An agreement on the construction of the world's first international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER) was signed in Paris on Tuesday.

Representatives of Russia, the United States, the European Union, China, South Korea, Japan and India signed the agreement to finance the 10-billion-euro (US$12 billion) reactor in the presence of French President Jacques Chirac and European Commission President Commission Jose Manuel Barroso at France's Elysee Palace.

According to the pact, the construction of the ITER is to begin early in 2007 in Cadarache in the southern French region of Provence. The reactor is expected to generate energy by combining atoms instead of splitting them.

As fossil fuels are now in short supply, the reactor would provide a clean and limitless alternative that could attain within 40 years the level of industrial electricity generation at new power plants.

(Xinhua News Agency November 22, 2006)