GUANGZHOU -- Forty-eight blanket shield block modules departed from China on Friday, heading to France for the construction of the world's largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor.

Departing from the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province, the components are the first of their kind destined for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in southern France.

The facility, sometimes referred to as "artificial sun," is being built by China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Russia and the United States to test the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and clean source of energy.

The ITER tokamak uses a magnetic cage to confine, shape and control the super-hot plasmas to make fusion reactions possible.

The blanket shield block modules are critical vacuum components that provide neutron shielding and heat conduction under high thermal loads. They protect the vacuum chamber, external equipment, and personnel from radiation, ensuring the reactor's stable operation.

China and the ROK are each responsible for the manufacturing of 220 blanket shield block modules. The first 48 modules were produced by Dongfang Electric Corporation.