After decades of decline, the US national fusion lab seeks a rebirth
Fusion will be the ultimate clean fuel. It is only a matter of time.
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Yet things may be looking up for the lab. After years of DOE reviews, PPPL researchers expect to start to rebuild NSTX in April. And a year ago, a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) urged the United States not only to stick with ITER—which is hugely overbudget and behind schedule—but also to prepare to build the machine after it. This would be a prototype power plant, smaller and cheaper than ITER, and PPPL would likely play a leading role in building it.
Perhaps most important, in 2018 Princeton University, which runs the lab for DOE, hired a new lab director. Steven Cowley, a strapping 60-year-old Englishman with a shock of silver hair and a knighthood, makes no bones about his role as an agent of change. “My job as a director is not to be an administrator,” he says in his velvety baritone. “It’s about scientific vision. What should we be doing? What are the interesting questions? How do we get to fusion?” He already has a plan to diversify the lab’s work, grow its staff, and start to build things again.
Physicists are watching PPPL as a bellwether for the fortunes of the U.S. fusion program, whose share of the world’s public fusion research has slipped to just one-sixth. And some observers who have been critical of the lab’s previous leadership and culture think PPPL is finally on the right track. “Steve is the best person on the planet for the job,” says William Madia, former director of two other DOE national labs, who urged Princeton to hire Cowley. “I’m optimistic.” Yet the lab still faces obstacles on the path to redemption.
NSTX RESEMBLES an extraterrestrial spaceship.