Russia, China fulfil obligations within ITER project in due time - Rosatom

MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. Only Russia and China fulfil their obligations within the ITER project in due time, deputy director of Russia’s state-run nuclear corporation, Rosatom, Vyacheslav Pershukov said on Monday. ITER is an international project to design and build an experimental fusion reactor. The thermonuclear reactor is under construction in the French city of Cadarache. The ITER project involves the European Union, India, the Republic of Korea, Russia, the United States and Japan. It is seen as a potential inexhaustible source of ecologically clean energy. Russia’s investment in the ITER project would reach nearly 8 billion roubles by 2016. In 2014 Russia’s industrial contribution stood at 5 billion roubles. The costs of building an international experimental reactor keep growing, as the launch has been repeatedly postponed. At this point the project’s costs stand at 15 billion euros, whereas the original estimate was 10 billion euros. Experts believe that another considerable delay may push up the costs by another 40 percent. Controlled thermonuclear fusion is to imitate processes underway on the Sun, resulting in the release of immense amounts of energy. Some experts hope thermonuclear fusion plants might become one of the most promising sources of energy in the near future. The original plan was to stage the first experiment to generate plasma in 2018. Then the launch date had to be postponed till 2020. The year 2027 was set as the date for getting stable burning plasma. In October there were reports the reactor’s launch may be delayed by another two or three years. Read more