EAST, WEST APPROVE NUCLEAR FUSION ENERGY PROJECT
East and West on Monday decided to go
ahead with an ambitious nuclear fusion project billed as
possibly providing an inexhaustible source of energy, the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
    Representatives of the U.S., The Soviet Union, the European
Community and Japan agreed to develop plans for a revolutionary
thermonuclear reactor, to produce energy not from splitting
atoms as in today's nuclear plants, but by joining them.
    Work is due to begin next year at the Institute for Plasma
Physics at the Max Planck Foundation near Munich, West Germany,
and is scheduled for completion by 1990, an IAEA statement
said.
    Research into fusion's scientific feasibility has been
under way for many years but the project approved on Monday,
known as International Thremonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER) will study if an actual plant could be built.
    The project represents an unprecedented display of
East-West scientific cooperation, but a decision will not be
made until its completion on whether an actual reactor would be
jointly constructed or by individual participant countries.
    Dieter Sigmar, a leading U.S. Fusion researcher, said last
month that the development of a demonstration plant would cost
several billion dlrs and need at least another 10 years.
    Fusion plants would produce little radioactive waste.
    While today's nuclear power plants need uranium, mined in
only a few countries and producing dangerous waste, fusion
plants would eventually run only on deuterium, an element
related to hydrogen and available from almost limitless
supplies of sea water, according to experts.
 REUTER
