Plasma fusion facility comes to Illinois

WDWS-AM (audio story, Nov. 21) -- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins a short list of universities worldwide that has an operating fusion device on its campus. Earlier this year, the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics gifted its multi-million dollar plasma/fusion WEGA advanced physics testing facility to the University of Illinois as a result of the relationship the Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) plasma/fusion group has developed with the German institute. The machine, renamed the Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications, or HIDRA, arrived in Urbana on several flatbed trailers during the week of November 17. In an audio interview, David Ruzic, a professor and director of the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions at Illinois said that the HIDRA plasma fusion device takes 2 million watts of power to run and that it will be a very beneficial research project and learning tool for students. Also: News-Gazette (Nov. 21), ScienceBlog (Nov. 20).