CURRENT STATUS OF NUCLEAR FUSION ENERGY RESEARCH IN KOREA

Abstract

The history of nuclear fusion research in Korea is rather short compared to that of advanced countries. However, since the mid-1900s, at which time the construction of KSTAR was about to commence, fusion research in Korea has been actively carried out in a wide range of areas, from basic plasma physics to fusion reactor design. The flourishing of fusion research partly owes to the fact that industrial technologies in Korea including those related to the nuclear field have been fully matured, with their quality being highly ranked in the world. Successive pivotal programs such as KSTAR and ITER have provided diverse opportunities to address new scientific and technological problems in fusion as well as to draw young researchers into related fields. The frame of the Korean nuclear fusion program is now changing from a small laboratory scale to a large national agenda. Coordinated strategies from different views and a holistic approach are necessary in order to achieve optimal efficiency and effectiveness. Upon this background, the present paper reflects upon the road taken to arrive at this point and looks ahead at the coming future in nuclear fusion research activities in Korea.