Inauguration at Broader Approach site

An important ceremony was held last Tuesday, 27 March, at Rokkasho, Japan, as Japanese and European personalities celebrated the completion of the International Fusion Energy Research Centre (IFERC).

IFERC is part of the "Broader Approach," the agreement that was negotiated in 2005 between Europe and Japan to provide complementary development projects in support of ITER and the next-step device DEMO.

The event also highlighted the completion of the administration & research building, the IFMIF/EVEDA prototype accelerator building, the CSC/REC building, and the DEMO R&D building. The CSC/REC building will be used to install the supercomputer with all its peripherals and the equipment of the Remote Experimentation Centre, including a very large data storage facility.

The ceremony was attended by Toichi Sakata, Vice Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; Shingo Mimura, Governor of Aomori prefecture; Kenji Furukawa, Mayor of Rokkasho; Toshio Okazaki, President of JAEA and several Japanese MPs. The European Commission was represented by Barbara Rhode and the French Ambassador to Japan by Pierre-Yves Cordier, the embassy's nuclear attaché.

A live video connection enabled ITER Director-General Kaname Ikeda from the ITER premises in Cadarache to address the audience assembled on the other side of the globe. Having expressed his satisfaction and "happiness," Ikeda drew a parallel between the "good support" that local and regional governments are providing to ITER here in Provence, and to IFERC in Aomori prefecture.

In Rokkasho, as reported by IFMIF-EVEDA Project Leader Pascal Garin, the celebration ended in traditional Japanese fashion with "the sake barrel ceremony, dances by children, and still more speeches ..."