The MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center was quite the experience. After getting off the Red Line at Kendall and navigating our way through MIT’s campus we finally arrived. Upon our arrival we attended a PowerPoint discussion about plasma fusion from a 4th year PhD student Geoff. Throughout the whole presentation I found at times the things he was talking about went straight over my head and understood little to what he was saying, however his enthusiasm was a warm welcome to the complicated material he was teaching me. After the lecture we got a tour of the facility by another graduate student, Ian.
The Alcator project has been a work in progress since the 1940’s. The one MIT students are currently working on is the Alcator C-Mod. It operates with extremely strong magnetic fields, and with this approach, it makes it possible to produce very dense and well-compacted plasmas in a compact device. This is all part of research to the ITER project, which is a multi-nation effort to make fusion energy the way of the future by providing clean renewable energy.
