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France has made a formal offer to host ITER, the International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor. Since the US dropped out of the fusion reactor project in
1998, the remaining partners—Japan, Europe, Russia and Canada—have
been unable to come up with a site, in part because the host country has to pay
a quarter of the construction costs. France’s proposal to build the reactor at
Cadarache in southern France, home to the research labs of France’s Atomic
Energy Commission (CEA), has been welcomed by the European partners. “This is
one of the more rational choices we have made,” says Michel…