A government panel has proposed that Japan host an experimental nuclear fusion plant being developed jointly with the EU and Russia which promises cheap and abundant energy, an official said Tuesday.
The government will decide whether to host the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) after the Atomic Energy Commission panel compiles a final report by March 2001, the official said.
The ITER is an international project launched by Japan, the European Union, the former Soviet Union and the United States in 1988.
But the United States withdrew in 1998 because its costs were deemed too high, said the Science and Technology Agency official, who declined to be named.
The ITER site is expected to be chosen through talks between member nations by 2002, with France and Canada -- which is helping the EU with the design -- also in the running.
"If Japan succeeds in hosting the ITER, it can take the international initiative in using nuclear fusion in the 21st century," the official said.
The construction cost was initially estimated at one trillion yen ($8.8 billion), but this has been revised down to about 500 billion yen. Japan would expect to pay the lion's share of 400 billion yen if it hosts the ITER, the official said.
"Nuclear fusion is next-generation technology to create electricity in the same way that the sun generates energy," said the official.
Scientists hope to harness the massive amounts of energy given off by controlled fusion of atomic nuclei in a plasma core. The hydrogen bomb is an example of uncontrolled fusion.
Conventional nuclear fission requires uranium, resulting in high-level radioactive waste. But nuclear fusion's main fuel is deuterium, which can be extracted from ordinary water.
Eight gallons (30.4 litres) of water contain about one gram of deuterium, which has an energy content equivalent to roughly 2,500 gallons (9,500 litres) of petrol.
"We can also halt nuclear reactions in the ITER faster than in conventional nuclear reactors if there is trouble inside," the official added.
A decision to site the experimental reactor in Japan could arouse opposition amid concern about nuclear safety after a spate of accidents.
Two workers were killed in September last year in an accident at a uranium plant in Tokaimura, 120 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of Tokyo, which was the world's first fatal nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse.
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
