Scientists crack fusion research code

PARIS: Physicists working in the United States believe they have cracked an important problem facing man-made nuclear fusion, touted as the cheap, safe, clean and almost limitless energy source of the future.

A consortium of countries including, India signed a deal last year to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France as a testbed for an eventual commercial design.

But many experts have been shaking their heads at the many challenges facing the ITER designers. The 12.8-billion-dollar ITER scheme entails building the largest tokamak in the world at Cadarache, near the southern French city of Marseille.

The partners are the European Union (EU), the United States, Japan, Russia, China, India and South Korea.  It is designed to be a test bed of fusion technologies, with a construction period of about 10 years and an operational lifespan of 20 years.

In fusion, atomic nuclei are fused together to release energy, as opposed to fission, the technique used for nuclear power and atomic bombs, where nuclei are split.

In a fusion reactor, particles are rammed together to form a charged gas called a plasma, contained inside a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak by powerful magnetic coils.

If ITER works, a prototype commercial reactor will be built, and if that works, fusion technology will be rolled out across the world.