France is to host the world’s first nuclear fusion reactor, the project’s multinational partners agreed on Tuesday, bringing closer a technology backers say could one day provide the world with endless cheap energy. The 10-billion-euro ($12.18 billion) International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project is backed by China, the EU, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Cadarache, north of Marseille in southern France, will be the site of the reactor after it beat off stiff competition from the northern Japanese village of Rokkasho. ‘‘We are making history in terms of international scientific cooperation,’’ the EU’s Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said in a statement today after partner countries signed the project agreement in Moscow. The idea of a nuclear fusion reactor was floated by the then Soviet Union in 1985 as a showpiece for international cooperation during the Cold War. Decades of research, however, have yet to produce a commercially viable fusion reactor. Japan and France have wrangled for months over where the reactor should be built while other partners have clashed over funding, causing the project repeated delays. The French earlier defeated a Spanish bid for the project in November 2003. The United States supported Japan’s bid in what diplomats said was a way of punishing France for its opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. France has been a big producer of nuclear energy since the oil shocks of the 1970s, and has 58 reactors. The reactor is expected to be operational for 20 years. The European Union intends to cover 40 per cent of the cost and France will contribute an additional 10 pc. —Reuters
