The PPPL has catalyzed its own change and decided to venture beyond fusion
In a small, dark, and unassuming physics lab, silent except for the hum of gadgetry, research physicist Yevgeny Raitses points at a metal box the size of a microwave with tubes snaking in and out of it. Raitses, who works at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), explains what can happen to the methane inside the box. With the help of electrically charged gas called plasma, methane, a more potent climate-warmer than carbon dioxide, transforms into two desirable products — solid carbon and hydrogen gas, he says. This transformation is just one way scientists at PPPL plan to use their crown jewel, expertise in plasma, to combat the warming of the Earth.
One of 17 U. S. Department of Energy national labs, PPPL sits off Route 1 a few miles from Princeton’s main campus, on Stellarator Road — named for a device that uses magnetic fields to hold super hot plasma for fusion experiments. Since the lab’s inception in 1961 — 10 years after fusion research began at the site — it has focused solely on that climate-saving silver bullet: producing energy via fusion, a process with no emissions or major safety concerns.
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