Countries sign pact to build $13 bn nuke fusion reactor
A seven-member international consortium Tuesday signed a formal treaty to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear reactor emulating the power of the sun, sealing a decade of negotiations.
By Agencies |
PARIS: A seven-member international consortium Tuesday signed a formal treaty to build a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear reactor emulating the power of the sun, sealing a decade of negotiations.
“This is a new step in an exceptional adventure,” French President Jacques Chirac said after leading the signing ceremony in Paris. Representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States signed a pact on the construction of the E10-bn ($12.8bn) reactor.
Work on the reactor — originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor but now known officially by its initials ITER — is to be built in Cadarache, in southern France, over a decade starting ’08.
The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves by testing nuclear fusion technologies. Instead of splitting the atom — the principle behind current nuclear plants — the project seeks to harness nuclear fusion: the power of the sun and the stars achieved by fusing together atomic nuclei.
If it is successful, a prototype commercial reactor will be built, and if that works, fusion technology will be rolled out across the world. The EU is to put up half the cost of building the reactor, with the rest evenly divided among the other parties. The project will employ 400 scientists, two-thirds of them non-French.
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Following years of wrangling, Japan agreed in ’05 to withdraw its bid to host the project — in exchange for 20% of staff posts including the director general’s job. A Japanese engineer turned ambassador, Kaname Ikeda, was named earlier this month to head the project.European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who was also in Paris Tuesday, called the signing “a major event” and a step forward to finding new energy sources that did not cause climate change.
Chirac said the experimental reactor was “a hand held out to future generations” and predicted that, if it proved successful, “we will be able to derive as much energy from a litre of seawater as from a litre of petrol or a kilo of coal.”
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