Labs fuse efforts with federal grant

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), in collaboration with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, was recently awarded a grant of $10 million from the federal government to be given over a five-year period.

The grant is part of the Department of Energy's Simulation of Wave Interactions with Magnetohydrodynamics (SWIM) project, which aims to create computer simulations that can correctly model the movements of plasma and subsequently facilitate the development of fusion energy.

"The goal of the [simulations] is to understand how radio waves affect plasma motion and how that motion affects the radio waves, so that we can use the process most effectively for driving current while keeping plasma in [a] magnetic field," said astrophysics professor Robert Goldston, director of the PPPL.

The effect of radio waves and the motion of the plasma, which were previously studied independently, are brought together by the collaboration of the University and ORNL.

"If you fire radio waves into fusion fuel, you can heat and control [the fuel] in various ways," Goldston explained. "ORNL is arguably the world leader in the calculation of how radio waves shine into fusion fuels. We are arguably the world leaders on calculations of how plasmas move around."

The goal, he said, is to take the most advanced codes that calculate two different aspects of what goes on in fusion plasmas and determine how the two interact.

Ideas ignited

The idea for the SWIM project stemmed from a lobbying effort that called for the government to devote resources to computer simulation of advanced fusion technology.

Astrophysics professor Steve Jardin, the principal research physicist at the PPPL, was part of a subcommittee put together by a high-level advisory committee of the fusion energy division of the Department of Energy. The group met a few years ago to come up with recommendations of how to increase the use of computer simulation in fusion.

"The Department of Energy wanted to launch a large-scale fusion simulation project at $20 million a year to put together all of the isolated computer models of different aspects of a fusion plasma and produce a totally integrated model," Jardin said.

He compared the idea to the aircraft industry where, in the past, wind tunnels were used to test small plane models. Careful measurements of drag and lift could be taken to help the engineers make the necessary modifications.

"Now we don't have to do that because computer programs are so good that we have numerical wind tunnels where you can input the exact shape of an airplane and the computer program can very accurately model lift and drag," Jardin said. "A fusion plasma is something like the air, just a lot more complicated because of a strong magnetic field and all of the plasma effects. We've developed through the years a lot of computer programs that are very similar in spirit to wind tunnels that use a lot more computational physics."

Based on the recommendations of the subcommittee, the Department of Energy put together a competition to award the SWIM grant. The joint PPPL and ORNL proposal, one of four applications, was ultimately successful.

Cost of research

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Jardin said he believes the PPPL and ORNL won the grant because the members of the proposal were the most qualified, some of them being the actual authors of the major component codes they are now going to couple together.

"For one thing, we are very enthusiastic about it, and I think that big labs like Princeton and Oak Ridge have the resources to make this thing a success," he added.

Money from the grant will add to PPPL's $70 million research endowment. Though $2 million per year is a significant sum, the PPPL was hoping for closer to $5 million per year, Jardin said.

"It's really because of budgets," Jardin said. "The government's fusion program budget is way down from what it used to be and probably what it should be. Our friends in the Department of Energy are trying hard to make ends meet."

Fusion, one of the focuses of the PPPL, has many advantages as an energy source.

It produces no carbon dioxide, a plus for those worried about the effects of global warming, and generates less radiation than current fission power plants do.

"In a fission plant, when you operate for 30 years, the core will be radioactive afterwards for 10,000 years. Now they're planning on burying the used core at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is angering the residents. Fusion doesn't have anything like that," Jardin said.

Fusion also has no potential weapons fallout, since there is no possible way to make an atomic bomb out of a fusion plant.

Goldston said the PPPL grant will have a significant effect, both on ongoing experiments at a smaller scale and on the massive International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project that is to be built in France.

PPPL and ORNL are heading the project office for the United States, which has already contributed 10 percent of the $1 billion estimated cost of the ITER project.

The ITER project spawned from a deal made 20 years ago between former President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev with the ultimate goal of making a prototype fusion reactor that will generate 500 million watts of fusion power.

"The five years they've laid out is a reasonable time period for us to get to that point," Goldston said. "This being science, you never really finish anything. Newton thought he figured out gravity, then Einstein came. At the end we will have a computational tool that will allow us to do things we couldn't before, like finishing ITER. But we'll keep going afterwards. It's not just building for five years and using it on ITER. We'll keep identifying new scientific issues and going back to modify."