CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : SAN DIEGO : Pact for Fusion Project to Be Signed

A six-year, $1.2-billion agreement to be signed today will bring an international effort to harness fusion energy to San Diego. After a lag of more than a year, representatives of the European Community, Japan, Russia and the United States will sign an accord this afternoon to cooperate in the engineering design phase of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The pact clears the way for scientists here and at the two other co-centers in Garching, Germany, and Naka, Japan, to design a reactor intended to provide unlimited, inexpensive energy without peril of pollution. The $1.2 billion allocated for the engineering design phase of the project will be divided equally among the four partners. In San Diego, the project had been welcomed with open arms as experts estimated it would pump $200 million into the local economy. The technological hurdles are formidable as scientists attempt to mimic the natural process that occurs at the sun’s core. Fusion generates power by melding together simple atoms, such as hydrogen. For five decades, proponents of fusion have envisioned environmentally safe plants powered by hydrogen atoms taken from sea water.