PARIS -- Physicists have dreamed about it for decades: harnessing the fusion process that powers the sun to make clean, safe and limitless energy. A multinational pact signed Tuesday may bring that dream a step closer to reality. Seven partners representing half the world's population have agreed to build an experimental fusion reactor in southern France that could revolutionize global energy use for future generations.

Yet it is also just an experiment -- a bold, long-awaited, $12.8-billion experiment -- and it will be decades before scientists are even sure that it works.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project by the United States, the European Union, China, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea will attempt to combat global warming by offering an alternative to polluting fossil fuels. Controlling climate change and finding secure energy sources are urgent goals worldwide.

French President Jacques Chirac hailed the agreement as a victory for humanity -- and for France, which widely exports its nuclear energy expertise and beat out Japan in the bidding to host the reactor. The project's director will be Japanese, and Japan will supply the reactor's most complex parts.

"The growing shortage of resources and the battle against global warming demand a revolution in our ways of production and consumption," Chirac said. "We have the duty to start research that will prepare energy solutions for our descendants."

Physicists have been trying for half a century to create fusion, which replicates the sun's power source and produces no greenhouse gas emissions and little radioactive waste.

The ITER project recognizes that no single country can afford the immense investment to move the science forward.

It is expected to take eight years to build the reactor in Cadarache in the southern French region of Provence. A demonstration power plant may be ready by 2040, according to project organizers. Officials involved in the project say 10% to 20% of the world's energy could come from fusion by the end of the century.

Fusion, which powers the stars, involves confining hydrogen at extreme temperature and pressure to create a highly energetic gas. At 180 million degrees, the gas undergoes nuclear fusion, releasing energy that can be used to generate electricity.

The supply of the reactor's hydrogen fuel is essentially limitless.

By Angela Charlton
Associated Press
November 22, 2006
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