Iran looks to tapping nuclear fusion energy

Iran has discussed joining an international project to generate power from nuclear fusion as the country seeks to capitalize on its scientific capacities in the field of plasma physics.

According to Press TV, the country has about a hundred plasma physicists and about 150 scientists with doctorates in fields related to nuclear fusion, according Laban Coblentz, spokesman for the ITER project.

ITER stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an international nuclear fusion research and engineering megaproject, which will be the world's largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment.

Iran’s nuclear energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Vice President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari visited the Cadarache research center for nuclear power in France earlier this month to discuss the country's participation in the project.

"We discussed possibilities of Iran's joining ITER, and the other members welcomed a prospective Iran membership," Salehi told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday.

Fusion-generated nuclear power has no significant weapons applications and nuclear fusion, which joins atoms together, is the process that powers the sun and stars.

The experimental project seeks to use today's fusion research machines for power generation in tomorrow’s nuclear plants.

An annex to a nuclear agreement reached in July between Iran and the West as well as Russia and China envisages Iranian contribution to the ITER project.

According to the ITER Charter, the project is open to any country that is prepared to have meaningful technological and financial participation, Coblentz said.

Iran began building an experimental nuclear fusion reactor in July 2010 and now has three small tokamak machines and is building a fourth, according to Coblentz.

SS