This led to a series of machines in the 1950s and 60s.
This is some distance from the main Princeton campus, but the lab has a Princeton address. ==History== ===Formation=== In 1950, John Wheeler was setting up a secret H-bomb research lab at Princeton University.
The focus of this program changed from H-bombs to fusion power in 1951, when Lyman Spitzer developed the stellarator concept and was granted funding from the Atomic Energy Commission to study the concept.
While leaving for a ski trip to Aspen in February 1951, his father called and told him to read the front page of the New York Times.
As a result of this meeting and a review of the invention by scientists throughout the nation, the stellarator proposal was funded in 1951.
Matterhorn ultimately ended its involvement in the bomb field in 1954, becoming entirely devoted to the fusion power field. In 1958, this magnetic fusion research was declassified following the United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.
Matterhorn ultimately ended its involvement in the bomb field in 1954, becoming entirely devoted to the fusion power field. In 1958, this magnetic fusion research was declassified following the United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.
In 1961, after declassification, Project Matterhorn was renamed the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. PPPL's stellarators proved unable to meet their performance goals.
The last and most powerful stellarator at this time was the 'racetrack' Model C (operating from 1961 to 1969). ===Tokamak=== By the mid-1960s it was clear something was fundamentally wrong with the stellarators; they leaked fuel at rates far beyond what theory predicted, rates that carried away energy from the plasma that was far beyond what the fusion reactions could ever produce.
Spitzer became extremely skeptical that fusion energy was possible and expressed this opinion in very public fashion in 1965 at an international meeting in the UK.
In 1968, Soviet's claims of excellent performance on their tokamaks generated intense scepticism, and to test it, PPPL's Model C stellarator was converted to a tokamak.
At the same meeting, the Soviet delegation announced results about 10 times better than any previous device, which Spitzer dismissed as a measurement error. At the next meeting in 1968, the Soviets presented considerable data from their devices that showed even greater performance, about 100 times the Bohm diffusion limit.
The last and most powerful stellarator at this time was the 'racetrack' Model C (operating from 1961 to 1969). ===Tokamak=== By the mid-1960s it was clear something was fundamentally wrong with the stellarators; they leaked fuel at rates far beyond what theory predicted, rates that carried away energy from the plasma that was far beyond what the fusion reactions could ever produce.
When a UK team verified the results in 1969, the AEC suggested PPPL convert their Model C to a tokamak to test it, as the only lab willing to build one from scratch, Oak Ridge, would need some time to build theirs.
Starting in 1975, PLT verified these "scaling laws" and then went on to add neutral beam injection from Oak Ridge that resulted in a series of record-setting plasma temperatures, eventually topping out at 78 million Kelvin, well beyond what was needed for a practical fusion power system.
This produced the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, or TFTR, which was completed in 1982.
In April 1986, it demonstrated a combination of density and confinement, the so-called fusion triple product, well beyond what was needed for a practical reactor.
Beginning in 1993, TFTR was the first in the world to use 50/50 mixtures of deuterium-tritium.
In 1994 it yielded an unprecedented 10.7 megawatts of fusion power. ===Later designs=== In 1999, the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), based on the spherical tokamak concept, came online at the PPPL.
The system continued performing basic studies on these problems until being shut down in 1997.
In 1994 it yielded an unprecedented 10.7 megawatts of fusion power. ===Later designs=== In 1999, the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), based on the spherical tokamak concept, came online at the PPPL.
Staff are applying knowledge gained in fusion research to a number of theoretical and experimental areas including materials science, solar physics, chemistry, and manufacturing. Odd-parity heating was demonstrated in the 4 cm radius PFRC-1 experiment in 2006.
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