Fact Sheets

The National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) represents a promising and uncompleted pathway to fusion as a safe, clean and virtually limitless source of energy for generating electricity.

Currently, scientists do not understand the required conditions and the accretion, or matter collection process, involved in star and planet formation. But the Magnetorotational Instability (MRI) experiment at PPPL may shed light on this mystery.

Anti-terrorism efforts are getting a boost from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). A team led by PPPL engineer Charles Gentile has developed a Miniature Integrated Nuclear Detection System, called MINDS, which can be used to scan moving vehicles, luggage, cargo vessels, and the like for specific nuclear signatures associated with materials employed in radiological weapons.

An Interview with Stewart Prager, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Harnessing nuclear fusion, the energy that powers the sun and the stars, has been a goal of physicists worldwide since the 1950s. It is essentially inexhaustible and it can be created using hydrogen isotopes — chemical cousins of hydrogen, like deuterium — that can readily be extracted from seawater.

For centuries, the way in which the sun and stars produce their energy remained a mystery to man. During the twentieth century, scientists discovered that they produce their energy through the fusion of light atoms.

E=mc², Albert Einstein's familiar formula, provided the basis for understanding fusion. Einstein's theory that mass can be converted into energy was further explored by other physicists who discovered two practical methods for achieving this conversion.