MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th July, 2020) RRussian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday expressed gratitude to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron for his invaluable contribution to the implementation of the ITER, an international megaproject to build a device that would prove the possibility of using fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.
On Tuesday, a ceremony marking the beginning of the assembly of the device was held at ITER in southern France.
"I would like to sincerely thank everyone who has been working on the ITER project for many years. Special thanks to French President Emmanuel Macron as the leader of the host country of the project, providing a site for the reactor and providing invaluable assistance in its construction," Putin was cited by Rosatom General Director Alexey Likhachev via a virtual press conference.
The French leader in his turn said that the joint efforts of the participating states on the project demonstrate how nations unite for a common purpose and the common good.
"There are moments when the nations of the world choose to overcome their differences to meet a particular moment in history. The decision to launch ITER in the mid-2000s was one of these moments," Macron said at a live broadcast.
The ITER demonstration reactor is being built next to the Cadarache research center in southern France jointly by the European Union, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
This will be the first large-scale attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of using thermonuclear reactions to generate energy on an industrial scale. Should the ITER project be successful, mankind will be able to count on the possession of an almost inexhaustible source of energy. The launch of the reactor and the production of the first plasma on it are expected to take place in 2025.
A total of 35 countries take part in the ITER project. Europe, as the host of the ITER reactor, contributes 45 percent of the cost of the construction, while the other countries, including Russia, contribute 9 percent each.
