Fusion Researchers Highlight Opportunities at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility

Get to know some of the outstanding researchers working at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility to advance fusion energy

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility is a user facility of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science. DIII-D is open to all interested potential users to advance scientific or technical knowledge without regard to nationality or institutional affiliation, and the allocation of facility resources is determined by merit review of the proposed work. The DIII-D program has been operated by General Atomics since its inception.

DIII-D is the product of evolving fusion research at GA going back to the 1950s. Early tokamak designs, starting in the 1960s, were circular in cross-section, but GA scientists developed the “doublet,” a configuration with an elongated hourglass-shaped plasma cross-section. The Doublet I, II, and III tokamaks in the 1970s and 1980s showed that this approach allowed for a hotter and denser stable plasma. Further research led to a modification of Doublet III in the mid-1980s to DIII-D’s current D-shaped cross-section. Successes with this configuration inspired many other devices to adopt the D-shape, including JET (UK), TCV (Switzerland), ASDEX-U (Germany), JT-60U (Japan), KSTAR (Korea), and EAST (China).

DIII-D regularly undergoes upgrades to add new diagnostic and experimental capabilities and modernize existing systems. This ongoing work enables DIII-D to function as one of the best-diagnosed magnetic fusion experiments in the world, providing an essential program for developing key scientific insights and technological breakthroughs to support the development of fusion energy.

Research at DIII-D is performed by an international and interdisciplinary team of collaborators, who are organized into three research groups and their associated topical areas. These groups serve the broader goal of establishing a basis for better optimization, prediction, and projection of fusion energy solutions, as well as advancing the fundamental understanding of fusion plasmas.

The success of the research program at DIII-D is demonstrated by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications based on DIII-D data that have advanced the understanding of fusion and its application as an energy source. Additionally, the pioneering work performed at DIII-D has been repeatedly recognized within the fusion science field, being presented in invited talks at scientific and technical conferences worldwide and recognized with numerous awards for research excellence.

 

The computing infrastructure at DIII-D enables cutting-edge science across many research areas and promotes seamless collaborations among different institutional partners. Data from these systems are managed and shared with the domestic and international community from multiple data storage and analysis servers offering both short- and long-term data reaching as far back as 1988. DIII-D data are open but controlled; all research data are available to all users.

Beyond experiment operation and data storage, the scientists at DIII-D pioneer novel analysis tools and techniques. Some of these are customized for specific experiments at DIII-D, while others are prototyped before wider application throughout the fusion community. DIII-D also plays a leading role in the community by providing mechanisms for remote collaboration and connection to external systems. Fully remote operations are supported with live video, audio, and data feeds directly to/from the control room, and experiments led by off-site colleagues are a regular part of the program.