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Part Promotion of Scientific Research

The development of clean and inexhaustable energy has now become an important problem common to toe whole world, and the development of energy by nuclear fusion, which is expected to be the future source of energy, is actively being carried out by the world's major nations.

The research on nuclear fusion is also actively pursued in Japan, and one of the national inter-university research institutes of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, which is called the National Institute for Fusion Science, acts as the central organ of research in this field.

The Institute is implementing a plan for the construction of a large-scale helical apparatus by the helical method using super conducting coils, with the cooperation of scientists from universities and research institutes. This is being carried out for the purpose of studying the constant operation of the ring magnetic system and inquiring into the physics of enclosing high-temperature plasma. The experimental manufacturing was conducted in 1989 and actual construction was started in 1990 under a 7-year program. In 1991, the construction of principal apparatus has been started according to the annual schedule.

In certain university institutes, pioneering and basic research on various methods for enclosing and heating plasma is being conducted, for example, the "Tandem mirror program" at the Plasma Research Center of the University of Tsukuba, the "Heliotron-E program" at the Plasma Physics Laboratory of Kyoto University, the "Laser nuclear fusion program" at the Institute of Baser Engineering of Osaka University, and the "Improvement of Tokamak method" at the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics of Kyushu University.