PROGRESS IN MAGNETIC FUSION ENERGY RESEARCH

Remarkable scientific progress has been made in the Magnetic Fusion Energy Program since its inception 40 years ago. A key energy confinement parameter reflecting that progress has been improved 10 000 000-fold in that time. A formalized international collaborative effort of design and development for a 1000-MW experimental reactor (ITER) has been entered into by the United States, Russia, Japan, and the European Community. In the United States, a national project to build a superconducting steady-state advanced tokamak (SSAT) to improve the reactor prospects of fusion is underway. [The device has been newly renamed the Tokamak Physics Experiment (TPX).] Despite this very encouraging progress, the outlook for fusion as an energy source remains unclear, with both economic and technological attractiveness yet to be determined. However, with only limited options for long-term energy supplies, and with environmental consequences yet to play a more dominant role in our choices, the world can ill afford not to develop the potential of fusion in the decades to come.