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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

France to Host World's First Nuclear Fusion Plant

By REUTERS
Published: June 28, 2005

Filed at 9:32 a.m. ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Science's quest to find a cheap and inexhaustible way to 
meet global energy needs took a major step forward on Tuesday 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-euroexperimental reactor in Cadarache, near 
Marseille.

The project will seek to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the 
sun produces energy. It would be cleaner than current nuclear reactors, 
would not rely on enriched uranium fuel or produce plutonium.

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 European Union's 
Science and Research Commissioner, told a news conference in Moscow, where 
the multinational partners in the ITER (International Thermonuclear 
Experimental Reactor) project were meeting. They also reached preliminary 
agreement on how to fund one of the world's most expensive scientific 
experiments.

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. 
The search took on new significance as crude this week reached a record 
price of $60.95 a barrel in some trading.

Next week, a summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in 
Scotland is to discuss climate change, widely blamed on burning fossil 
fuels for energy.

DECADES OF RESEARCH

Unlike fission reactors, which are used in existing nuclear power stations 
and 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 (180 million F) for 
long enough to generate power.

``I give it a 50:50 chance of success but the engineering is very 
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 1,000 to 2,000 years,'' he said.

Don't know if this url will work, but here is the place to read the rest of 
the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-energy-france-nuclear.html?hp&ex=1120017600&en=1a4d7adbd0f209ec&ei=5094&partner=homepage