news

Geoff Brumfiel, Princeton

Government officials have indicated that
the United States is ready to rejoin ITER,
the international project to build an experimental magnetic fusion reactor.
Speaking at celebrations to mark Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s fiftiethbirthday on 6 June, energy under-secretary
Robert Card said that a decision on whether
to return to ITER will come “within weeks
rather than months”.
“We’ve more or less decided to re-entertalks” with ITER’s current participants, sayspresidential science adviser John Marburger.
But, he adds, the United States needs to havea firmer understanding of the project’s
costs and implications before making a firm
financial commitment to it.
The extent of the United States’ planned
involvement remains an open question, but
Marburger says that the country will notoffer to pay the $1 billion or more needed tohost the experimental reactor. “We’re notinterested in having ITER in the UnitedStates,” he says. Observers say that US
participation would probably involve a commitment of about $500 million over 10 years.
The United States and the Soviet Union
started ITER, then known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, aspart of détente in 1988. But just over a decade
later, when the engineering phase yielded adesign that could have cost up to $10 billion
to build, Congress instructed the energy
department to withdraw from the project.
This withdrawal was accompanied by sharp
cuts in the domestic fusion budget, leaving
US researchers with no prospect of building alarge fusion experiment of their own.
Subsequently, the remaining ITER participants — Russia, Canada, Japan and theEuropean Union — have developed aslimmed-down version of the design, which
is now expected to cost about $4 billion toT. MATSUMOTO

Detectors licked by gummy fingers
David Cyranoski, Tokyo
Fingerprint-identification equipment canreadily be fooled by a piece of gelatin,
according to a cursory study undertaken bya Japanese mathematician.
Tsutomu Matsumoto of Yokohama
National University says that his findings
could undermine the extravagant claims
being made for biometry, which uses
inherent human traits such as fingerprints
to automatically identify individuals.
In Matsumoto’s informal study, he madeplastic moulds of the subject’s fingers,
poured gelatin into the moulds, and let thethin ‘gummy fingers’ harden. Hundreds oftrials by 5 people on 11 devices showed that aperson wearing the gummy finger could passfor the subject nearly every time, he says.
Even more alarmingly, Matsumoto wasable to create an effective fake fingerprint
from a piece of glass that the subject hadtouched. He used a digital camera to
photograph an enhanced copy of the mark,etched it on a printed circuit board, and used
this to produce a fake finger made of gelatin.
“What’s really scary is that anyone could
do this,” says Matsumoto. “The technology
is all on the Internet and can be done
cheaply at home.”
He emphasizes that he is only dabbling inthis research “for fun” while he pursues hisreal work on the application of cryptography
and mathematics to information security.
Spokespeople at Sony and Fujitsu, whichmake automated fingerprint readers,declined to deny that their devices could be676

Keep ’em peeled: fake fingerprints can readily
be made using gelatin and a simple mould.

deceived by Matsumoto’s gummy finger. But
Sony and NEC, a third manufacturer, say thatthey are currently developing better systems.
The new NEC reader, for example, will use
light from the side that diffuses through thesubject’s finger, instead of just reflecting off
the fingerprint.
Matsumoto is in no doubt that moresophisticated fingerprint-readers could passhis existing test — but he questions thephilosophy of relying on biometry forsecurity. “A password can be changed if it getsleaked,” says Matsumoto, “but once someone
has a copy of your fingerprint or your DNA,■
they will always be able to use it.”© 2002 Nature Publishing GroupThe United States could yet take part in ITER —but it has ruled out hosting the reactor itself.

build. At a meeting in Cadarache, France,on 6 June, the project members formallyannounced four potential sites for the reactor — two in Europe, one in Canada andone in Japan.
In the past year, both members of Congress and the Bush administration havesteadily warmed to the idea of once again
participating in ITER (see Nature 415,247–248; 2002)
US researchers reacted with a mixture ofcaution and optimism to the prospect of theUnited States rejoining ITER. “I think this is
an opportunity for the United States to reengage with the international programme,”says Rob Goldston, director of the Princeton
Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey.
“But I think it is critical that the United States
strengthens its domestic programme as partof such an initiative.”
The domestic US fusion-research programme “is still pretty fragile”, says Gerry
Navratil, a physicist at Columbia University.
He is worried that its management will be
distracted by negotiations over ITER, andeven questions whether US scientists will
gain full access to data from the internationalexperiment. He wants the United States toestablish a firm withdrawal date should thenegotiations prove not to be fruitful, and tocontinue working on its own, more modest,
plasma experiment.
As ITER negotiators begin discussing
their choice of site, US researchers will
debate the relative merits of ITER and adomestic experiment next month at a conference in Snowmass, Colorado. Goldston
hopes that the negotiations abroad anddiscussion at home will bring the UnitedStates closer to the ultimate goal of building aviable fusion reactor. “Between vision andreality a number of steps remain,” he says,“but I think it’s possible.”■➧ www.iter.org
NATURE | VOL 417 | 13 JUNE 2002 | www.nature.com/nature

ITER

US set to rejoin international fusion project