PART II Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture
Chapter 6. Promoting Scientific Research
Section 6. Prioritized Promotion of Basic Research
4. Developing Energy Sources for the Twenty-first Century: Fusion Research
Fusion is expected to be an important energy source in future, and it is being investigated in many developed nations. The National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) plays the main role in fusion studies in Japan. The Large Helical Device (LHD) has been under construction since fiscal 1990 at the NIFS. The LHD will be used to investigate the steady-state operation of toroidal systems and confinement physics of high-temperature plasmas.
Pioneering basic fusion research is also underway at other institutions, including research using a magnetic mirror at the Plasma Research Center of the University of Tsukuba, inertial confinement at the Institute for Laser Engineering of Osaka University, and a superconducting tokamak at the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics of Kyushu University.
