It’s not all that often that we hear about major breakthroughs in nuclear research, and now, such announcements, at least in the U.S., may become more infrequent still. That’s because our nation’s “flagship experimental fusion reactor” is no longer working, a problem made all the more frustrating by the fact that scientists just completed a four-year, $94 million upgrade on the machine. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey are now trying to determine what exactly was behind the reactor’s failure, which could be a lengthy engagement. The real travesty of the situation is that it means the U.S. has only one major facility in which to conduct nuclear fusion ...
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