• December 7th, 2005:

India becomes full partner in fusion project ITER

Yesterday, India was welcomed as a full partner to the international fusion energy project ITER. This decision was taken on December 6th, 2005, at the 12th ITER Negotiation Meeting, which was held on the Jeju Island in Korea. At the beginning of the meeting, the current ITER partners (EU, Japan, China, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Korea and the USA) unanimously and enthusiastically welcomed the new partner, after which a Delegation from India, for the first time, joined the meeting and participated fully in the discussions that followed.

The seven ITER Delegations also welcomed to the Meeting the newly designated Nominee Director-General for the prospective ITER Organisation, Ambassador Kaname IKEDA, who is to take up his duties as leader of the project.

The Delegations also succeeded in reaching a full agreement on remaining key issues such as decision-making, intellectual property and management within the prospective ITER Organisation and adjustments to the sharing of resources as a result of India´s participation. This opens the way for the conclusion of the negotiations at the political level.

BACKGROUND TO THE NEWS RELEASE

The ITER experiment is a large-scale international project with the aim to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. The project is expected to cost about 10 billion Euro over its complete life, of which 4.7 billion for construction, and a similar amount for the foreseen 20 year operation period. The European Union, as host of the project, will contribute half of the costs; the six other partners will contribute the other half. Of the total construction costs, 80% is expected to go directly to industry. The design of ITER is ready for the start of construction to begin, and the first plasma operation is expected in 2016.

The ITER-project began in 1985 as a collaboration between the former Soviet Union (and then Russia), the USA, the European Union (through EURATOM) and Japan, and was later enlarged to China, the Republic of Korea and now to India. The negotiations on the project are seen as a test case for large-scale international cooperation on science and technology. Last June, the partners decided unanimously to choose the European site at Cadarache, in the South of France, as the location for the construction of ITER.

Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. When light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released. The European fusion energy research programme is aimed at developing a prototype fusion power plant that is safe and reliable, environmentally responsible, economically viable, with abundant and widespread fuel resources. A key feature of the European fusion programme is its unique co-ordination, which provides for an intensive use of all relevant R&D resources in pan-European collaborations on all the major research topics.