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Paris, Nov 21 (ANI): An agreement was signed today in Paris to establish an International Fusion Energy Organisation for the joint implementation of the International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.
The aim of the ITER project is to develop the most advanced nuclear fusion reactor yet.
At the signing ceremony hosted by French President Jacques Chirac, representatives of India, China, European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the United States of America signed the agreement in the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris, finalising the project after years of negotiations.
Speaking on the occasion, Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Dr. Anil Kakodkar said fusion has the potential to provide abundant and clean energy based on resources available everywhere without significant ecological issues associated with mining of earth's resources.
While all the existing nuclear reactors work on fission principle, the ITER would generate energy by fusion. It will turn seawater into fuel in the same way in which the sun produces energy. Its supporters say that would be cleaner than existing nuclear reactors.
"If nothing changes, humanity will have consumed, in 200 years, most of the fossil fuel resources accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, provoking, at the same time, a veritable climate calamity," Chirac was quoted by a foreign news agency, as saying.
"With ITER, a stage has been accomplished, and three decades of research open up to our nations with the hope of a solution useful to the whole of humanity," he added.
However, experimental fusion reactors have so far been unable to release more energy than they use.
After months of negotiations, France edged out Japan last year in its bid to host the 12.8 billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which will be built at Cadarache, near the city of Marseilles.
The countries involved hailed the project as a model of international cooperation to meet a global challenge.
ITER will aim to fuse deuterium derived from seawater with tritium made from lithium, which is abundant in the Earth's crust. An electromagnetic ring will force the atoms together at around 100 million Celsius. (ANI)
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