WASHINGTON, April 30 -- The U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory issued the following press release:
Creating heat from fusion reactions requires carefully manipulating the properties of plasma(Link is external), the electrically charged fourth state of matter that makes up 99% of the visible universe. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy(Link is external) (Link opens in new window)'s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have finished building a new plasma measurement instrument, or diagnostic, that could aid the effort to boost the heat of fusion reactions in facilities known as tokamaks and potentially improve the power output of future fusion power plants.
Known as ALPACA, the diagnost...