25 years of massive fusion energy experiment data open on the 'cloud' and available to everyone

High-temperature fusion plasma experiments conducted in the Large Helical Device (LHD) of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), have renewed the world record for an acquired data amount, 0.92 terabytes (TB) per experiment, in February 2022, by using a full range of state-of-the-art plasma diagnostic devices.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), which is currently under construction in France through the international collaboration of seven parties, is expected to generate approximately 1 TB of data per experiment in 10 years, and LHD is currently the only experiment in the world that produces data closely aligned to ITER.

The promotion of “Open Science,” in which large-scale research data assets are utilized and shared across society, was adopted as a joint statement at the G7 meeting held in Sendai, Japan in 2023. NIFS started full-fledged efforts toward Open Science by establishing the “Open Access Policy” in February 2022 and the “Research Data Policy” in October 2022.

Since 2023, all the data obtained from LHD experiments are open to the public immediately after acquisition and analysis is completed. All computing program source codes for data analysis are also openly available.

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