LONDON: India is developing the heaviest and the largest parts of the Tokamak, the machine behind the biggest scientific collaboration on the planet, to produce unlimited supplies of cheap, clean, safe and commercial energy from

fusion.

The international nuclear fusion project known as ITER, meaning "the way" in Latin, is based on the 'tokamak' concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel.

The fuel-a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen-is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million degrees Celsius forming a hot plasma.

The temperature within the gigantic machine will, therefore, reach 10 times the temperature at the core of the Sun.

Strong

will be used to keep the plasma away from the walls.

India will be one of the significant creators of the Tokamak which will weigh 23,000 tons-as heavy as three Eiffel Towers-with a plasma volume of 840 cubic metres.

The main feature of the 180 hectare ITER site in Cadarache, southern France, is a man-made level 42 hectare platform that would be 1 kilometre long and 400 metres wide, and compares in size to 60 soccer fields.

The Tokamak Building will be slightly taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Beginning December 2015, the first of the ITER cryostat's components will arrive on site from India.

ITER project ranks as the most ambitious science endeavors of our time. Building began in 2010 in France where 34 nations are collaborating to realize the ITER project's First Plasma in November 2020.

ITER says as part of India's in-kind contribution to the project, these 54 segments are among the largest and heaviest of the whole Tokamak assembly.

They will have to be pre-assembled into four sections before being transported to the Assembly Building. The workshop will be built and operated by the Indian Domestic Agency. ITER-India is the Indian Domestic Agency responsible for the delivery of components.

As stipulated in the agreement that the ITER Organization and the Indian Domestic Agency signed on 19 April, this small "territory"-the size of a

field-will be made available to the Indian Domestic Agency.

When India joined the ITER project in 2005, the

(IPR) at

was entrusted by the government of India with managing participation in ITER.

The strength of ITER-India now stands at 83 permanent and 10 contracted staff.

In addition, about 20 engineers hired from different engineering service companies work on the ITER-India premises.

India said: "At present, the focus of ITER-India activities is the completion of the remaining design work. ITER is a unique opportunity for all of us to show that fusion can be a credible and sustainable alternate energy source for human civilization. Especially for countries like India and China, with huge population, fast-growing economies and consequently enormous energy demands and against the backdrop of depleting fossil fuel reserves and CO2 emission concerns fusion can be a lifeline."