Officials Pull Plug on Key Fusion Reactor

Princeton University’s Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, the world’s most powerful tool in the effort to harness the form of energy that powers the sun, shut down Friday because of federal budget cuts.

Even in its final hour, the 15-year-old reactor was doing cutting-edge experiments.

“We’ve done some truly historic accomplishments,” said Rich Hawryluk, the reactor’s project director for six years.

Fission, the process that powers nuclear reactors, involves splitting atoms. Fusion, the process that powers stars, creates energy by combining, or fusing, atoms--usually hydrogen--under extreme temperature and pressure.

Scientists hope to develop a fusion reactor that can produce more energy than it needs to operate, thereby harnessing a cheap and inexhaustible source of energy.

But after nearly half a century and $8.2 billion worth of U.S. research, scientists are thought to be decades away from that goal.

The Princeton lab’s funding has been cut from $111 million in 1992 to a proposed $52 million for the next fiscal year, even though some scientists argue that America is falling behind foreigners in fusion technology. The Energy Department ordered that the device be shut down this week.

In 1994, the mammoth reactor set the world record for fusion power by generating 10.7 million watts for about one second--about enough to power 10,000 homes.

The lab’s limited funding will leave only enough money to continue theoretical research, construction of a smaller reactor, analysis of data collected during experiments over the last 3 1/2 years and collaboration with scientists at other institutions.