The international group of scientists spearheading the ILC will be having a meeting on March 7th, and have set that as the deadline for the Japanese government to make an Expression of Intent (EOI) for the ILC. On February 21st, the Federation of Diet Members for the ILC (130 members, chair: Hon. Takeo Kawamura) held a general meeting. There, Keisuke Isogai, the head of the Research Promotion Bureau at the Ministry of Science (MEXT), stated that he would attend the March 7th meeting to announce the national government’s position on the ILC.
Mr. Isogai said, “We have pushed forth our deliberations along with related ministries and organizations, taking into account a number of different viewpoints.” He also said that they were very aware that planning for the next European strategy for particle physics (for 2020-2024) would begin in earnest soon.
The FDMILC general meeting took place along with a meeting of the ILC Liaison Council of the Liberal Democratic Party, and 23 Diet members were in attendance. Kunihisa Yamura (chair of the Iwate ILC Promotion Council) and Atsuto Suzuki (president of Iwate Prefectural University) were there to talk about the candidate site’s initiatives to bring about the project.
The FDMILC then adopted a resolution that would aim to realize the ILC as a national project under the national government and legislature. A student of Tohoku University’s Faculty of Science also submitted to Chair Kawamura an additional 5, 664 signatures calling for the realization of the ILC.
Chair Kawamura said, “Japan must make an expression of intent so that the world can start working in earnest for the ILC. The financial sector (made of economic federations, chambers of commerce, etc) must join us in calling the national government to act, and sending to them resolutions for the ILC as quickly as possible.”
The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), an organization of leaders of the world’s major particle physics labs, will be meeting in Tokyo on March 7th. The directorate of the Linear Collider Collaboration (an organization underneath ICFA working towards the ILC) came to Japan in December 2018 and stated that the March 7th meeting was the deadline for the Japanese government to give an EOI for the ILC.