The National Fusion Research Center has completed construction of a nuclear test fusion reactor as part of the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) project.

The Korea Basic Science Institute, which houses the fusion research center in Daejeon, held a dedication ceremony attended by some 400 guests including President Roh Moo-hyun and nuclear fusion experts from the U.S., Japan, China and Russia. They were joined by Seoul-based envoys from countries participating in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project.

The KSTAR is a magnetic fusion device built for the study of aspects of magnetic fusion energy,
based on a process that uses hot plasma in a sealed vacuum chamber to combine deuterium and tritium, making them into heavier particles and generating massive amounts of energy.

The process that mimics stellar power generation could allow three hundredths of a gram of deuterium to generate power equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.

Fusion research center officials say the KSTAR is the closest to the ITER model that seven countries including Korea plan to complete by 2015.

With the construction of the KSTAR, Korea has now become the sixth country in the world to develop a nuclear fusion reactor after the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and the European Union.