Feature Channels: Fusion

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at PPPL have gained a better understanding of a promising method for improving the confinement of superhot fusion plasma using magnetic fields.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility are preparing to support their colleagues at the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in a quest to develop sustained fusion energy. Under recently announced DOE funding programs, two teams at DIII-D will perform research on physics and instrumentation for NSTX-U as the facility’s staff work to restart operations late next year.

• share
• favorite_border

PPPL physicist Sam Cohen will receive an Edison Award for his invention with collaborators of a compact rocket engine thruster propelled by a small fusion reactor.

• share
• favorite_border

Profile of PPPL physicist Elena Belova, a pioneer in developing hybrid simulation codes in fusion and space plasmas, who has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

• share
• favorite_border

Students attending the third annual graduate summer school at PPPL gathered virtually, due to travel restrictions, to get a broad overview of the field of plasma physics.

• share
• favorite_border

Hyeon Park honored with 2020 Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Prize for Plasma Physics from the Division of Plasma Physics of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Societies. The prize recognizes Park for his work developing an essential diagnostic tool for tokamak fusion facilities throughout the world.

• share
• favorite_border

Argonne scientists were part of a team that constructed a nuclear physics model capturing the interactions between neutrinos and atomic nuclei. This model building is part of a larger project to understand the role of neutrinos in the early universe.

• share
• favorite_border

The record-setting PPPL tokamak that laid the foundation for future fusion power plants receives the distinguished landmark designation from the the American Nuclear Society.

• share
• favorite_border

An international group of researchers has developed a technique that forecasts how tokamaks might respond to unwanted magnetic errors. These forecasts could help engineers design fusion facilities that create a virtually inexhaustible supply of safe and clean fusion energy to generate electricity.

• share
• favorite_border

Hutch Neilson, a physicist at PPPL who is head of ITER Projects, has received the 2020 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Merit Award for decades of achievements, including collaborations with fusion experiments around the world from the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator in Germany to the international ITER experiment in the south of France.

• share
• favorite_border

New funding will upgrade key diagnostics on the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment-Upgrade, the flagship facility at PPPL.

• share
• favorite_border

Instabilities in tokamak confinement fields can damage reactor walls by exposing them to plasma. Resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) suppresses instabilities, but it was thought to impair confinement. New research shows that RMP has no effect on confinement and actually improves tokamak operation.

• share
• favorite_border

PPPL scientists have found that electrical currents can form in ways not known before. The novel findings could give researchers greater ability to bring the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars to Earth.

• share
• favorite_border

Two new fusion companies will work with PPPL to model their development concepts under the INFUSE program.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of ORNL researchers working with tungsten to armor the inside of future fusion reactors had some surprising results when looking at the probability of contamination.

• share
• favorite_border

UC San Diego researchers published a study that used the 'Comet' supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on campus showing how machine learning produced a model for plasma turbulence.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers led by PPPL have upgraded a key computer code for calculating forces acting on magnetically confined plasma in fusion energy experiments. The upgrade will help scientists further improve the design of breakfast-cruller-shaped facilities known as stellarators.

• share
• favorite_border

A professor at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has been awarded a one-year, $98,930 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for plasma research that could advance pulsed fusion propulsion for spacecraft.

• share
• favorite_border

Egemen Kolemen, Princeton University assistant professor and PPPL physicist, wins prestigious Fusion Power Associates award.

• share
• favorite_border

Physicists at PPPL discover a new trigger for edge localized modes (ELMs) — instabilities that can halt fusion reactions and damage the tokamaks that house such reactions.