Biography
Gyung-Su Lee is a Korean scientist who served the Vice Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation for Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) from June 2021 to May 2022. As Vice Minister, he led and oversaw planning and implementation of national science, technology, and innovation policy across all national-level governmental entities (~ 40 ministries and agencies) and directed overall Korean R&D budget decisions (approximately 27 billion US Dollars in FY2022), including R&D budget for “Net-Zero in 2050”.
Before joining Government of the Republic of Korea, Dr. GS Lee served the Deputy Director-General in the capacity of Chief Operating Officer and Site Construction Director for the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization (IO) from October 2015 to May 2020. In IO, he coordinated and implemented, through close collaboration with seven Domestic Agencies, the Procurement Arrangements for designing, manufacturing, testing, and delivering various components and systems to the ITER site in France, and developed and organized the assembly, installation, testing, and commissioning plan to meet technical, quality, and safety requirements to achieve the ITER scientific and technical mission.
Also, he led and managed the KSTAR National Project for design activities, project management, machine construction, and initial operation to reach the First Plasma of the KSTAR Tokamak, succeeded in developing a new generation of the Advanced Steady-state Superconducting Tokamak, KSTAR.
Plenary Title: Fusion Energy Development in the Era of Climate Crisis and Strategic Competition
For more than thirty years of rapid economic growth and sustained peace on a global scale, many of us assumed that the interlinked value and supply chains driven by globalization would bring further prosperity and stability continuing through the twenty-first century. However, the looming climate crisis with COVID-19 pandemic and strategic competition with renewed “cold war” rhetoric in recent years questioned world on ‘how the future path of civilization would evolve toward the year 2050’? In Korea, we also inquire ourselves how we can sustain an expanding economy and cultural strength in these challenges and uncertainties surrounding us, in addition to the dooming low birth rate that accelerates a record-breaking pace.
In the era with two pillars of challenges, namely climate crisis and strategic competition, there is surfacing consensus that prosperity and sustainability of nation are now strongly dependent on the strategic choice and development of emerging and critical technologies ever, for example, semiconductor chips and rechargeable batteries for Korea in this decade. It is also believed to be crucial how to achieve “Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2030” and “Carbon-neutrality in 2050” without strongly impacting economic growth in the different environment of the world of trades where we are in, now.
From this perspective, we would like to present worldwide fusion technology development effort for a practical energy source complementing renewables, and examine scientific, economic and social implication of fusion to aim for a better understanding of the feasibility and maturity of technology and industrialization. In this paper, we will utilize the recent progress of the ITER Project as “the way” to fusion burning and international collaboration among seven Members namely European Union, United States, Russian Federation, China, India, Japan and Korea that should answer some aspects of two pillars together.