The energy released when two atomic nuclei fuse together. This process powers the sun and stars. Read more
Stewart Prager was the sixth director of PPPL. He joined the Laboratory in 2009 after a long career at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Wisconsin, he led research on the “Madison Symmetric Torus” (MST) experiment and headed a center that studied plasmas in both the laboratory and the cosmos. He also co-discovered the “bootstrap current” there—a key finding that has influenced the design of today’s tokamaks. He earned his PhD in plasma physics from Columbia University.
The swirls created by milk poured into coffee or the shudders that can jolt airplanes in flight are examples of turbulence, the chaotic movement of matter found throughout nature. Turbulence also occurs within tokamaks, doughnut-shaped facilities that house the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have discovered that turbulence may play an increased role in affecting the self-driven, or bootstrap, current in plasma that is necessary for tokamak fusion reactions.
The swirls created by milk poured into coffee or the shudders that can jolt airplanes in flight are examples of turbulence, the chaotic movement of matter found throughout nature. Turbulence also occurs within tokamaks, doughnut-shaped facilities that house the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have discovered that turbulence may play an increased role in affecting the self-driven, or bootstrap, current in plasma that is necessary for tokamak fusion reactions.
Turbulence, the swirling eddies and currents that jostle fluids and air, is traditionally seen as disruptive of efforts to capture and control on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars. Now a discovery by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and General Atomics has found that enhanced turbulence in the edge of the plasma may actually improve the thermal insulation required to achieve fusion energy.
Surprise finding
Surprise finding challenges scientific assumptions.
State-of-the-art computer codes and world-class expertise at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will provide four of the first 12 collaborations under the newly created Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. The public-private partnerships, funded by the DOE Office of Science, are intended to speed the development on Earth of the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.
State-of-the-art computer codes and world-class expertise at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will provide four of the first 12 collaborations under the newly created Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. The public-private partnerships, funded by the DOE Office of Science, are intended to speed the development on Earth of the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.
The new Princeton University supercomputer, Traverse, enhances research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics (PPPL) to develop the science to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth. Princeton officially launched the supercomputer Sept. 30 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the High-Performance Computing Research Center on the Forrestal campus.
The new Princeton University supercomputer, Traverse, enhances research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics (PPPL) to develop the science to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth. Princeton officially launched the supercomputer Sept. 30 in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the High-Performance Computing Research Center on the Forrestal campus.
How do you start a fusion reaction, the process that lights the sun and stars, on Earth? Like lighting a match to start a fire, you first produce plasma, the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion reactions, and raise it to temperatures rivaling the sun in hundreds of milliseconds.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University.
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