MOSCOW, June 28 (RIA Novosti) - Parties to ITER, a project to create an international thermonuclear experimental rector, signed a declaration in Moscow today on the construction of the reactor in Cadarache, the south of France. The project, which involves Russia, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and the European Union, was ready for implementation long ago, but the parties could not reach a compromise on the site for the construction.
The EU had the support of Russia and China to build the reactor in Cadarache. Japan had the backing of the U.S. and South Korea to construct it in Rokkasho in the north of the country.
Yevgeny Velikhov, a project senior manager, told RIA Novosti: "We dragged the process out. The issue could be solved three years ago."
Scientists consider safety as one of the advantages of the new fusion power station, which distinguishes it from fission power plants. Academician Vladimir Fortov said that such a power plant could be even based in a densely populated region. Moreover, he said it was "absolutely unattractive to terrorists", because harmless hydrogen would be used as fuel instead of radioactive materials.
Thermonuclear fusion is considered to be a virtually inexhaustible source of power. So far mankind has only managed to release such power in the hydrogen bomb. In nature fusion reactions proceed in the depths of stars, such as the Sun.
The ITER project was devised (ITER means 'way' in Latin) to prove that a thermonuclear power plant was possible.
The concept emerged when the Soviet Union suggested that the four most advanced parties in the study of thermonuclear reactions - the U.S.S.R., the U.S., Europe and Japan - create a so-called "tokamak" reactor, a toroid (doughnut-shaped) chamber to confine incandescent plasma that no material can withstand in a magnetic field. The thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, proceeds in the plasma.
The world's first tokamak was produced in Moscow in 1955, and research was carried out in the Soviet Union alone for the next 15 years.
