"Oui, ITER is a worthy challenge!"

"Oui, ITER is a worthy challenge!" writes CEA Chairman Bernard Bigot in a column published last Wednesday, 6 July in the French economic daily Les Échos.

"For the first time in our history, the energy situation calls for a formidable effort to develop the innovative technologies that will be necessary to cover our needs," stresses the French physicist who is also the High Representative for ITER in France. "With 9 billion inhabitants on Earth in 2050, each one of us knows that in the next decades we must find a way to reduce the proportion of fossil fuels consumed."

In Bigot's view, renewable energies cannot, alone, fill the gap. "The energy mix of the future will necessarily include baseload electricity generation, complemented by renewable energy sources. A call for nuclear energy is inevitable to replace, in part, fossile resources."

While Fukushima has acted as a reminder of the inherent risks of nuclear energy if safety is not raised to an "absolute priority," mankind must now turn to "exploring the potential of fusion energy," argues Bigot.

And for an investment that represents only 0.02 percent of the Members' combined energy markets, ITER is the way to do it.