TOKYO, Nov. 10, Nov 10, 2006 -- Kyodo

Japan, the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, South Korea and India will sign in Paris on Nov. 21 an international agreement on plans to build the world's first thermonuclear reactor in France, Japanese government sources said Friday.

The seven players already initialed the pact on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project in Brussels in May.

The agreement calls for, among other things, establishing the ITER Organization, the operator of the reactor, in France.

The organization will be inaugurated within 30 days after the agreement comes into force. Kaname Ikeda, a former Japanese deputy minister of science and technology, is expected to head the organization, the sources said.

The seven parties hope the pact will come into force by the end of 2007. The Japanese government plans to seek Diet approval of the agreement during the next session starting in January, they said.

In June 2005, France was chosen as host for the nuclear fusion reactor. It is to be built in Cadarache in southern France. Japan, which competed with France to host the reactor, gave up the desire and instead became host of ITER-related research facilities.

The construction cost of the ITER is estimated at 5 billion euros (about $6.4 billion or 750 billion yen) over 10 years, and another 5 billion euros are foreseen for the 20-year operation period, the sources said.

The long-term objective of fusion research is to harness the nuclear energy provided by the fusion of light atoms to help meet humankind's future energy needs. The aim of the ITER project is to show fusion could be used to generate electrical power, and to gain the necessary data to design and operate the first practical plant.

If things go smoothly, construction of the experimental reactor will be completed in 2017, they said.

ITER-related candidate facilities in Japan include a computational simulation center for fusion science and a center for remote experimentation.

The village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, where a nuclear power complex is located, is the candidate site for the two facilities.

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