The Department of Energy's proposal to slash spending for U.S.-led nuclear research projects next year could cause the United States to fall behind China, South Korea, the European Union and Japan in the decades-long race for fusion energy, the heads of eight U.S. universities told Energy Secretary Steven Chu today.

Domestic fusion projects would take a 16.4 percent cut under the White House's budget blueprint for fiscal 2013, bringing their total budget to about $248 million.

In a letter, the presidents of Auburn University, Columbia University, Lehigh University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and the University of Maryland, as well as the chancellor of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the interim chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, criticized the plan. They told Chu that students won't want to research fusion, a technology long held out as the electricity source of the future, if U.S. facilities start shutting down and funding starts to dwindle.

"The administration's request would not only seriously jeopardize the excellent research and training that is being done at our institutions, but it would ultimately delay the availability of commercial fusion energy," the letter says.

All told, the administration is not backing away from fusion. Total funding for the topic within DOE's science office would fall by less than 1 percent, to $398 million, under the administration's plan.

But a number of domestic projects would lose money to make up for increased spending on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, which is being built in the south of France. Funding for ITER would grow from $105 million to $150 million, though Chu has publicly said 80 percent of the ITER budget would be spent in the United States rather than abroad.

Critics say it is unwise to allow one of the three main U.S. fusion research facilities, housed at MIT, to shut down. That prospect has led to protests from Massachusetts lawmakers such as Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who sent a letter to Senate appropriators last week urging them to prioritize domestic fusion projects over ITER.

William Brinkman, the acting head of DOE's science office, said during a recent hearing that the international project is the most important place for DOE to spend its fusion budget next year. It would be the largest fusion reactor ever built, a doughnut-shaped vessel using super-powered magnets to maintain a reaction between deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, at temperatures above 150 million degrees Celsius (E&E Daily, March 21).

The United States has committed to start sending another $300 million to the project annually within the next few years, but austerity on Capitol Hill makes it unclear whether the money will be there.

"We do not want ITER to fail because of the United States," Brinkman told House Appropriations Committee members last month.

Click here to read the letter.