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1981
Harold P. Furth succeeds Melvin Gottlieb as director of PPPL.
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PLT produces the first tokamak discharge in which the plasma current is driven
entirely by lower-hybrid radio-frequency waves.
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1982
The Advanced Concepts Torus-1 (ACT-1) demonstrates ion-Bernstein wave
heating of a tokamak plasma for the first time. Smaller research devices like ACT-1
are used to investigate new concepts, perform basic plasma physics experiments,
and are especially well suited for research projects by doctoral candidates.
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TFTR produces first plasma on December 24. Nearly nine years have elapsed
since conceptual design study in 1974 to first plasma discharge.
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1984
PLT uses ion-cyclotron radio-frequency heating to produce ion temperatures of 60
million degrees C, a record for this technique.
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PPPL's Soft X-ray Laser demonstrates X-ray lasing at 18.2 nm in a magnetically
confined laser-produced plasma. Applications for the Soft X-ray Laser include the
study of live biological specimens and micro-lithography. Several other near-term
practical uses of plasma science and technology are studied at PPPL during the
1980s and 1990s.
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1986
Neutral-beam heating experiments on TFTR produce world record ion
temperatures of approximately 200 million degrees C-- more than ten times the
temperature at the center of the sun. Levels of plasma temperature and heat
confinement exceed the basic objectives specified for TFTR.
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TFTR produces the first demonstration of tokamak bootstrap current driven by
pressure gradients within the plasma itself, rather than by external means.
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A new enhanced-confinement plasma regime, called "supershots," is discovered
in TFTR where peaked density profiles obtained with neutral-beam heating lead
to a reduction in energy leakage by a factor of 2 to 3.
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1988
The magnetohydrodynamic model is extended to include kinetic effects, which
are essential for the stability of high-temperature tokamak plasmas.
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1989
The Princeton Beta Experiment-Modification (PBX-M), successor to the PDX,
achieves a PPPL record beta of 6.8%. Beta is a measure of the effectiveness of the
magnetic field in containing a high-pressure plasma. Values achieved are in the
range of those anticipated in a commercial fusion reactor.
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