Number 179 (Story #2), May 17, 1994 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein AN ION TEMPERATURE OF 429 MILLION K (37 keV) was achieved in the fusion experiments last December at Princeton's TFTR Tokamak, which for the first time used a fuel of 50% deuterium and 50% tritium in order to produce a record 6.2 megawatts of power (the 1991 experiments at the Joint European Torus, which produced the previous record of 1.7 MW, used a fuel of approximately 90% deuterium and 10% tritium). The central region of the TFTR plasma achieved a power density (from fusion reactions) of just over 1 megawatt/m**3, comparable to that expected in the first commercial reactors. There are encouraging signs that the alpha (helium-4) particles produced in the D-T reactions are directly heating electrons in the plasma. Alpha particle confinement and heating will be the focus of ongoing experiments at TFTR this year. (Upcoming articles in Physical Review Letters, May 23: J.D. Strachan et al., and R.J. Hawryluk et al.)