The National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) held its 5th KSTAR Program Advisory Committee (PAC) meeting in Daejeon, Korea from 20-22 March 2013. The KSTAR PAC was first established in 2009 and has provided critical analysis of each year's experimental campaign and constructive counseling to the KSTAR campaign ever since.
This year, eight world-renowned fusion scientists and researchers, including Hartmut Zohm (IPP, Germany), Mickey Wade (General Atomics, USA), and Joseph Snipes (ITER Organization) were invited as PAC members and reviewed the 2012 KSTAR campaign results, 2013 research plan and beyond. PAC members shared their critical views and comments with KSTAR management and researchers; this input can now be utilized to steer the upcoming campaign and as a basis for long-term KSTAR research planning.
The chairperson of the KSTAR PAC meeting, H. Park (POSTECH, Korea), stated that the PAC found that the 2012 KSTAR campaign had achieved remarkable progress in spite of short run time and scarce resources.