Jeanne Jackson DeVoe

October 23, 2024

Title & Department: Senior Project Manager and Project Director, Princeton Plasma Innovation Center

Year started at PPPL: 1992

Steve Langish’s career recently came full circle when he and his team completed a project to safely remove and dispose of the legacy tritium system for the groundbreaking Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) that he first worked on when he arrived at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in 1992. 

Langish’s career also included serving as chief operating officer on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), an earlier incarnation of PPPL’s main fusion energy experiment. Now, he is heading a project that ushers in a new era for the Laboratory as PPPL prepares to begin construction on the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center, a sustainable building that will provide ultramodern laboratory and office spaces in the first new building at PPPL in nearly five decades. He has also served as the acting head of health physics since 2023. 

Langish grew up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and he spent 13 years in the U.S. Navy from 1979 to 1992, serving on the nuclear submarine USS Stonewall Jackson and the USS Sam Rayburn in South Carolina. Langish was a chief machinist’s mate working on the reactor systems for the submarines. Toward the end of his naval career, he worked as an instructor.
 

Career began on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor 

After leaving the Navy, Langish took a job at PPPL through a consulting group. He worked on the nuclear systems on TFTR and became an employee five years later. The system injected a tritium and deuterium mixture into the experiment to create record-breaking fusion power. In the final years of TFTR operations, the system recycled the tritium, processing the used tritium to be reused in the experiment. 

Those systems were in the basement of the massive TFTR test cell, so Langish and his crew were part of but didn’t witness firsthand when the TFTR made global headlines by achieving 10.7 million watts of fusion power on Nov. 2, 1994, a world record. “It was exciting,” Langish said. “It was a big deal for the Laboratory.” 

When PPPL began an effort to dispose of those same systems to repurpose the massive TFTR test cell as collaborative laboratory space, Langish was the project manager and later became the head of the project. He and Andy Carpe, then an engineering associate, were the only TFTR Tritium Systems team members still at the Laboratory. 

The project to remove the legacy tritium systems began in 2020 and concluded in 2024. The Tritium Systems Demolition and Disposal (TSDD) team won a U.S. Secretary of Energy Achievement Award in January 2023. The award is the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) highest employee recognition for groups that accomplished significant achievements on behalf of the Department. The project officially ended in September when the DOE’s Energy System Acquisition Advisory Board recommended closing the project. 

Langish felt a pang when the project was completed. “I actually got emotional about it because it was a full circle moment,” he said. “We had a really good safety record back in the day, so it was important to us for the legacy of the tritium systems to have this project go well.” 

Langish is now using his expertise as part of a committee of the International Atomic Energy Agency that is preparing recommendations on how to decommission fusion energy facilities. 

Langish earned a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering technology, along with a master’s degree in management from Thomas Edison State University. He was a chief operating engineer on the NSTX from 2005 to 2010 and also ran PPPL’s technical shops.
 

A focus on project management

After earning his master’s degree, Langish’s career focused on project management. He became a planning and control officer, heading the finances of the Advanced Projects Department, which handled major experiments such as the National Spherical Torus Experiment-Upgrade. 

Langish was one of several people who contributed to the invention of the Miniature Integrated Nuclear Detection System (MINDS) device, which can scan for specific nuclear signatures associated with nuclear weapons. The device was patented in 2010 and won an Edison Patent Award from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey in 2008.

Langish was also the project manager of a PPPL project to design and build a component called the “trim coil” for the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany, which concluded in 2012. 

After completing the TSDD project, Langish became director of PPPL’s Science Laboratory Infrastructure projects, which include PPIC and the $87 million Critical Infrastructure Recovery and Renewal project, which will replace current electrical, heating and air conditioning, communications and chilled water systems.  

Langish and his wife of 44 years, Marsha, a facilities office secretary for the Burlington County Special School District, live in Eastampton, New Jersey. They have two adult children, Christian and Noelle.
 

Three things about yourself: 

1. “I enjoy boating, and I spend my spare time boating up and down the Delaware.”  

2. “I have three Australian shepherds, Bella, Louie, and a recent rescue, Chico.” 

3. “I love all Philadelphia sports teams, especially the Eagles.”
    

What experiment did you enjoy working on the most? 

“I liked working on them all, but my favorite was probably being an operator on NSTX. I learned a lot, and it was definitely fun operating the experiment. We called it ‘driving the bus.’ We would work with a physics operator who would decide what magnets they wanted to have on. We’d get everything configured, make sure they had the right equipment and press the button. It’s fun when you see really good shots go off, and you see the physicists get all excited.”
 

What is inspiring about the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center? 

“This project is very energizing for someone like myself who’s been here 32 years and never saw a new building project. We have a great project team and tremendous support from the Laboratory, Princeton University and the Department of Energy, and we’re getting ready to start construction in a few months.”
 

What does working at PPPL mean to you?

“The mission is really important. Fusion would be an endless supply of energy. It’s important for the world.”