A man on a mission
15 Oct 2010
-
Sabina Griffith
ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima with staff of the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow looking at the protoype of a jacketing cable for ITER's toroidal field coils: Alexander Shikov, director of NBIC Center, leading researcher Anatoly Krivykh, Oleg Anashkin, head of the laboratory, and the responsible officers Viktor Pantsyrniy and Vladimir Tronza.
With the impressions of the IAEA conference in Korea still fresh in his mind, ITER Director-General Osamu Motojima has just arrived in China where he is meeting Minister Wan Gang and Vice Minister Cao Jianlin of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. This trip is part of a series of visits aimed at reinforcing collaboration with the ITER Members.
In September he visited the Indian Domestic Agency in Ahmedabad, followed by a meeting with the US Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, in Washington. From there, he went on to Madrid to meet with the Spanish Minister for Science and Innovation, Cristina Garmendia. Motojima thanked her for supporting the ITER Project over the first six months of the year when Spain held the presidency of the Council of the European Union, and he reported on the progress made since.
Before heading off to Korea to attend the IAEA meeting, Motojima travelled to Russia, where, at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, he met the Chairman of the ITER Council, Academician Yvgeny Velikov, and the Head of the Russian Delegation to the ITER Council, Igor Borovkov. In a special session with the staff of the Domestic Agency located on the premises of the famous Institute, the Director-General presented the current status of the ITER Project.
He continued his world-spanning round trip from Moscow to Japan where he held bilateral talks with Japan's Deputy Minister Moriguchi and Vice-Minister Shimizu before he discussed recent issues with the management of the Domestic Agency at the JAEA Tokyo Office, representatives from Japanese industry and universities. "As the ITER Project seeks unanimous consent in its decision process," Motojima recently stated in an interview, 'close cooperation between the Members is essential."