France to host fusion reactor

MOSCOW - Science's quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to meet global energy needs took a major step forward this week when a 30-nation consortium chose France to host the world's first nuclear fusion reactor.

After months of wrangling, France defeated a bid from Japan and signed a deal to site the €10 billion ($17 billion) experimental reactor in Cadarache, near Marseille.

The project will seek to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the sun produces energy.

Its backers say it will be cleaner than nuclear reactors, but critics argue it could be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built, if at all.

"We are making scientific history," Janez Potocnik, the EU's Science and Research Commissioner, said in Moscow, where the multinational partners in the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project were meeting.

A nuclear fusion power station is the "Holy Grail" for scientists trying to find a viable alternative to the world's depleting stocks of oil and gas.

Unlike existing fission reactors, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by combining them. Power has been harnessed from fusion in laboratories but scientists have so far been unable to build a commercially viable reactor, despite decades of research.

The 500 megawatt ITER reactor will use deuterium, extracted from seawater, as its major fuel and a giant electromagnetic ring to fuse atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures.

One of the biggest challenges facing scientists is to build a reactor that can sustain temperatures of about 100 million celsius for long enough to generate power.

"I give it a 50:50 chance of success but the engineering is difficult," said Ian Fells of Britain's Royal Academy of Engineering. "If we can really make this work, there will be enough electricity to last the world for the next 1000 to 2000 years."

The ITER project began in 1985 but wrangling over the site and financing have caused repeated delays.

At their meeting in Moscow, officials from ITER partners China, the 25-nation EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States chose France over Japan.

In its long battle to host the project, the EU, backing member France, used some of the tactics of unilateralism it often criticises in the US, vowing to go it alone or build ITER with a "coalition of the willing" if the Japanese did not yield.

In the end, the EU made huge financial and industrial concessions to the Japanese.

A disproportionate share of Japanese will also staff the ITER organisation, including the post of director-general.

Building the reactor is expected to take about 10 years, but some scientists say it could take three times that long.

Power and energy

Unlike fission reactors, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER will generate energy by combining them.

Power has been harnessed from fusion in laboratories but a commercially viable reactor is still some way off.

The 500 megawatt ITER reactor will use deuterium from seawater as its major fuel.

A giant electromagnetic ring will fuse atomic nuclei.

Developing a reactor that can withstand temperatures of about 100 million celsius for long enough to generate power is a key challenge.

- REUTERS