Iran plans fusion reactor

Published on Saturday 24 July 2010 13:59

IRAN is planning to build an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, it said yesterday.

The declaration came as the West demands that Tehran suspends its work on nuclear materials suspecting it plans to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran said in 2006 that it was pressing ahead with research tests on nuclear fusion, a type of atomic reaction which has yet to be developed for commercial power generation, but this was the first mention in years that the work was continuing.

"We need two years to complete the studies on constructing and then another ten years to design and build the reactor," Asqar Sediqzadeh, head of Iran's Nuclear Fusion Research Centre, said.

The United States and its European allies suspect Iran is trying to build an atomic bomb, and have imposed sanctions on it in a drive to convince it to drop sensitive nuclear work. Tehran says its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only.

Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran was ready to co-operate with the international community over its National Fusion Energy Project, without mentioning the plan to build the reactor. "The scientific phase of the fusion energy research project is being launched with no budgetary limitation," he said.

Commercial nuclear reactors rely on fission, generating energy from splitting atoms.