[en] In 1981, the joint ORNL/PPPL PDX neutral beam heating project succeeded in reliably injecting 7.2 MW of D⁰ into the PDX plasma, at nearly perpendicular angles, and achieved ion temperatures up to 6.5 keV. The expeditious achievement of this result was due to the thorough conditioning and qualification of the PDX neutral beam ion sources at ORNL prior to delivery coupled with several field design changes and improvements in the injection system made at PPPL as a result of neutral beam operating experience with the PLT tokamak. It has been found that the operation of high power neutral beam injection systems in a tokamak-neutral beam environment requires procedures and performance different from those required for development operation on test stands. In this paper, we review the installatin of the PDX neutral beam injection system, and its operation and performance during the initial high power plasma heating experiments with the PDX tokamak