PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Representatives of more than 30 countries signed a deal on Tuesday to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor, aimed at developing a cheap and abundant energy source as the end of fossil fuels looms.
After months of wrangling, France edged out Japan last year in its bid to host the 10 billion euro ($12.8 billion) International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which will be built at Cadarache, near the southern city of Marseille.
At a ceremony hosted by French President Jacques Chirac, representatives of the European Union, the United States, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and China signed the ITER agreement in the presidential Elysee Palace in Paris, finalising the project after years of negotiations.
***
The ITER reactor will aim to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the sun produces energy. Its backers say that would be cleaner than existing nuclear reactors, but critics argue it could be at least 50 years before a commercially viable reactor is built, if one is built at all.
Unlike existing fission reactors, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by combining atoms. Despite decades of research, experimental fusion reactors have so far been unable to release more energy than they use.
***
not much more:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/21/nuclear.fusion.reut/index.htmlNB: The "E" is for Experimental -- hence a post to Science rather than Environment/Energy. If it takes 30 countries and $13 billion just to build the prototype, don't expect fusion power online anytime soon. This has perhaps been one of the biggest dissapointments of 20th century technology -- that nuclear fission could be harnessed as a power source so quickly after the phenomenon was discovered, but that nuclear fusion did not follow in short order. Now a bigger question looms: will fusion EVER prove practical? If not, future generations will never have the option of using as much energy per capita as we have, except by a sharp reduction in population (which would be a good thing for other reasons as well). It could be that ALL of the science fiction authors got it wrong, and that we'll end up not as spacefaring posthuman cyborgs or postapocalyptic savages, but boring, appropriate-tech homebodies.