** Building construction for the immense 192-beam 500-terawatt NIF project is completed and construction of laser beam-lines and target bay diagnostics commences, expecting to take its first full system shot in 2010.
** Negotiations on the Joint Implementation of ITER begin between Canada, countries represented by the European Union, Japan and Russia.
** Claims and counter-claims are published regarding bubble fusion, in which a table-top apparatus was reported as producing small-scale fusion in a liquid undergoing acoustic cavitation. Like cold fusion (see 1989), it is later dismissed.
** European Union proposes Cadarache in France and Vandellos in Spain as candidate sites for ITER while Japan proposes Rokkasho.
** The United States rejoins the ITER project with China and Republic of Korea also joining. Canada withdraws.
** Cadarache in France is selected as the European Candidate Site for ITER.
** Sandia National Laboratories begins fusion experiments in the Z machine.
** The United States drops its own ITER-scale tokamak project, FIRE, recognising an inability to match EU progress.
** Following final negotiations between the EU and Japan, ITER chooses Cadarache over Rokkasho for the site of the reactor. In concession, Japan is able to host the related materials research facility and granted rights to fill 20% of the project's research posts while providing 10% of the funding.
** The NIF fires its first bundle of eight beams achieving the highest ever energy laser pulse of 152.8 kJ (infrared).
** China's EAST test reactor is completed, the first tokamak experiment to use superconducting magnets to generate both the toroidal and poloidal fields.
** Construction of the NIF reported as complete.
** Ricardo Betti, the third Under Secretary, responsible for Nuclear Energy, testifies before Congress: "IFE [ICF for energy production] has no home".