In 1971, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching near Munich, where he dealt with the theory of stellarators for controlled nuclear fusion.
[2] In the 1980s, Nührenberg and Allen Boozer developed methods to optimize the magnetic field of the stellarator in such a way that the stability of plasma confinement became comparable to those of the tokamak.
In contrast to tokamaks, stellarators work continuously but have more complicated magnetic fields that do not have simple rotational symmetry.
[5] Since 1990, Nührenberg has been a member of the project management team involved in the planning of the Wendelstein 7-X and has played a key role in its development.
In 2010, he received the Hannes Alfvén Prize with Allen Boozer for "the formulation and practical application of criteria allowing stellarators to have good fast-particle and neoclassical energy confinement".