Abstract
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.