Overview of the Japanese fusion reactor studies programme

Fusion reactor design studies conducted in Japan since the fifth IAEA Technical Committee Meeting and Workshop on Fusion Reactor Design and Technology in 1993 are introduced. During the 5 years since the last IAEA-TCM, the fusion reactor studies in Japan became more focused concentrating on tokamaks, helical devices and laser fusion. There are four tokamak reactor studies, namely, A-SSTR, CREST, DREAM and IDLT. There are helical reactor studies such as FFHR and one laser fusion reactor study on KOYO. Compared with the situation of 5 years ago having many types of confinement schemes being studied, the confinement schemes are now limited to three and each of the effort is larger involving greater number of scientists. The cooperation and exchanges between the design groups have increased through various committees, meetings and symposia.