Superconductors: Is Japan Ahead?

According to the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), Japan may pull ahead of the U.S. in the race to bring new, high-temperature superconductors to the marketplace. If the U.S. hopes to compete with Japan, American industry must intensify basic research and work on applications and potential manufacturing processes. In a study, done at the request of several House and Senate committees, the OTA determined that the country lacks a cohesive, focused strategy for developing superconductors and applying them to commercial products. The U.S. may lead on the science front, but this advantage will soon disappear if American companies are not positioned to transform research findings into viable products.
The report is not directly critical of Reagan Administration efforts to promote the field, but indicates that steps taken to date are not adequate. For example, research and development spending on superconductors in Japan in 1988 is virtually equal to the $97 million that U.S. companies will spend, and Japan has 900 people engaged in superconductor research compared with 625 in the U.S.
The OTA suggests that the U.S. drive to understand superconductors and make useful materials is partly flawed because there is no assurance of a long-term commitment by government or industry to fund this research. The OTA report examines three possible strategies that policy-makers may face in trying to shape a sustained and coordinated superconductivity research and development program.
The first is a business-as-usual approach where the Department of Defense pursues processing methods for super conductors to support specialized defense needs. Concurrently, Department of Energy research would be carried out through its ten national laboratories and with industry and the university sector. A second and more aggressive course would increase support for National Science Foundation-funded research and establish a working group on commercialization of high-temperature superconductor research. Industry, the university sector, and various government agencies would be represented on this working group. Finally, the government could establish a federal technology agency or a cabinet-level department of science, which might centralize many fragmented federal science and technology development efforts.
Beyond the federal research sector, there is a need to get industry to conduct more long-term research. Government assistance will be required, according to OTA, but should be less than 50% of any given undertaking. Perhaps most importantly, OTA says that industry must be stimulated to use research results in a timely fashion. Too many firms are taking a wait-and-see approach and could find themselves ill-equipped to compete.