£7bn Nuclear Fusion Project Launched in France

Officials from six nations and the European Union today signed an international treaty launching a £7bn nuclear fusion energy research project aimed at developing an emission-free energy source.

The French president, Jacques Chirac, hosted officials from the 25 EU countries, the US, India, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia as they unveiled the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter).

The European commission president, José Manuel Barroso, called the occasion a "historic event" in the effort to phase out polluting fossil fuels, while Mr Chirac expressed pride that France had been chosen as the site.

The reactor will be built in Cadarache, in the southern region of Provence. Construction work will begin next year, but the £3.5bn buildings are not expected to be ready for eight years. The EU is shouldering half the costs of the project.

If all goes to plan, officials hope to set up a demonstration power plant by 2040. The long-term experiment could create around 10,000 jobs.

The aim is to promote the power of fusion, which reproduces the sun's power source, producing no greenhouse gas emissions and only low levels of radioactive waste.

A statement by the commission described the project as an unprecedented attempt to reproduce the physical reaction that occurs in the sun and the stars.

"Existing experiments have already shown that it is possible to replicate this process on Earth," it said.

"Iter aims to do this on a scale and in conditions that will demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as an energy source."

However, environmental activists generally oppose nuclear power, and have argued that the project would distract attention from existing efforts to fight global warming.

Today's signing ceremony marks the end of years of discussions on the practicalities of building a nuclear fusion plant capable of achieving the temperatures, of over 100m degrees Celsius, necessary to replicate the source of the sun's energy.

Fusion involves colliding atoms at extremely high temperatures and pressure inside a reactor. When the atoms fuse into a plasma, they release energy that can be harnessed to generate electricity.

The reactor would run on an isotope of hydrogen, a virtually boundless fuel source that can be extracted from water.

After today's signing ceremony, at the Elysee palace in Paris, a formal first meeting of the new Iter council was to be held.