China is confident of making a big contribution to an international bid to meet future energy needs through nuclear power, a senior official said yesterday.

Jin Xiaoming, director-general of the International Co-operation Bureau of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said the country has succeeded in the trial operation of a miniature of a planned international reactor.

The US$12.8 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project involves nations representing half the world's population and aims to develop a viable fusion power reactor.

Chinese scientists conducted a successful test with a device known as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST, that is of a similar configuration to, but much smaller than, the ITER two weeks ago in Hefei of Anhui Province.

An international committee will evaluate the device next month.

"The building of the EAST shows that China has the capability to contribute more to the ITER," Jin told China Daily.

The ITER project, whose members are China, the European Union, the United States, Russia, India, Japan and the Republic of Korea, seeks to turn seawater into fuel by mimicking the way the sun produces energy creating an alternative to polluting fossil fuels. Ministers from the seven sides signed the agreement to implement the project on November 21.

Unlike existing fission reactors, which release energy by splitting atoms apart, ITER would generate energy by combining them. Power has been harnessed from fusion in laboratories but scientists have so far been unable to build a commercially-viable reactor.

The 500MW ITER reactor will use deuterium, extracted from seawater, as its major fuel and a giant electromagnetic ring to fuse atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures.

"It is the largest and most expensive international science programme that China has ever joined," said Jin. "China has been welcomed into the project primarily because of its achievements in nuclear fusion research.

"Joining the ITER is one of the key steps China has taken to be involved in international mega science programmes and projects and in international efforts to develop new energy sources and fight global warming," he added.

China is a member of numerous global science programmes, such as the Human Genome Programme, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme and the Galileo Project. It is also considering whether to join FutureGen, a US-based project to build the world's first coal-fed, near-zero emission power plant.

Before the ITER, the nation's most expensive foray was in the Europe-based Galileo satellite navigation project, to which it has committed 200 million euros.

On the ITER, China will spend more than US$1 billion in total and about 1,000 scientists will be involved, according to Jin.

Scientists and managers will be sent on a rotating basis to the ITER headquarters at Cadarache in France, said Jin. There are already six Chinese working there and more than 20 will soon join them.