ABSTRACT
It has long been a dream of mankind to produce energy just the way the sun does. Since the early 20th century, we have known that the source of energy for the sun — as for other stars — is a process called nuclear fusion, yet civil research activities in this field did not start until the 1950s. Nowadays many countries support fusion research in the quest for a new resource for the production of electricity. Performing such research is increasingly important as the energy problem becomes a more and more pressing issue (for a brief summary, see Appendix A.1).
