Review of Japanese fusion program and role of inertial fusion

The high compression of 600 times liquid density and the recent fast heating of a compressed core to 1-keV temperature have provided proof-of-principle of the fast ignition concept, and these results have significantly contributed to approve the first phase of the Fast Ignition Realization EXperiment (FIREX) project. The goal of FIREX-I is to demonstrate fast heating of a fusion fuel up to the ignition temperature of 5-10 keV. Although the fuel size of FIREX-I is too small to ignite, sufficient heating will provide the scientific viability of ignition-and-burn by increasing the laser energy thereby the fuel size. Based on the result of FIREX-I, the decision to launch FIREX-II will be made. FIREX-II will start to demonstrate ignition and burn in parallel to the U.S. NIF facility and the French Megajoule laser. The FIREX program is under the collaboration of the Institute of Laser Engineering and the National Institute for Fusion Science