Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
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Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory for plasma physics and nuclear fusion science. Its primary mission is research into and development of fusion as an energy source. It is known in particular for the development of the stellarator and tokamak designs, along with numerous fundamental advances in plasma physics and the exploration of many other plasma confinement concepts. PPPL grew out of the top-secret Cold War project to control thermonuclear reactions, called Project Matterhorn. 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. This led to a series of machines in the 1950s and 60s. In 1961, after declassification, Project Matterhorn was renamed the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. PPPL's stellarators proved unable to meet their performance goals. In 196 ...
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Plasma Physics
Plasma ()πλάσμα
, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek English Lexicon'', on Perseus
is one of the . It contains a significant portion of charged particles – s and/or s. The presence of these charged particles is what primarily sets plasma apart from the other fundamental states of matter. It is the most abundant form of

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United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb. An increasing number of critics during the 1960s charged that the AEC's regulations were insufficiently rigorous in several important areas, including radiation protection standards, nuclear reactor safety, plant siting, and environmental protection. By 1974, the AEC's regulatory programs had come under such strong attack that the U.S. Congress decided to abolish the AEC. The AEC was abolished by the Ener ...
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Huemul Project
The Huemul Project ( es, Proyecto Huemul) was an early 1950s Argentine effort to develop a fusion power device known as the Thermotron. The concept was invented by Austrian scientist Ronald Richter, who claimed to have a design that would produce effectively unlimited power. Richter was able to pitch the idea to President of Argentina Juan Perón in 1948, and soon received massive funding to build an experimental site on Huemul Island, on a lake just outside the town of San Carlos de Bariloche in Patagonia, near the Andes mountains. Construction began late in 1949, and by 1951 the site was completed and carrying out tests. On 16 February 1951, Richter measured high temperatures that suggested fusion had been achieved. On 24 March, the day before an important international meeting of the leaders of the Americas, Perón publicly announced that Richter had been successful, adding that in the future energy would be sold in packages the size of a milk bottle and perhaps free of charg ...
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Ronald Richter
Ronald Richter (1909–1991) was an Austrian-born German, later Argentine citizen, scientist who became infamous in connection with the Argentine Huemul Project and the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA). The project was intended to generate energy from nuclear fusion in the 1950s, during the presidency of Juan Perón. Richter's project would deliver, according to Perón's 1951 announcements, cheap energy in half-litre and one-litre containers. Nationality Richter was born in Falkenau an der Eger (in Czech ''Falknov nad Ohří'' renamed Sokolov in 1948), Bohemia (now Czech Republic) while it was part of the Austrian empire. Richter was of German origin. He was naturalized as an Argentine citizen in the early 1950s; President of Argentina Juan Perón overrode Argentine law to enable this. Education Richter attended the German University of Prague, graduating in 1935. Sources provide variant narratives about his studies as a doctoral candidate. According to Gambini, Richte ...
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Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. It shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state subdivided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and a part of Antarctica. The earliest recorded human prese ...
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New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital media, digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as ''The Daily (podcast), The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (publisher), George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked List of newspapers by circulation, 18th in the world by circulation and List of newspapers in the United States, 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is Public company, publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 189 ...
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Aspen, Colorado
Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains' Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below above sea level on the Western Slope, west of the Continental Divide. Aspen is now a part of the Glenwood Springs, CO Micropolitan Statistical Area. Founded as a mining camp during the Colorado Silver Boom and later named Aspen for the abundance of aspen trees in the area, the city boomed during the 1880s, its first decade. The boom ended when the Panic of 1893 led to a collapse of the silver market. For the next half-century, known as "the quiet years", the population steadily declined, reaching a nadir of fewer than 1000 by 1930. Aspen's fortunes recovered in the mid-20th century when neighboring Aspen Mountain was developed into a ski ...
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John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in explaining the basic principles behind nuclear fission. Together with Gregory Breit, Wheeler developed the concept of the Breit–Wheeler process. He is best known for popularizing the term "black hole," as to objects with gravitational collapse already predicted during the early 20th century, for inventing the terms "quantum foam", "neutron moderator", "wormhole" and "it from bit", and for hypothesizing the "one-electron universe". Stephen Hawking referred to him as the "hero of the black hole story". Wheeler earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Karl Herzfeld, and studied under Breit and Bohr on a National Research Council fellowship. During 1939 he collaborated with Bohr to write a series of papers ...
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New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware River and Pennsylvania; and on the southwest by Delaware Bay and the state of Delaware. At , New Jersey is the fifth-smallest state in land area; but with close to 9.3 million residents, it ranks 11th in population and first in population density. The state capital is Trenton, and the most populous city is Newark. With the exception of Warren County, all of the state's 21 counties lie within the combined statistical areas of New York City or Philadelphia. New Jersey was first inhabited by Native Americans for at least 2,800 years, with the Lenape being the dominant group when Europeans arrived in the early 17th century. Dutch and Swedish colonists founded the first European settlements in the state. The British later seized control o ...
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Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. It is one of the highest-ranked universities in the world. The institution moved to Newark, New Jersey, Newark in 1747, and then to the current site nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University. It is a member of the Ivy League. The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment, endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate education, undergraduate and graduate education, graduate in ...
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Lithium Tokamak Experiment
The Lithium Tokamak Experiment (LTX), and its predecessor, the Current Drive Experiment-Upgrade (CDX-U), are devices dedicated to the study of liquid lithium as a plasma-facing component (PFC) at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Benefits of lithium as PFC One of the ongoing research issues for commercial fusion power development is the choice of material for the plasma-facing portions of the reactor vessel, also known as the first wall. Most reactors operate at the equivalent of a high vacuum and thus demand high-strength materials to resists the inward pressure of the magnets against the empty interior. Typical materials are those used in other chemical and atomic processes, like various steel alloys. Unfortunately, these same materials have a number of disadvantages when used in fusion reactors. One major problem is that when escaped fusion fuel hits the material it cools, returning to the fuel mass at a lower temperature and cooling the fuel as a whole. This is known as ...
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National Spherical Torus Experiment
The National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) is a magnetic fusion device based on the ''spherical tokamak'' concept. It was constructed by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Columbia University, and the University of Washington at Seattle. It entered service in 1999. In 2012 it was shut down as part of an upgrade program and became NSTX-U, for Upgrade. The spherical tokamak (ST) is an offshoot of the conventional tokamak design. Proponents claim that it has a number of practical advantages over these devices, some of them dramatic. For this reason the ST has seen considerable interest since it was proposed in the late 1980s. However, development remains effectively one generation behind mainline efforts such as JET. Other major experiments in the field include the pioneering START and MAST at Culham in the UK. NSTX studies the physics principles of spherically shaped plasmas—hot ionized gases in which nuc ...
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