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Nicholas Krall is an American theoretical plasma physicist. Dr Krall has authored over 160 science publications [1] and has contributed to the fields of electron scattering, plasma stability, high energy nuclear physics and magnetohydrodynamics. He has worked at General Atomics, the University of California, San Diego, the Naval Research Laboratory and University of Maryland. [2]
He received his BS in physics from the University of Notre Dame in 1954 and his PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1959. After graduation, Dr. Krall worked as a staff scientist and a manager at General Atomics in San Diego until 1967. He worked closely with physicist Marshall Rosenbluth. [3] [4] After general atomics he accepted a position as professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1967 and held that position for six years. [5] While at Maryland he was appointed director joint program for plasma physics, at the Naval Research Laboratory. He held that position until 1973. He also co-wrote a textbook [6] on plasma physics with Alvin Trivelpiece and in 1973 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego and became a vice president at Science Applications, Inc. until 1978. He made contributions to the plasma behavior in Tokamaks and Stellarators. [7] [8] [9] He was appointed chairman of the US Department of Energy's Office of Science committee on alternate fusion concepts in 1977. He became executive vice president and chief scientist at Jaycor Inc in 1978 and held that position until at least 1985. [10] He co-founded (with Stephen O. Dean and Alvin Trivelpiece) the Fusion Power Associates, a Washington-based non for profit organization in 1979 and served as board chairman in 1983. [2] [11] In 1980 he served as chairman of division of plasma physics for the American Physical Society. [12] In January 1988, he formed a consulting firm, Krall Associates. [13] He consulted with Robert W. Bussard in the late 1980s and early 1990s on Polywell research. [14]
Dr. Krall was born in Kansas City on February 16, 1932. He is twice married and is the father of six children and grandfather of nine. Even after retirement, he continues contributing to research within his field. [2]
A tokamak is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. As of 2016, it was the leading candidate for a practical fusion reactor.
Inertial electrostatic confinement, or IEC, is a class of fusion power devices that use electric fields to confine the plasma rather than the more common approach using magnetic fields found in magnetic fusion energy (MFE) designs. Most IEC devices directly accelerate their fuel to fusion conditions, thereby avoiding energy losses seen during the longer heating stages of MFE devices. In theory, this makes them more suitable for using alternative aneutronic fusion fuels, which offer a number of major practical benefits and makes IEC devices one of the more widely studied approaches to fusion.
The Levitated Dipole Experiment (LDX) was an experiment investigating the generation of fusion power using the concept of a levitated dipole. The device was the first of its kind to test the levitated dipole concept and was funded by the US Department of Energy. The machine was also part of a collaboration between the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Columbia University, where another levitated dipole experiment, the Collisionless Terrella Experiment (CTX), was located.
A field-reversed configuration (FRC) is a type of plasma device studied as a means of producing nuclear fusion. It confines a plasma on closed magnetic field lines without a central penetration. In an FRC, the plasma has the form of a self-stable torus, similar to a smoke ring.
DIII-D is a tokamak that has been operated since the late 1980s by General Atomics (GA) in San Diego, USA, for the U.S. Department of Energy. The DIII-D National Fusion Facility is part of the ongoing effort to achieve magnetically confined fusion. The mission of the DIII-D Research Program is to establish the scientific basis for the optimization of the tokamak approach to fusion energy production.
Alcator C-Mod was a tokamak that operated between 1991 and 2016 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). Notable for its high toroidal magnetic field, Alcator C-Mod holds the world record for volume averaged plasma pressure in a magnetically confined fusion device. Until its shutdown in 2016, it was one of the major fusion research facilities in the United States.
Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth was an American plasma physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1997 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for discoveries in controlled thermonuclear fusion, contributions to plasma physics, and work in computational statistical mechanics. He was also a recipient of the E.O. Lawrence Prize (1964), the Albert Einstein Award (1967), the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (1976), the Enrico Fermi Award (1985), and the Hannes Alfvén Prize (2002).
The Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) is an autonomous physics research institute in India. The institute is involved in research in aspects of plasma science including basic plasma physics, research on magnetically confined hot plasmas and plasma technologies for industrial applications. It is a large and leading plasma physics organization in India. The institute is mainly funded by the Department of Atomic Energy. IPR is playing a major scientific and technical role in Indian partnership in the international fusion energy initiative ITER. It is part of the IndiGO consortium for research on gravitational waves.
The polywell is a proposed design for a fusion reactor using an electric field to heat ions to fusion conditions.
Plasma modeling refers to solving equations of motion that describe the state of a plasma. It is generally coupled with Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic fields or Poisson's equation for electrostatic fields. There are several main types of plasma models: single particle, kinetic, fluid, hybrid kinetic/fluid, gyrokinetic and as system of many particles.
Ghulam Murtaza, SI, FPAS, is a Pakistani theoretical physicist with a specialization in the physics of ionized plasmas, and is an Emeritus Professor of physics at the Government College University in Lahore. Murtaza's work is recognizable in plasma physics and controlled nuclear fusion processes to provide a better understanding of energy propagated by the main-sequence star, the Sun.
Liu Chen is an American theoretical physicist who has made original contributions to many aspects of plasma physics. He is known for the discoveries of kinetic Alfven waves, toroidal Alfven eigenmodes, and energetic particle modes; the theories of geomagnetic pulsations, Alfven wave heating, and fishbone oscillations, and the first formulation of nonlinear gyrokinetic equations. Chen retired from University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 2012, assuming the title Professor Emeritus of physics and astronomy.
Alvin Trivelpiece is a retired Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), former Executor Officer of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and former Director of the Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). He has also been a professor of physics and a corporate executive. Throughout his varied career, Dr. Trivelpiece's research focused on plasma physics, controlled thermonuclear research, and particle accelerators. He has several patents on accelerators and microwave devices.
The Tandem Mirror Experiment was a magnetic mirror machine operated from 1979 to 1987 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It was the first large-scale machine to test the "tandem mirror" concept in which two mirrors trapped a large volume of plasma between them in an effort to increase the efficiency of the reactor.
Stephen O. Dean is an American physicist, engineer and author. He was born in Niagara Falls, New York, United States, and grew up there through high school.
Norman Rostoker was a Canadian plasma physicist known for being a pioneer in developing clean plasma-based fusion energy. He co-founded TAE Technologies in 1998 and held 27 U.S. Patents on plasma-based fusion accelerators.
Miklos Porkolab (born March 24, 1939) is a Hungarian-American physicist specializing in plasma physics.
Ksenia Aleksandrovna Razumova is a Russian physicist. She graduated from the Physical Faculty of Moscow University in 1955 and took a position at the then called Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, then USSR. She defended her Ph.D. in 1966, was Candidate in Physical and Mathematical sciences in 1967, and became Doctor of Sciences in 1984. She is laboratory head at the Institute of Nuclear Fusion, Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Institute. Since the beginning she is actively involved plasma physics in research on the tokamak line of Magnetic confinement fusion.
Clifford Michael Surko is an American physicist, whose works involve plasma physics, atomic physics, nonlinear dynamics and solid state physics. Together with his colleagues, he developed techniques for laser scattering at small angles to study waves and turbulence in tokamak plasmas and invented a positron trap that was used in experiments worldwide to study antimatter. Surko also developed other techniques for studying positron plasmas and examined atomic and plasma physics with positrons.
The history of nuclear fusion began early in the 20th century as an inquiry into how stars powered themselves and expanded to incorporate a broad inquiry into the nature of matter and energy, as potential applications expanded to include warfare, energy production and rocket propulsion.
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