India signs ITER agreement in Brussels

London, May 24: India today signed the International Thermonuclear Energy Reactor (ITER) agreement in Brussels, with six other partners -- EU, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.

''This signifies the start of a major international effort towards developing an energy technology which provides virtually limitless energy for supporting global development,'' Atomic Energy Commission chairman Dr Anil Kakodkar said after signing the agreement.

''Energy is an issue for the whole world but it is much more crucial for the developing world, particularly for India which has one-sixth of the world's population,'' he added.

Dr Kakodakar noted that programme had ''potential to provide access to a much larger quantum of energy,'' for India's huge needs.

''Even if we are talking about 5000 kilowatt hour per capita per year, which is nothing compared to the per capita energy consumption of Europe, even this very modest target would mean enhancing the electricity consumption in India by a factor of 11 or 12,'' he said.

India is contributing 10 per cent in the form of manufacturing equipment to the ITER project, situated in Cadarache, France, which is expected to produce nuclear fusion energy in conditions that will demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion as an energy source.

Fusion has several attractions as a large scale energy source such as the abundance of basic fuels, no green house gas emissions and no long-lasting radioactive waste.
Institute for Plasma Research director Dr P K Kaw, who was also present in Brussels on the occasion, said that Indian industries would manufacture components for ITER such as the key configurations and other high-tech heating sources and diagnostic equipments. The ITER project is expected to start in 2007 and be completed in 2015 after which experiments will commissioned and conducted.

It is expected to become a commercially-viable reality in 2040 at the earliest.

''By 2025 we will have sustained fusion reactors. After that we will have to design and develop demonstration reactors, which will eventually produce commercial power,'' Dr Kaw explained.

Referring to India's contribution, he said the country would also get access to the other 90 per cent of the work done elsewhere.

''This will get our scientists and engineers trained in those ways also. So it is hoped that by the end of the ITER project, our scientists and engineers will know how to make fusion reactors ourselves,'' he said.

Another member of the Indian team, Dr R B Grover, the Director of the Strategic Planning Group in the Department of Atomic Energy, stressed ITER's significance, saying ''this is a scientific break-through for half the world.'' EU Commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potocnik, who was also present, told mediapersons that they were ''making history in two ways.'' ''We have made a historical decision in the search of potential energy for the future and we have also made a historical decision about global cooperation the world has never seen until now,'' he said.

India is the last member to join the ITER project following the establishment of a joint EU-India energy panel set up to cooperate and address issues of energy security and alternative energy resources. The country's accession to the project was one of the issues mentioned in the July 18 joint statement after the historic meeting between US President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. US had promised India to support its accession to the project.

Every country, besides EU, has contributed 10 per cent to the ITER project while the EU will finance about 50 per cent of the project's cost estimated to be five billion Euros.

UNI