The agreement was initialed in Brussels by representatives from Russia, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and the European Union, and gives the go-ahead for practical work on the project to start.

The ITER project, which is likely to cost more than $12 billion, had been ready for some time, but the parties could not reach a compromise on the construction site. The EU had the support of Russia and China to build the reactor, while Japan had the backing of the U.S. and South Korea to construct it in Rokkasho in the north of the country.

France finally beat out Japan in its bid to host the experimental fusion reactor - expected to produce clean and safe energy by 2016 for 20 years - in Caradache in the south of the country.

The idea of ITER began when the Soviet Union suggested that the four most advanced nuclear nations - the U.S.S.R., the U.S., Europe and Japan - create a "tokamak" reactor, a doughnut-shaped chamber to confine in a magnetic field incandescent plasma that no material can withstand. Thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium then proceeds in the plasma.

The world's first tokamak reactor was produced in Moscow in 1955, and research was carried out in the Soviet Union alone for the next 15 years.

Source: RIA Novosti

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International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor