ITER to Cadarache, Provence, France

The international community
For
ITER
to Cadarache, Provence, France.

.the water in our oceans alone could meet world energy needs for around a billion years

We Americans and other members of the international community will not support a site where no fusion research has ever been conducted.

We want this important choice of site to be governed by objective merits of the candidates only; not political horsetrading!

By signing this petition we, like the majority of the ITER Consortium, second Cadarache France, site of Tore Supra, an Iter precursor, for construction site of the Nuclear Fusion Reactor, due to its considerable human resources, its financial commitment, competence, technical expertise and solid safety guarantees.

We also believe that the quality lifestyle and beauty of Provence, with the Alps and the Mediterranean see within an hours drive, only 2.5 hours away from Paris by TGV, will continue to attract the international top researchers and their families to what is becoming also a sophisticated, cosmopolitan community with a highly developed infrastructure for expatriates.

We consider Cadarache France, the ideal candidate to succeed with the ITER project, both for the construction and the exploitation phase.


Why The ITER Project?
(International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor)

ITER is the largest and boldest scientific co-operation project on a world-wide scale. With a cost of around 10 billion dollars, the construction phase will last for 10 years and the exploitation phase for 20 years.
Based on research developed for over 40 years on a world-wide scale, the ITER project is based on controlled fusion, aiming to reproduce on Earth the process that powers our Sun and other stars: thermonuclear fusion.

Its goal will be to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for 500 seconds or longer during each individual fusion experiment and, in doing so, demonstrate essential technologies for a commercial reactor.

Controlled fusion is a major scientific and technological challenge, which could, in time, provide solutions to the crucial issue of providing new clean long-term energy resources. Unlike fission energy, fusion energy is a source of hope in terms of creating an abundant source of clean energy, with little or no waste, in the 21st century; this at a time when fossil fuel shortages are just 50 years away.

Scientists say it will be the first fusion device to produce thermal energy at the level of a conventional electricity-producing power station. Deuterium and tritium are abundant and cheap fuels - deuterium is extracted from seawater and tritium is made from the common element lithium.

Just 300 litres of seawater provide one gram of deuterium. This means that the water in our oceans alone could meet world energy needs for around a billion years.