THE INTERNATIONAL Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project has been in the news of late. There was an announcement that agreement had been reached among the participating entities to locate it in France. In an interaction with presspersons, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told them that India was keen on joining the project and that French President Jacques Chirac was enthusiastic about Indian participation. The participants at present are the United States, Russia, the European Union, Japan, China, and South Korea.

It is interesting to recall the genesis of the ITER project. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested to the international community in the latter 1980s that the development of controlled fusion reactors (or thermonuclear reactions) could be embarked upon as an international collaborative programme. Homi Bhabha in his presidential address to the first United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva in 1955, made a prophetic statement that when thermonuclear energy was harnessed, say in a couple of decades, mankind's energy needs could be met from the abundant sea water. Water contains a small fraction of heavy water; the heavy hydrogen can be used as a fuel in a fusion or thermonuclear reactor. As things turned out, Bhabha's timetable for harnessing fusion energy was way off the mark. But scientists in various laboratories of the world have been working on this problem for the past half a century.

In the 1930s, Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe, a German scientist who eventually emigrated to the U.S., proposed that energy was produced by fusing of light element nuclei. Typically hydrogen nuclei fused together to form helium; in the process energy was released. This nuclear reaction takes place at high temperatures and hence the fusion reaction is also called thermonuclear reaction. This is different from the fission reaction where heavy nuclei, such as those of uranium and plutonium, break up and release energy. It is fission energy that is harnessed in all the nuclear power stations that are operating in India and elsewhere in the world.

In the past 50 years, many outstanding scientists and technologists have worked on problems connected with controlled thermonuclear reactions. This has turned out to be much more difficult than using fusion energy for making the hydrogen bomb. Edward Teller in the U.S. and Andrie Sakharov in the USSR led the H bomb work. A number of laboratories including Princeton in the U.S. and the Kurchatov laboratory in the USSR pioneered the studies in harnessing fusion energy for peaceful applications. In due course of time, there was a cooperative European initiative, which culminated in the Joint European Torus (JET) built in the U.K. Basic scientific work on plasma physics was taken up in France, Germany, Japan, and India too. While much has been learnt on the basic processes involved, obtaining the requisite temperatures, of the order of some millions of degrees centigrade, and holding it for sufficient duration to allow the fusion reactions to take place have proved to be formidable. There are many technological problems of containing the high temperature plasma in a stable mode, of high levels of vacuum, of choosing materials that can withstand the intense radiation and so forth that need solutions. The magnetic confinement of plasma, initially demonstrated in the USSR is the path now Chosen for the Tokamak (a Russian word) development to achieve controlled fusion.

In the latter half of the 1980, Hans Blix, then Director-General of IAEA, took the initiative to suggest that the thermonuclear experimental reactor would be an ideal project for international collaboration. The world was searching for a large source of energy that did not add to the carbon dioxide burden of the atmosphere. The cold war tensions had eased and the U.S. and Russia had normalised their relations substantially. Moreover the challenges posed in developing a thermonuclear reactor for electricity production were such that international cooperation would result in pooling of scientific and financial resources among the participating countries. The U.S., the Soviet Union, the European Union, and Japan agreed to be partners in the ITER venture. I remember Hans Blix mentioning to me, when I was Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, about the desirability of India also joining the project. At that time, India was engaged in consolidating its activities in the field of nuclear power and associated technologies, given the embargoes operating after the 1974 Pokhran-I test. Whilst I welcomed the suggestion of Hans Blix, it was premature for India to think of participating in the ITER. Moreover, India faced severe foreign exchange crisis in the early 1990s, when it had to send out of the country gold from the Reserve Bank of India. This would have ruled out India making any financial contribution to the international project, no matter how important it was from a long term point of view.

After some years of halting progress, the ITER project gathered momentum in the last couple of years. The original four sponsors realised the advantage of seeking new partners. China and South Korea joined the original four, agreeing to take on about 10 per cent of the cost of the project each. In the mean time, a point of contention was the location of the project. The European Union was insistent that ITER should be built at Cadarache in southern France. The French Atomic Energy Commission has set up at that location extensive facilities dedicated to developing fast breeder reactors and for studies in the safety of light water reactors. Japan offered an alternative site on its territory and was equally adamant that ITER should be built there. The U.S. lent strong support behind the scenes to the Japanese location. Very recently this conflict has been resolved and Cadarache in France has been chosen as the site.

In September 2004, I was in France to attend a seminar when I had occasion to meet the High Commissioner of the French Atomic Energy Commission, M. Bigot. He was very keen that India should join the ITER project, as a partner, given its technological and scientific standing and its search for a sustainable source of energy. While the site decision had not been taken, France was hopeful its site would be chosen. Later in 2004, M. Bigot as well as M. Bugat, Managing Director of the French Atomic Energy Commission visited India and met Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and his colleagues. They reiterated their desire that India should become a partner in ITER and that France as part of the European Union would be happy to sponsor India's participation.

The Department of Atomic Energy has under it the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR) at Ahmedabad, as an aided institution and finances its activities almost entirely. This institute carries out theoretical and experimental research in plasma physics, relevant to magnetically confined hot plasmas. There are a number of experimental facilities, the major one being a Tokamak Aditya. A more advanced steady state Tokamak (SSI - I) is being put together at IPR. SSI-I will study physics and technology issues of steady state Tokamaks and advanced Tokamak configurations. Many sophisticated equipment such as super conducting magnets, high vacuum vessels and liquid helium systems were made in the country for this project. India therefore already has a significant number of scientists and engineers engaged on Tokamak-related activities who would be available to work on ITER related activities, if India were to join in.

Advantages of partnership

It is too early to be definitive about the cost implications of India joining the ITER as a partner. India would be expected to pick up about 10 per cent of the costs as China and South Korea have done. As a rough guess, India may have to invest some Rs.250 crores a year for the next ten years or so when ITER would be built. India's contribution would include Indian scientists and engineers working on the design, installation and operation of the ITER and Indian industry having an opportunity to supply components and equipment for the ITER project. There would of course be competitive bidding for these supplies from amongst industry in the participating countries. As a result of supplying a wide range of components and equipment for our diversified nuclear industry, Indian industry is well poised to secure some of the contracts for ITER. It is only by joining as a partner that India will be able to have access in the future to the technologies involved without having to pay royalties on patents.

In considering joining the ITER, there will be views that the money we would spend on this project could be better spent on education or health or on non conventional energy technologies such as solar or wind or biomass. We must realise that India with its growing economy and improving living standards is looking for a large source of energy in a world, which may run out of oil and gas and when coal and other carbonaceous fuels would be unacceptable because of build up of green house gases in the atmosphere. We shall need large quantities of electricity and hydrogen to assure our large population a reasonable quality of life and a sustainable economy. We should wholeheartedly support the Prime Minister's desire that India becomes a partner in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project.