http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4504668.stm
BBC News
Tuesday, 6 December 2005, 17:43 GMT
India joins nuclear fusion club
India has become the latest nation to join the global project building
a prototype nuclear fusion reactor.
It joins China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US in the
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) team.
At a meeting on the Korean island of Jeju, Iter also named a new
director-general, Kaname Ikeda.
The 10bn euro (=A36.7bn) Iter project is designed to produce electricity
using nuclear fusion, as happens in the Sun.
It will be built at Cadarache in France; construction will take at
least a decade.
Global endeavour
An Iter statement on India's accession comments: "With this exciting
new development, over half the world's population is now represented in
this global endeavour."
Iter will be the second largest science project in history after the
International Space Station.
ITER - NUCLEAR FUSION PROJECT
After decades of experimentation at national and regional level, it
should demonstrate once and for all whether it is possible to harness
the tremendous potential of nuclear fusion in a practical and economic
way.
Fusion works by forcing together atomic nuclei, rather than by
splitting them as in the case of the fission reactions that power
existing nuclear stations.
In the core of the Sun, huge gravitational pressures allow this to
happen at around 10 million degrees Celsius. These pressures cannot be
created on Earth, so temperatures need to be much higher - above 100
million degrees Celsius.
No materials could withstand direct contact with such heat; the
favoured solution is to hold a super-heated gas, or plasma, of hydrogen
fuel inside an intense doughnut-shaped magnetic field.
Unlike the burning of fossil fuels, fusion reactions produce no carbon
dioxide and so the process contributes almost nothing to the greenhouse
effect.
It is also inherently powerful, and could potentially provide a
solution to the energy shortages coming over the course of this
century.
But the huge technical issues involved prompt sceptics to suggest it
may never work.
India's involvement in the project, which has been welcomed by the
European Commission and the US administration, suggests that it is
among the optimists.
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