The magnetic confinement fusion is one of the most promising approaches to a fusion reactor, and in the next generation experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the scientific and technological feasibility of a magnetic fusion reactor will be demonstrated. Fusion plasmas are extremely complex physical system consisting of multiple fluids (electrons and multiple s...

Thermonuclear fusion powers our universe and is a most promising option for electricity and hydrogen fuel generation within a future sustainable and environmentally benign energy scenario. We shortly describe the current status of magnetic fusion research on its way to the international tokamak experiment ITER, for which construction at the European site Cadarache (France) starts in the near fu...

The next major frontier in magnetic fusion physics is to explore and understand the strong non-linear coupling among confinement, MHD stability, self-heating, edge physics and waveparticle interactions that is fundamental to fusion plasma behavior. The Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE) design study has been undertaken to define the lowest cost facility to attain, explore, understand an...

The current situation and possible future developments for nuclear power--including fission and fusion processes--is presented. The fission nuclear power continues to be an essential part of the low-carbon electricity generation in the world for decades to come. There are breakthrough possibilities in the development of new generation nuclear reactors where the life-time of the nuclear waste ca...

The energy confinement time of tokamak plasmas scales positively with plasma size and so it is generally expected that the fusion triple product, nTτE, will also increase with size, and this has been part of the motivation for building devices of increasing size including ITER. Here n, T, and τE are the ion density, ion temperature and energy confinement time respectively. However, tokamak plas...

Tentative design and implementation of an irradiation facility are described, which will add a 14 MeV component to the neutron spectrum in a thermal research reactor irradiation facility. The idea is to exploit the Li(n,T)He reaction in a blanket of lithium in a deuterated environment, placed in a thermal reactor irradiation channel. Existing literature describing similar devices is reviewed, t...

For fusion reactor design study, a maneuverable design tool of superconductor (SC) TF coils, SCONE code, has been developed. The code was originally developed to apply reactor conceptual design where a baseline design of TF coils is required rather than the detailed one. The code consistently solves heat balance, electromagnetic stress and magnetic field at the TF coil system, and eventually pr...

The feasibility of a new approach of laser fusion in plasma without implosion has been proposed and is discussed using an intense laser. The cross section of the nuclear reaction is increased by enhancing the penetrability of nuclei through the Coulomb barrier. In this approach, an intense laser field of more than 100 PW was required to distort the Coulomb barrier to obtain enough penetrability...