PPPL presented its plans to an independent panel of reviewers from the Department of Energy for the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center (PPIC), a new building that will revamp the PPPL campus and provide a cutting-edge, modern laboratory, collaboration and office space. 

The building will herald a new era at PPPL as it will be the first new building on the campus in several decades. It will support PPPL’s central mission of developing fusion as a future energy source as well as its expanded research focus in microelectronics, quantum materials and devices and sustainable technologies. 

The review took place after PPPL completed 30% of the building design. The goal of the two-day meeting was to communicate the design plans, cost and schedule for the project and conduct an independent review of the project status.

“I want to thank our team for their hard work in coming up with a design for PPIC,” said Steve Cowley, Laboratory director. “PPIC will be transformational for our national Laboratory. The building will showcase our core capabilities in plasma physics, computation and precision engineering to help move these national priorities forward.” 

“It’s the most important research infrastructure project we’ve had in decades,” added Jon Menard, deputy director for research. “It will serve as an international hub for fusion energy and will help us continue to attract the top minds in physics and engineering. This building will not only serve our scientists and PPPL but also the whole country.”

Tim Meyer, deputy director for operations, said PPIC has been a collaborative project from the beginning, noting how the Lab has worked closely with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Site Office and Princeton University. “We are especially grateful to Princeton for its contribution of $10 million, which is helping us to get off to a good start on the project,” he said.

An international hub for fusion energy 

PPIC will provide space for both PPPL researchers and international collaborators, positioning it as an international hub for fusion energy and a “town center” for PPPL. PPIC is envisioned as an “an iconic building that establishes a new front door to the campus,” according to Kenyon Petura, the project manager. The new building will replace the historic Theory Building and the Administration Wing, both of which will be demolished prior to construction beginning.

The team is being led by experienced project managers including Steve Langish, the project director, a 30-year veteran at PPPL who led the Tritium Systems Demolition and Disposal project team. The team won the Secretary of Energy Award in 2022.

The PPIC team also includes Venkat Bommisetty, the science integration and operations coordinator, who has a doctoral degree in materials science and experience in research center formation and management. Petura has more than 25 years of experience planning, designing and constructing laboratory facilities. Dennis Pasternak, the deputy manager, also has more than a decade of planning and construction experience. 

A realistic budget early in the project 

Petura said the key to PPPL’s strategy on the PPIC project was coming up with a realistic plan and a budget for the project early. The team accomplished this by taking a measured approach, hiring the SmithGroup as the architect and engineer in June 2022 and then retaining the Philadelphia company INTECH Construction as the construction manager/general contractor and preconstruction firm. INTECH used real cost estimates from Philadelphia-area contractors to determine a realistic cost estimate.

With project delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic and costs increasing due to inflation, the estimated cost of the project is higher than anticipated. Taking into account new models for working at the Lab, the architects proposed innovative solutions to accommodate lab, collaboration, and office spaces while shrinking the building footprint. The design adds slightly more collaboration space, while retaining the medium and small bay laboratories. 

The design reduces the amount of traditional office space and adds more collaborative/hybrid offices. While PPPL’s headcount is growing at a rate of about 45 people per year, not all new hires require separate, private offices because of the Future of Work program, in which about 40% of PPPL staff opted either to work remotely or to work a hybrid schedule and share an office, according to project managers.

Follow the journey of PPIC’s evolution on our timeline.