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Our dream to realize fusion energy is alive
Professor Osamu Motojima
26th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, Oct 2016

Ladies and Gentlemen. I wish you are enjoying IAEA conference and Kyoto.
It is my great privilege to make the welcome speech at this banquet of theIAEA Fusion Energy Conference, organized by IAEA and hosted by theGovernment of Japan through MEXT and NIFS, National institute for Fusion
Science for which the new Director General is Prof Takeiri.
First of all, I would like to celebrate the success of this conference which hasgathered together more than 1000 participants from all over the world. I
thank DG Takeiri of NIFS and his group for their great effort to organize thisimportant conference.
I am very glad to mention that in this conference week, we are reconfirming
to each other the steady progress of fusion research, which has produced
many innovations confronting new challenges. Personally it is my great
pleasure to meet so many friends.
Our dream to realize fusion energy is alive; in other words; our objective isto bring the Sun to the Earth, and we are firmly moving ourselves forward
towards the scientific and engineering goal. The realization of fusion energy
has become more than just a dream; it is now a real target, since the ITER
project has come into the real construction phase. Thus, the role andresponsibility of the ITER project is inevitably growing, and has moved
beyond the turning-back point.
LHD of NIFS Heliotron will starts the D-D experiment soon. The new comer
W7X Stelarator is welcome. The results of DIII-D, JET, ASDEX-U, EAST, KSTAR,Alcator C-Mod and other Tokamaks are very encouraging. Research on theinertial fusion, theory and technology are also remarkably progressing.
Prof Iiyoshi mentioned in his keynote speech on Monday that, in such asituation, much more intensive collaboration together with competition in
the research community is necessary to meet our goal. This is a very
encouraging statement and I would like to fully agree with and support hisidea.
IAEA will continue to take care of its important role of fusion, and I thank
DG Mr Amano who first time attended the opening session in the long
history of IAEA-FEC and the IAEA Scientific Secretaries, Mr Kaiser and hiscolleagues for maintaining your strong interest in the support of fusion.
It is a good opportunity to thank Dr. Alain Becoulet who is the chair of theprogram committee and its members. Program committee members spent1

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one week at Vienna to decide the whole program of this conference. It isalways a tough and big job as you know. From the ITER organization, Dr Joe
Snipes is a member, who is here. I would like to thank Joe and all themembers for your hard work and efforts. You did a good job!
I am really pleased to hear DG Bigot's plenary talk on the status of the ITER
project, which maintains the steady progress of the ITER construction,overwhelming the existing difficulties. He declared his strong will not todelay the 500MW DT burning experiment and I fully support this strategy.
To this end, from my experience, I believe that the ITER Council needs togive the DG more authority and power for the management of the whole
ITER team including budget which makes the cash flow much easier.
As you know, the Paris convention’s goal will soon be effective during
COP22 (Conference of Parties) in Morocco on 7 Nov, since more than 55
countries have ratified the recommendation already. I believe thateverybody here knows that this convention aims at Zero CO2 emission. Andsince this is not an easy job, many more innovations to meet the difficult
challenges are required.
Therefore, the world is tackling the many challenges to develop solar, wind,bio and other renewable energy sources. At the same time, it is very
interesting that CCS (Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage) is becoming a big
business like oil and natural gas. However, some environmentalists areclaiming that CO2 zero emission is not enough but instead that minusemission is the only solution for our survival. For me this sounds realistic. In
this trend, I have great confidence that nuclear energy, the fusion energy
will attract more and more interest and hope from the people.
Ladies and Gentlemen. It is not necessary to mention that our common andultimate objective is to realize the fusion energy that contributes to thesustainable world and peace. I believe that the ITER project is able to findits position outside of the political tension, like the collaboration of thespace laboratory. I will be very glad if we are able to confirm this philosophy
in this conference in Kyoto.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very happy to meet you again. I remember wellthat the banquet in St Petersburg was so nice. However, NIFS is preparing
nice attractions as well, which will soon start. At the end, I would like tothank Prof Yamada and his group, who as the local secretaries, played an
important role for the success of this conference.

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Ladies and Gentlemen. Please enjoy the banquet and conference, as well as
Kyoto. We are very glad if you learn about Japan and in particular, theJapanese people’s hospitality, history and culture.
Thank you very much for your attention.

Osamu Motojima
DG Emeritus of the ITER Organization
President
Future Energy Research Association
North Building No.4
Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji-City 611-0011, Kyoto-Fu, Japan
0774-33-1213

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