natural process that occurs at the sun’s core. Fusion generates power by melding together simple atoms, such as hydrogen. For five decades, proponents of fusion have envisioned environmentally safe plants powered by hydrogen atoms taken from sea water.

Today, much of the world’s energy is derived from polluting sources such as fossil fuels or fission of radioactive elements.

As alluring as it may be, fusion is still a commodity of the future, since scientists are still uncertain that they will be able to harness the energy for everyday use. Under the ITER project, experts labored for years to devise the concept. In the current phase, they expect to work about six years actually coming up with the engineering design plans to operate a fusion reactor. Then the reactor would be built; and finally, sometime in the next century, experts would operate the facility.

“It’s a long process. We’ve lost a lot of good people, and we’ve lost some momentum,” said Post. “But we are going to get going again.”

The ITER project evolved from the 1985 Geneva Summit between the United States and Soviet Union, which had pioneered fusion research. The Soviets proposed an international project to fund the costs of building an experimental reactor. A year later, plans for collaboration broadened as other countries opted to join the partnership.

After the accord is signed today, an ITER council will be established with two members from each of the four partners. E.P. Velikhov of Russia has tentatively been named chairman of the council.

At Tuesday’s ceremony, James D. Watkins, secretary of energy, will sign the accord on behalf of the United States. The other dignitaries include Viktor Mikhailov, minister of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy; Minister Hiroshi Hirabayashi, deputy chief of mission in the Japanese embassy, and Ambassador Andreas van Agt, head of the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities.