man has looked to the stars for answers to its most pressing dilemmas.

Just as curious ancient societies once sought to learn the future from the

heavens,

so do today's nuclear physicists.

Some believe that nuclear fusion, or the process that stars including our sun

use to produce energy,

may provide an alternative to current limited energy sources.

A global collaboration was formed

consisting of the U.S., the European Union, Japan, Russia, China, India,

and South Korea.

Member nations are building a prototype fusion power plant known as a ITER,

which is latin for "the way".

The objective is to understand the properties of matter undergoing intense

fusion reactions

and to serve as a test bed for future fusion power producing reactors.

Inside the tomamak, high powered radio waves at several frequencies

and highly energetic beams of neutral atoms

will heat and control the plasma, or the fuel, in the reaction process.

The plasma is an ionized gas made up of

the hydrogen isotopes deuterium

and tritium

that will eventually reach one hundred fifty million degrees.

After the plasma has reached a sufficient density,

it is further heated by injecting extremely high velocity neutral

deuterium atoms.

These charged particles are confined by the magnetic field and their density

continues to build over time.

As the beam particles collide with the lower energy plasma particles

they transfer energy to the plasma

thereby heating it and driving current.

Once in operation,

ITER will serve as a working laboratory in which scientists can test the various

components of the design

and further refine fusion energy

so that it might one day provide the world with a clean virtually limitless

energy source.