The design of devices that use powerful magnetic fields to control plasma so fusion can take place. The most widely used magnetic confinement device is the tokamak, followed by the stellarator.
Elizabeth Paul, developer of a groundbreaking method for optimizing magnetic confinement stellarator fusion facilities, has won a Princeton University Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to advance the method at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
Permanent magnets akin to those used on refrigerators could speed the development of fusion energy – the same energy produced by the sun and stars.
In principle, such magnets can greatly simplify the design and production of twisty fusion facilities called stellarators, according to scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. PPPL founder Lyman Spitzer Jr. invented the stellarator in the early 1950s.
Novel idea for simplifying stellarator design.
A key hurdle facing fusion devices called stellarators — twisty facilities that seek to harness on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars — has been their limited ability to maintain the heat and performance of the plasma that fuels those reactions. Now collaborative research by scientists at the U.S.
A key hurdle facing fusion devices called stellarators — twisty facilities that seek to harness on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars — has been their limited ability to maintain the heat and performance of the plasma that fuels those reactions. Now collaborative research by scientists at the U.S.
What does the future hold for the development of fusion energy as a safe, clean and virtually limitless source of power to generate electricity? To find out, the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton University spoke with Steve Cowley, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University professor of astrophysical sciences, and Egemen Kolemen, a PPPL physicist and assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center.
Arms control robots, a new national facility, and accelerating the drive to bring the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars to Earth. These far-reaching achievements at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) made 2019 another remarkable year. Research at the only national laboratory devoted to fusion and plasma physics — the state of matter that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe — broke new ground in varied fields as vast as astrophysics and as tiny as nanotechnology.
Arms control robots and accelerating the drive to bring fusion energy to Earth are among achievements that made 2019 another remarkable PPPL year.
A major issue with operating ring-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks is keeping the plasma that fuels fusion reactions free of impurities that could reduce the efficiency of the reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that sprinkling a type of powder into the plasma could aid in harnessing the ultra-hot gas within a tokamak facility to produce heat to create electricity without producing greenhouse gases or long-term radioactive waste.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University.
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