Record heat in lab bolsters effort toward fusion energy

WASHINGTON Princeton University researchers have generated thehighest temperature ever recorded in a laboratory - 360 milliondegrees Fahrenheit

The government's top energy official hailed the feat as "a majormilestone in progress toward the development of fusion energy."

The temperature, 10 times hotter than that at the center of thesun, was achieved in mid-July during a series of experimentsinvolving the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton's PlasmaPhysics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

"No previous laboratory experiment has ever achieved such hightemperatures," Harold Furth, laboratory director, said yesterday.The previous record, set in 1980 at …