TFTR

TFTR, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor, was a magnetic confinement fusion device at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. It was built to investigate deuterium-tritium plasmas and to test concepts relevant to future fusion power reactors. TFTR was designed to study high-temperature plasma behavior, confinement, and heating methods under conditions approaching those needed for practical fusion energy.

The machine was a large tokamak featuring a toroidal vacuum chamber and heating systems that included ohmic heating, neutral beam injection, and radio-frequency heating. It used deuterium and, later, deuterium-tritium fuel to explore reactor-relevant plasma physics. Over its operational life, TFTR produced plasmas at temperatures and pressures sufficient to study fusion reactions and confinement characteristics, with heating power delivered in the tens of megawatts range.

Operational history and milestones: construction was completed in the late 1970s, with first plasma achieved in 1982. The program continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s, culminating in deuterium-tritium experiments in the mid-1990s to explore D-T fusion physics and alpha-particle heating. TFTR did not achieve net energy gain, but it set records for fusion power production and contributed valuable data on plasma performance, confinement, and tritium handling. The facility was retired in 1997, and decommissioning followed over the subsequent years.

Impact and legacy: TFTR's experiments significantly advanced the understanding of tokamak physics with D-T plasmas and informed the design and physics goals of later devices, including ITER. The program provided a comprehensive data set on high-performance confinement, heating efficiency, and tritium operations that influenced subsequent magnetic confinement fusion research.