text: ** Decision to construct the National Ignition Facility "beamlet" laser at LLNL is made.
  ** The START Tokamak fusion experiment begins in Culham. The experiment would eventually achieve a record beta (plasma pressure compared to magnetic field pressure) of 40% using a neutral beam injector. It was the first design that adapted the conventional toroidal fusion experiments into a tighter spherical design.
  ** The JT-60 tokamak was upgraded to JT-60U in March.
  ** The Engineering Design Activity for the ITER starts with participants EURATOM, Japan, Russia and United States. It ended in 2001.
  ** The United States and the former republics of the Soviet Union cease nuclear weapons testing.
  ** The TFTR tokamak at Princeton (PPPL) experiments with a 50% deuterium, 50% tritium mix, eventually producing as much as 10 megawatts of power from a controlled fusion reaction.
  ** NIF Beamlet laser is completed and begins experiments validating the expected performance of NIF.
  ** The USA declassifies information about indirectly driven (hohlraum) target design.
  ** Comprehensive European-based study of HIF driver begins, centered at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) and involving 14 laboratories, including USA and Russia. The Heavy Ion Driven Inertial Fusion (HIDIF) study will be completed in 1997.
  ** A record is reached at Tore Supra: a plasma duration of two minutes with a current of almost 1 million amperes driven non-inductively by 2.3 MW of lower hybrid frequency waves (i.e. 280 MJ of injected and extracted energy). This result was possible due to the actively cooled plasma-facing components installed in the machine.
  ** The JT-60U tokamak achieves extrapolated breakeven at Q = 1.05.
  ** The JET tokamak in the UK produces 16 MW of fusion power - this remains the world record for fusion power until 2022 when JET sets an even higher record. Four megawatts of alpha particle self-heating was achieved.
  ** LLNL study compared projected costs of power from ICF and other fusion approaches to the projected future costs of existing energy sources.
  ** Groundbreaking ceremony held for the National Ignition Facility (NIF).
  ** The JT-60 tokamak in Japan produced a high performance reversed shear plasma with the equivalent fusion amplification factor  of 1.25 - the current world record of Q, fusion energy gain factor.
  ** Results of European-based study of heavy ion driven fusion power system (HIDIF, GSI-98-06) incorporates telescoping beams of multiple isotopic species. This technique multiplies the 6-D phase space usable for the design of HIF drivers.
  ** The United States withdraws from the ITER project.
  ** The START experiment is succeeded by MAST.