September 8, 2007 (LPAC)--South Korea has completed building an experimental fusion energy testbed that will be unveiled next week, South Korea's National Fusion Research Institute said Thursday. The state-run laboratory in Daejeon told YonHap News that the construction work on the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) took nearly 12 years and cost the country 309 billion won (US$328.7 million). They said if all goes well, plasma is to be created for sustained operations in the second half of 2008.

KSTAR uses superconducting materials identical to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and has been built with local technology. The Ministry of Science and Technology said it wants to become one of the top five nuclear fusion energy powers by 2021, and build its own commercial fusion reactor around 2040. ITER being pursued in France is expected to allow the world to use fusion energy as a power source after 2030.