Iran has set up an eight million dollar fund to conduct "serious" research in the area of nuclear fusion, atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi said on Saturday.
He said 50 people have been hired for the work, which Iran began nearly three decades ago but was initially "not very serious" about pursuing.
"Fusion research has been launched seriously today," the ISNA news agency quoted Salehi as saying.
"The start-up budget is 80 billion rials (eight million dollars)," he said.
"It takes 20 to 30 years before this process can be commercialised but we have to use all the capacity in the country to provide the necessary speed for fusion research."
Nuclear fusion has long been touted as the cheap, safe, clean and almost limitless energy source of the future but efforts to harness it for power generation have so far failed to bear fruit.
Fusion is used in the hydrogen bomb, in which fissile material like that used in a simple nuclear warhead launches the process by which atomic nuclei fuse together to release energy.
Iran has always rejected Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is aimed at developing a weapons capability.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
