The European Commission says it has approved plans to build new lasers that will dwarf the power of existing lasers for research into particle physics.

Three new lasers, each costing about $400 million, will be constructed -- one in the Czech Republic, one in Hungary and one in Romania, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

The lasers, set for completion in 2015, will be capable of firing pulses that reach a power of 10 petawatts.

Each of the lasers will be different in its design details, allowing each to perform different high-energy physics experiments, including accelerating particles using the laser pulses, studying atomic nuclei, and generating fleeting pulses to study the dynamics of extremely fast events in atoms.

The project, called the Extreme Light Infrastructure, will pave the way for an even more powerful laser capable of generating 10 beams, each twice as powerful as any one of the three ELI lasers, researchers said.