Nuclear fusion plant approved
Thirty countries officially begin a project to build the world’s most advanced nuclear fusion reactor.
The research program to build an experimental nuclear plant known as ITER, for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, officially launched at the end of November.
Scientists have been trying to bring nuclear fusion—the atomic process that releases energy in the Sun and the stars—to Earth for the past two decades. ITER will advance the technology used in other experimental fusion reactors in Russia, Japan, and China.
The experimental project will use nuclear fusion to create a contained plasma cloud of atoms heated to 100 million °C. The nuclear collisions should produce an order of magnitude more energy than is put into heating the reactor, generating about 500 megawatts of electricity for minutes at a time.
Participating parties—China, Japan, Russia, Korea, India, the U.S., and the EU—signed the ITER agreement on November 21. The project will break ground in Cadarache, France, in 2008. At a cost of more than $10 billion, of which the EU provides 45% and other parties share the remainder, the plant should be up and running by 2016.
