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Spring 2013
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory: Community Connections

A message from PPPL Director Stewart Prager

Welcome to the spring edition of PPPL E-News. Our theme this month is community connections - a theme near and dear to our hearts. At a local level, we enjoy good ties with neighboring towns and we would like our neighbors to get to know us better through events like our upcoming Open House on June 1. At a worldwide level, we have strong ties with the international fusion community both through our research in the Laboratory and our key contributions to ITER, the landmark international fusion experiment under construction in Cadarache, France. We hope you will enjoy learning about all of our connections in this second edition of our e-newsletter. – Stewart C. Prager 

Our Team

PPPL News is published quarterly  by the PPPL Office of Communications.

Questions or comments? Contact Jeanne Jackson DeVoe, Editor, jjackson@pppl.gov

http://www.pppl.gov

In this issue
June 1 Open House is a PPPL party for the whole family

PPPL is throwing open its doors and inviting everyone to come enjoy enjoy a free festival of science for the whole family on Saturday, June 1 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The theme of the Open House is “hot plasmas, cool science,” and there will be something for everyone – from hands-on plasma activities for kids to NASA moon rocks. Best of all, visitors will get a rare opportunity to see the Laboratory’s NSTX-U fusion machine and other experiments.

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Deputy Director is PPPL's Mr. Fixit

PPPL’s Deputy Director for Operations Adam Cohen is a nuclear engineer with several years of experience in the field who has brought a Mr. Fixit attitude to PPPL since he arrived in 2009. He is one of the leaders overseeing the $94 million NSTX upgrade and has focused on increasing collaborations with U.S. and international laboratories and encouraging new research directions such as the use of plasma in producing nanomaterials.

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A unique solution to verifying nuclear weapons

It has always been extremely difficult to verify whether nuclear weapons slated to be removed from deployment are actually armed with nuclear materials because doing so could potentially leak classified information from other countries. Now scientists at PPPL and Princeton University are researching a possible solution to that problem that doesn’t rely on secret information. 

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Young women scientists enjoy a day of inspiration

PPPL’s Young Women’s Conference is one way of battling a disturbing trend: Men still greatly outnumber women in the science and technology fields. The conference aims to spark excitement about the STEM fields in hundreds of seventh through tenth grade girls with exhibits on everything from plasmas to forensics, activities and laboratory tours. And who could resist a pep talk by the female NASA engineer who designs astronauts’ spacesuits?

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PPPL is key contributor to international fusion experiment

The construction of the 10-story international ITER fusion experiment in Cadarache, France, is a huge undertaking and PPPL is an essential part of that effort with dozens of its engineers and physicists contributing leading-edge research and design ideas to the project, which is  focused on  demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion power in fewer than 20 years. 

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Award recognizes PPPL’s sustainability commitment

PPPL has long had a strong commitment to sustainability through its green buying program, composting and recycling programs. So when Laboratory workers removed three mammoth sets of motor generators and one smaller set  in 2011, it made sense to recycle more than 2,000 tons of metal by selling all the metal components. The Laboratory’s success at reducing its carbon footprint was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise Program, which recently awarded PPPL the 2012 Federal Partner of the Year award. 

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PPPL celebrates milestone in NSTX upgrade

The National Spherical Torus Experiment is at the heart of PPPL’s research and the center stack is at the heart of the machine - the core at the center of the apple-shaped tokamak. The Laboratory recently marked a major milestone with the completion of one portion of the center stack as it moves forward with a $94 million upgrade that will make the machine many times more powerful than the previous version. 

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PPPL'ers greet neighbors & friends at Communiversity

Fifteen volunteers met hundreds of neighbors and friends at PPPL’s Communiversity booth this year. Children watched their hair stand on end with the Van de Graaff generator or checked out the plasma balls and spectrometers, while passersby chatted with some of PPPL’s top physicists and engineers about the Laboratory's cutting-edge research projects. 

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