The 21st IAEA Fusion Energy Conference will be held from October 16 to 21 in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, local government sources announced on Tuesday.

It will be the first time a developing nation has hosted an IAEA fusion energy conference. A total of 830 scientists from China and abroad will attend the six-day event.

The meeting will be sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and local supporters include the China National Atomic Energy Agency, the city government of Chengdu and China Nuclear Industrial Group.

According to He Huazhang, vice mayor of Chengdu, the venue was determined at the 20th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference held in 2004. India and the United States were also candidates to host the event.

He said China was chosen to host the coming conference because its nuclear research institutes had achieved some outstanding experimental results in the field of controlled nuclear fusion.

The Southwestern Research Institute of Physics, based in Chengdu, is China's largest institute specializing in controlled nuclear fusion and plasma physics research. It has built three nuclear fusion research devices, nicknamed "artificial sun."

Another major facility is EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) located at the Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province. It is said to be the first advanced full superconducting experimental Tokamak in the world and has recently undergone a successful test.

Controlled nuclear fusion, which replicates the energy generating process of the sun, is seen as an efficient source of unlimited, clean energy to offset the dearth of fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and enormous amounts of energy obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction at a massive temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water would produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.

If the nuclear fusion technology is commercialized, it could provide energy for mankind for more than 100 million years, scientists believe.

(Xinhua News Agency October 11, 2006)