The Hindu : Front Page : ITER project: India becomes full partner

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 07, 2005

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ITER project: India becomes full partner

R. Ramachandran

Half of humanity is now participating in this unique scientific mission

New Delhi: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project on Tuesday admitted India as a full partner into the consortium. This decision was taken at the ongoing ITER Negotiations at Jeju, Republic of Korea. The ambitious multi-billion dollar project is aimed at demonstrating the scientific and technological feasibility of controlled nuclear fusion as a future source of energy.

Seventh member

India will be the seventh participating member of ITER. The other members are China, the European Union (EU), Japan, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States.

With India's entry, half of humanity is now participating in this unique scientific mission to devise ways of tapping this enormous source of energy.

After protracted and acrimonious negotiations, Cadarache in France was selected in June as the site for building the reactor.

2015 is the target

The ITER, based on the frozen design of 1998, is expected to be up and running by 2015.

India's interest in joining ITER was formally expressed through a letter of July 8, which described India's ongoing fusion research at the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) in Ahmedabad. Following this, an exploratory fact-finding mission was in India in early October. It visited IPR and evaluated India's industrial capability to contribute to ITER's hardware and software needs.

The mission's technical report was considered by the ITER Negotiations Committee at its November 7 meeting in Vienna, and all parties supported India's admission.

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