During the past decade of IAEA Conferences on controlled fusion research, the topic of principal interest has shifted from the feasibility of fusion power to the optimization of economically favourable reactor characteristics: efficient plasma heating systems, high beta values, quasi-steady-state operating capabilities, simple coil structures, etc. At the present Conference, the experimental tokamak papers (about half the total number of papers in the category of magnetic-confinement experiments) offer a striking illustration of this trend. The other approaches – tandem mirrors, EBTs, stellarators, reversed-field pinches, and compact tori (represented in roughly equal numbers) – are still confronting questions of basic feasibility, but their research programmes are also becoming oriented towards particular features of reactor attractiveness.
過去10年間のIAEA会議を通じて、核融合研究の焦点は実現可能性から最適化へと移行してきた。この移行は、トカマク、タンデムミラー、EBT、ステラレーター、反転磁場ピンチ、コンパクトトーラスなど、多様な閉じ込め概念の進展を伴っている。しかし、これらの概念は依然として基本的な実現可能性の問題に直面している一方で、その研究プログラムは次第に経済的に魅力的な炉の特性の実現に向けられつつある。