THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 16, 1994 TAG: 9409160499
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
It's the thought of capturing a small sun and harnessing its prodigious power that so enthralls them. If these nuclear fusionists succeed, they will make available to a grateful world a nearly boundless source of safe and inexpensive energy.
That's part of the hope behind the establishment of Hampton University's Center for Fusion Research and Training. The United States Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Research has just awarded the university a three-year, $1.6 million grant to fund the facility.
The university says the center will be the only one of its kind in the nation at an historically black college or university.
``It's something we're very proud of,'' said Demetrius D. Venable , Hampton University's executive vice president and provost. ``We can go in and do world-class research. We have around us a body of under-represented minorities (in physics) whom we can attract to this program at an early stage.''
Nationally, there are relatively few African Americans and other minorities who choose to make a career in physics. That Hampton University might be able to redirect that trend was a factor in its grant reception, said Donald Priester, an African-American physicist and a senior program manager in the Department of Energy's fusion research office.
``In Hampton Roads, you have a high concentration of scientists and laboratories such as NASA (Langley Research Center in Hampton) and CEBAF (the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility in Newport News),'' he said. ``One of the problems the nation facesis attracting minority students into science. This is a way of saying, `Hey: We have some interesting research problems.' You need to pique the interest of younger scientists.''
Fusion presents researchers with a daunting challenge: How best to force, or fuse, together atomic nuclei to cause the release of enormous torrents of energy? For the past several decades, physicists and engineers have made steady but slow progress. But they are still years away from creating sustainable and economical fusion reactions.
``Fusion is always 25 years ahead,'' said Alan Wootton , professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin and director of that school's Fusion Research Center. ``There are two reasons: money, and the problems are enormous. It's a hard problem, on the level of getting a man on the moon.''
There is only one working fusion reactor: the sun. The force of solar gravity, coupled to astronomical temperatures in the range of millions of degrees, enables the sun to pour out fusion-produced light and heat.
To ignite fusion on Earth, researchers are using an ionized gas called a plasma. The plasma is confined within a tokamak, a machine shaped like a doughnut. Tokamaks originally were developed by Russian scientists in Moscow in the 1960s, but have since been adopted worldwide.
Much of the research centers on the best ways to manipulate and compress a tokamak-contained fusion plasma within a strong electromagnetic field, so that a fusion reaction can be indefinitely sustained.
Because of the very nature of the fusion process, a Three Mile Island near-meltdown or Chernobyl explosion is impossible. ``If something goes wrong it (a fusion reactor) will cool down and quietly sit there,'' explained Alkesh Punjabi, the director of the new Hampton University fusion center.
Led by Punjabi, Hampton University students will study simulated plasmas in tokamak-like devices to better understand how the plasmas behave and propagate. Physics students will be joined by colleagues in mathematics and computer science.
``I'm excited. I want to do fusion,'' said Michael Watson, a 26-year-old Ph.D. candidate in plasma fusion physics. ``It's sexy. You get a little bit of everything in fusion.''
Although the university will be purchasing some equipment with the energy department grant money, Hampton won't be shelling out the several hundred thousand necessary to purchase even a small table-top tokamak. No matter, Punjabi asserts; he expects the center to make a significant contribution to international fusion physics.
``The promise of fusion is cheap and clean power forever,'' he said. ``Fusion is the key energy technology of the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: FUTURE POWER
KRTN
Graphic
SOURCES: Science Explained, The World of Science, Grollier's
Academic American Encyclopedia.
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
Alkesh Punjabi, seated, is the director of the Hampton University
fusion center. Shown with Punjabi, from left, are students Willima
Kengeffy, Terry G. Smith, Alicia R. Ward and Michael Watson.
by CNB