The news is a blow to the project after France proposed this week that Europe could also break from the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

Canada had once proposed a site near Toronto for the reactor. Now France and Japan are competing for the valuable project.

Canada's Natural Resources Minister John Efford sent a letter to other ITER countries on December 23 informing them of the withdrawal, said Murray Stewart, the head of ITER Canada. Another letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency was sent a few days ago.

The withdrawal is mainly because of a lack of federal financing.

The choice between Japan or France was supposed to have been made in December by delegates from the European Union, the US, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia at a meeting near Washington.

But after they failed to reach the required consensus, the decision was delayed, probably until mid-February.

Europe has the means to build its own version of the experimental nuclear reactor, but will abide by a choice made between a site in France and one in Japan, an EU spokesman said Tuesday.

The European Commission responded after French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said Europe could go it alone on ITER's plan to produce a clean, safe, inexhaustible energy of the future.

Japan wants to have the experimental reactor in the village of Rokkasho-mura in Aomori prefecture. France has proposed its southern town of Cadarache.

WAR.WIRE