ITC18: 18th international Toki conference. Development of physics and technology of stellarators/heliotrons 'en route to DEMO'. Proceedings

18th International Toki Conference (ITC18) was held in Toki (Japan) December 9-12 2008 organized by the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS). More than 150 experts in fusion research, especially in stellarator/heliotron research from Australia, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States of America gathered at the conference. The International Organizing Committee (IOC) chaired by O. Motojima, the International Program Committee (IPC) chaired by Y. Ogawa and the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) chaired by T. Mutoh have played the leading role in the elaboration of the scientific program of the conference. NIFS has organized the ITC as an annual meeting for fusion related sciences since its establishment in 1989. The IPC arranged 2 plenary talks, 1 review talk, 34 invited talks in addition to 109 contributed presentations including 6 oral talks. Recent developments in the experimental, theoretical and technical research show the clear route to the realization of a stellarator/heliotron type demo fusion reactor. ITC18 was devoted to review the recent developments and to discuss the next steps forward to the demo reactor realization of stellarator/heliotron type. In the conference, recent experimental results from both tokamak and stellarator/heliotron devices are reviewed and the experimental and theoretical physics of plasma confinement in toroidal devices are also discussed and confirmed that the physical base of the fusion reactor is well developed. The development of steady state operation, heating, fueling, divertors, plasma wall interaction and wall materials, advanced diagnostics for reactor relevant plasma, blanket materials as well as super conducting magnets are discussed as inevitable key physics and technologies for the DEMO reactor. Slides of all oral presentations as well as the proceedings are available at http://itc.nifs.ac.jp/. Extended papers of major contributions will be published in the special issue of Plasma and Fusion Research (http://www.jspf.or.jp/PFR). The 111 of the papers are indexed individually. (J.P.N.)