ISTEC'S VIEW OF SUPERCONDUCTIVITY WORLDWIDE

A unique responsibility of ISTEC is that it undertakes studies of the state of superconductivity research worldwide and makes projections of the growth of the industry. There is no equivalent U.S. organization. The closest is CSAC, but its membership represents only a small fraction of the U.S. industry. At the workshop on 10 April 1997, Mr. Toriihara presented some of ISTEC's findings. With his kind permission, some of his viewgraphs are presented in Figs. 9.5 to 9.8 and Tables 9.5 to 9.9.

Many of these figures are self explanatory, but some deserve special comment. For example, Figure 9.5 and Table 9.5 show that the companies involved in superconductivity R&D in Japan (not only SCE, but all areas of SC application) are predominantly medium to large companies, with over half having over 10,000 employees. This is in contrast to the United States, where SC has become largely the domain of small companies. Figure 9.6 is particularly disturbing, in that it shows U.S. budgets for SC, after dropping sharply with the termination of the supercollider, eroding further until they were exceeded by Japan in 1995. The funding levels in each country in 1995 are given in Table 9.7. The projections for 1997 and 1998 in the United States, if they could be included in this figure, would be even more gloomy. Figure 9.8 is a representation of Japan's "strategic plan" for superconducting applications of all types. Perhaps most interesting are Tables 9.8 and 9.9, which summarize ISTEC's comparisons of the strengths and weaknesses of SC activities in Japan with those in the United States and Europe. To a great extent, the ISTEC findings reinforce those of this panel, as discussed throughout this report.