– This is the only unique international project involving Russia and Kazakhstan, the United States and Canada, the EU, China, India and Korea

This is the only unique international project involving Russia and Kazakhstan, the United States and Canada, the EU, China, India and Korea. Each of them has to contribute something to the project. We contribute the technology of high-temperature materials. I think that this is a very serious contribution.

There has been no such project before. This is a unique phenomenon in the world economy and science. It was the decision of Mitterrand, Gorbachev and Reagan to bring together the efforts of different countries and to create an international thermonuclear reactor as nobody can do it alone. For many years we perfectly worked on the project under the international aegis, then, we started long and heated debates where to build the reactor: the key aspirants were Japan and France. Europe won. The cost of the project is 5bln EUR. The parties contribute either money or materials.
  
Our innovations are valuable not only in terms of money – they are in demand on the highest international level.

Note

The initiator of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project was the Soviet Union, which proposed building a modern reactor on the basis of the experience of four leading international programs on controlled thermonuclear synthesis. The United States, together with the European Union and Japan, suggested ways to implement such a project. Presently, the project involves Russia, the EU, China, the US, Japan, India and South Korea.

The estimated thermonuclear capacity of ITER is 500MW. The project is supposed to last for nine years. The technical basis of the reactor was ready in 2001. On June 28 2005 the parties to the project met in Moscow and decided to build the reactor in France (Nuclear Center in Cadarache). 

India, with its strong research and technological potential, joined the project in late 2005.

The ITER Agreement took force on Oct 24 2007.

The first meeting of the ITER Council (the governing body of ITER Organization) took place in Cadarache (France) on Nov 27–28 2007.

Russia was represented by a delegation of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, led by ITER Council member, then deputy head of Rosatom Ivan Kamenskikh. The other members of ITER Council from the Russian Federation were the deputy head of the staff of the Government of the Russian Federation Igor Borovkov, the head of Rosnauka (Federal Science Agency) Sergey Mazurenko and the president of Kurchatov Institute Yevgeny Velikhov.

The Council elected EU representative Christopher Llewellyn Smith as their chairman and the president of Kurchatov Institute, laureate of Global Energy International Prize, academician Yevgeny Velikhov as vice chairman.

Thermonuclear reactor uses the energy produced by synthesis of hydrogen isotope nuclei. Isotope burning produces no radioactive waste. The reaction takes place in plasma under a temperature of 150,000,000 C. One unit of thermonuclear fuel produces 10,000,000 times more energy than organic fuel and almost 100 times more than uranium nuclei.

The key advantages of thermonuclear reactor are as follows:

— you have inexhaustible reserves of fuel for the reactor – water.
— you can build the reactor wherever you like,
— the reactor is safe as it does not emit radiation.