News By Location

Masaaki Yamada and Hantao Ji, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), recently received the American Physical Society's (APS) 2002 Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. The award recognizes a recent outstanding achievement in plasma physics research. Yamada and Ji, along with former PPPL graduate students Troy Carter and Scott Hsu, were cited "for the experimental investigation of driven magnetic reconnection in a laboratory plasma."

In recognition of their contributions to the successful dismantling of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR), Erik Perry and Ronald Strykowsky, engineers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), have received the Kaul Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research and Technology Development. Perry and Strykowsky were honored during a ceremony and reception at the Laboratory Friday, December 6.

One of the world's largest and most successful experimental fusion machines, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, has been safely disassembled and cleared away on schedule and under budget.

Researchers from three laboratories funded by the U. S. Department of Energy have captured high-resolution images of instabilities that cause heat to leak rapidly from the plasma edge of the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) and the Alcator C-Mod fusion experiments. Advanced imaging cameras were used to freeze plasma action at a rate of up to 1 million frames per second.

Rob Goldston, Director of the DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), is a recipient of the 2002 Laboratory Director of the Year Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC). Goldston was among three recipients honored for their contributions to the overall enhancement of technology transfer and the support of the FLC and its activities.

Anti-terrorism efforts may get a boost from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). A team led by PPPL engineer Charlie Gentile is developing a miniature nuclear detection system to scan objects such as cars, luggage, and vessels for specific nuclear signatures associated with materials employed in nuclear weapons. This system could be installed at tollbooths and airports, as well as in police cruisers to detect unauthorized nuclear materials being transported.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has been awarded funding under the new "Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)" Program. Nationally, 51 projects will receive a total of $57 million this year from the DOE to advance fundamental research in several areas, including climate modeling, fusion energ, chemical sciences, nuclear astrophysics, high-energy physics, and high-performance computing. The projects involve collaborations among 13 DOE laboratories and more than 50 colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, December 14, the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) produced a one million ampere plasma current -- a new world record for a spherical torus device. Producing this plasma current sets the stage for the Laboratory to create and study plasma conditions that are relevant to the production of fusion energy.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) report a major advance in the computer modeling of fusion plasmas in the September 18 edition of Science. The new results were obtained utilizing the Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) capabilities of the DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) will receive $700,000 in fiscal year 1998 under a recently established Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between the Laboratory and the Princeton Textile Research Institute. Under the terms of the CRADA, Laboratory staff will develop state-of-the-art optical techniques for the on-line characterization of synthetic fibers during production.