NEWS: Plasma heating & current drive

Evan Leppink, MIT

Evan Leppink: Choosing sides

Graduate student Evan Leppink will explore a new way to drive current in a tokamak plasma using radiofrequency (RF) waves during his residency at DIII-D in San Diego, CA.

PSFC News

Image of Aaron Rosenthal with diagnostic

Candid-camera capture

MIT graduate student Aaron Rosenthal and colleagues from PPPL use a pinhole camera technique to answer questions about what is happening in the edge of hot plasmas confined in tokamaks.

PSFC News

Photo of Wukitch and Wright

Summarizing a new approach for fusion heating

Principal research scientists at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Dr. John Wright and Dr. Stephen Wukitch, have collaborated with international partners on a review paper summarizing research on a three-ion approach to plasma heating for magnetic fusion devices, a scenario for which they shared the American Physical Society (APS) Landau-Spitzer Award in 2018.

PSFC News

David Fischer, MIT

Pushing the envelope with fusion magnets

Postdoctoral associate David Fischer's research focuses on observing ways irradiation damages the thin high-temperature superconductor tapes in the design of ARC, a fusion pilot plant concept.

PSFC

MIT fusion collaboration receives renewed funding

As part of an initiative to support the development of nuclear fusion as a future practical energy source, the U. S Department of Energy is renewing 3-year funding for two PSFC projects on the Wendelstein7-X (W7-X) stellarator at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany.

PSFC

Pushing the limit

Researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) have now demonstrated how microwaves can be used to overcome the barriers to steady state tokamak operation. In experiments performed on MIT’s Alcator C-Mod tokamak, research scientist Seung Gyou Baek and his colleagues have studied a method of driving current to heat the plasma called Lower Hybrid Current Drive.

PSFC

Wright, Wukitch win Landau-Spitzer Award

The American Physical Society (APS) has recognized MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) principal research scientists John Wright and Stephen Wukitch for their collaboration with Yevgen Kazikov and Jef Ongena of the Laboratory for Plasma Physics, Brussels, Belgium, with the Landau-Spitzer Award.

PSFC