The world\'s largest nuclear project reaches critical stage London – Naeem Arzu The world’s largest experimental nuclear reactor, in Cadarache, south France, has reached a critical phase, experts have announced .
The ITER, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, is designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input, is jointly funded and run by member entities, he European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The long-waited project aims to create full-scale electricity producing power plants, from experimental studies of plasma physics, and looks to demonstrate the principle of achieving more energy than that which is used to initiate it.
The project has been dogged by long delays and rises in costs, and has been delayed by almost 2 years.
Superheated gas reaching almost 200 million degrees C is used to fuse deuterium and tritium atoms together, inside a giant magnetic field, to produce energy, which will be harnessed into electrical energy.
An estimated budget for the project was said to be around 13 billion British pounds.
A source said the first commercially operating reactor will be made available within 40 years; with some experts saying it could be 50 to 60 years before this happens.