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[[File:MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center 01.jpg|thumb|MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT building NW17]]
[[File:Alcator C-Mod graduate students in control room.jpg|thumb|Control room of the [[Alcator C-Mod]] tokamak at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center.]]

The '''Plasma Science and Fusion Center''' (PSFC) at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) is a university [[research center]] for the study of [[Plasma (physics)|plasmas]], [[Nuclear fusion|fusion]] science and technology.

It was originally founded in 1976 as the '''Plasma Fusion Center''' (PFC) at the request and with the collaboration of the [[United States Department of Energy|U.S. Department of Energy]]. The original grant was for construction and operation of a [[tokamak]] reactor Alcator A, the first in a series of small, high-field tokamaks, followed by Alcator C (1978) and [[Alcator C-Mod]] (1993).

MIT's most recent tokamak, Alcator C-Mod, ran from 1993 to 2016. In 2016, the project pressure reached 2.05 atmospheres—a 15 percent jump over the previous record of 1.77 atmospheres with a plasma temperature of 35 million degrees C, sustaining fusion for 2 seconds, yielding 600 trillion fusion reactions.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/renewable-energy-ecology/fusion-energy-record-pressure-16102016|title=New record gets us closer to fusion energy|last=ANDREI|first=MIHAI|date=2016-10-17|newspaper=ZME Science|language=en-US|access-date=2016-10-18}}</ref> The run involved a 5.7 tesla magnetic field. It reached this milestone on its final day of operation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://newatlas.com/nuclear-fusion-record/45932|title=Under pressure: New world record set on path to nuclear fusion|last=Franco|first=Michael|date=October 14, 2016|website=newatlas.com|access-date=2016-10-18}}</ref>

In 2018, the PSFC began developing a conceptual design for the [[SPARC (tokamak)|SPARC]] tokamak in collaboration with [[Commonwealth Fusion Systems]]. SPARC intends to use new [[Yttrium barium copper oxide|YBCO]] [[superconducting magnet]]s in order to achieve net fusion energy in a compact device.{{Citation needed|date=March 2020}}

==References==
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==External links==
{{commonscat|MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center}}

*[http://www.psfc.mit.edu/ PSFC homepage]
*[http://web.mit.edu/nse Nuclear Science and Engineering homepage]
*[[New Record for Fusion (MIT News)]]
*[http://www.psfc.mit.edu/news/2016/pressure-record-faq Alcator C-Mod pressure record: FAQ (PSFC News)]

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[[Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology|Plasma Science and Fusion Center]]
[[Category:Plasma physics facilities]]


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