DIII-D in the News

DIII-D in the News

The latest advances and achievements at DIII-D

Interactive-DIII-D-DT-SC25-Demo2 — Press: Accelerating Science with Digital Twins

Li_SH2026 — FES Science Highlights: Protecting Against Large Damaging Energy Bursts in Fusion Energy Devices (Li et al.)

Sips_APS2025 — Press: General Atomics Scientist Receives National Honor for Contributions to Fusion Research

Mordijck_APS2025 — Press: W&M’s Saskia Mordijck named fellow of the American Physical Society

Eskew — Press: Auburn Physics PhD student earns prestigious DOE Fellowship

Li et al NatureComms — Nature Portfolio Article: Multi-scale Interaction Mechanism for Edge-Localized-Mode Suppression in the Tokamak Edge (Li et al.)

PinskerHelicon2025APS — Press Release: Scientists Pioneer New “Helicon” Method of Driving Electrical Currents in Tokamak Plasmas for Fusion Energy Production

Jalalvand_2025APS — Press Release: Seeing through the Gaps: AI-Supplemented Measurement in Fusion Devices and Beyond

Victor_2025APS — Press Release: Higher Edge Density Protects Fusion Reactor Walls from Hot Plasma

Hong_2025APS — Press Release: Scientists Double Fuel Density by Inverting Fusion Plasmas

Morbey_2025APS — Press Release: Liquid Lithium Walls: An Innovative Design for Handling Harsh Conditions

NVIDIA_blog — Press: NVIDIA and General Atomics Advance Commercial Fusion Energy

Schmitz_APS2025 — Press: Schmitz elected as APS Fellow

PPPL_diag2diag — Press: New AI enhances the view inside fusion energy systems

Jalalvand_NatureComms2025 — Nature Portfolio Article: Multimodal super-resolution: discovering hidden physics and its application to fusion plasmas (Jalalvand et al.)

NT Science Highlight — FES Science Highlights: Inverted Plasma Shape Shows Promise for Future Fusion Power Plant Design (Scotti et al. and Paz-Soldan et al.)

PPPL_lithium — Press: The complex relationship between fusion fuel and lithium walls

Globus_2025 — Blog: General Atomics: Higher Fidelity Plasma Reconstructions and Particle Tracking Across Facilities for DIII-D

UCSD New User — Press: Good News for Fusion Energy Workforce Development in San Diego

2017_TOCAMAC_Fusion_Chamber_C0096_KS — Press: Scientists Just Uncovered a Major Challenge for Fusion Power – And It’s Not What You’d Expect

NERSCHelicon — Press: Simulation Confirms Method for More Efficient Fusion

KPBS — Media: General Atomics sees an end to the long road toward nuclear fusion

Kolemen_Highlight — FES Science Highlights: AI Tackles Disruptive Tearing Instability in Fusion Plasma (Seo et al.)

IE-200k — Press: US nuclear fusion lab hits 200,000 plasma ‘shots,’ a milestone powering hopes

200k_SDUT — Press: San Diego's General Atomics Passes a Milestone. Can Nuclear Fusion Energy Become a Reality?

GA-200k — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility Achieves Historic Operational Milestone on the Road to Developing Fusion Energy

Kim_Highlight — FES Science Highlights: Controller with Integrated Machine Learning Tweaks Fusion Plasmas in Real Time (Kim et al.)

Kim-APS-2024 — Press Release: A Novel Path to High Performance Fusion Plasma: Real-Time Adaptive Control

aps-elm-combo-2024 — Press Release: Triple Play: Managing ELMs for Efficient Fusion Energy

snipes-effenberg_APS-DPP_2024 — Press Release: Stopping off-the-wall behavior in fusion reactors

Zhao_Highlight — FES Science Highlights: For Heating Plasma in Fusion Devices, Researchers Unravel How Electrons Respond to Neutral Beam Injection (Zhao and Austin)

Bardoczi_Highlight — FES Science Highlights: In a Fusion Device Plasma, a Steep Ion Temperature Gradient Slows the Growth of Magnetic Islands (Bardoczi et al.)

Ding-Highlight — FES Science Highlights: Ground-Breaking Efforts Overcome an Operational Limit of Tokamaks, Advancing Efforts to Achieve Fusion Energy (Ding et al.)

Nature Family Article: Discovering tungsten-based composites as plasma facing materials for future high-duty cycle nuclear fusion reactors (Marchhart et al.)

Press Release: GA Scientists Achieve Key Requirement for Economic Fusion Energy

Seven men stand in front of computer screens with data — Press: DIII-D gets supercomputing access through the DOE’s high-speed data network

Media: Scientists working on clean energy by recreating the sun in a San Diego lab

A map of CA with orange and white lines connecting hubs denoted by circles — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility, NERSC, and ESnet Collaboration Speeds Nuclear Fusion Research

Two scientists stand inside a vacuum chamber with a large cylindrical post in the center — Press: Upgrades in place, San Diego’s nuclear fusion facility is back up and running

An engineer in a blue jumpsuit uses tools in a narrow opening inside a vacuum vessel — Press: DIII-D, San Diego’s Nuclear Fusion Lab, is Back Online After Nearly a Year

An engineer in a yellow jumpsuit works on tiles — Press: DIII-D upgrades to shape the future of magnetic fusion energy research

Nature Portfolio Article: Highest fusion performance without harmful edge energy bursts in tokamak (Kim et al.)

InteriorComps-CROP-RESIZE — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility Completes Upgrade

A person in a green jumpsuit uses a tool inside a vacuum vessel — Press: Overcoming Limits -- Two Seconds of Hope for Fusion Power

An empty vacuum vessel — Press: Nuclear fusion experiment overcomes two key operating hurdles

DingNature — Nature Article: A high-density and high-confinement tokamak plasma regime for fusion energy (Ding et al.)

A female reporter and male scientist on a split screen — Media: Scientists: A.I. Could Help Create Limitless Clean Energy

An arrow points right from a reactor cross-section with a blue plasma cross-section containing an orange ring to a cross-section with the same plasma with a narrow black ring — Press Release: Engineers use AI to wrangle fusion power for the grid

KolemenNature — Nature Article: Avoiding fusion plasma tearing instability with deep reinforcement learning (Seo et al.)

Media: Fusion Reactor Promises Limitless Energy

Tokamak cross-section with the D-shaped plasma facing the center post — FES Science Highlights: Inverting Fusion Plasmas Improves Performance (Nelson et al.)

Graph showing relevance versus flexibility with an arrow pointing to the upper right labeled "DIII-D" — Publication: DIII-D's role as a national user facility in enabling the commercialization of fusion energy (Buttery et al.)

FES Science Highlights: Opening the Magnetic Bottle of a Tokamak Causes Particles to Rush Inward (Logan et al.)

FES Science Highlights: Researchers Visualize Energetic Ion Flow in Fusion Devices (Du et al.)

FES Science Highlights: Islands That Move Together, Disrupt Together (Bardoczi et al.)

Press Release: The Contrarian: Counterintuitive methods improve fusion plasma performance

Diagram showing the D-shape plasma of positive triangularity plasma on the left and reverse D-shape of negative triangularity plasma on the right — Press Release: Flipping Plasma Geometry at DIII-D Demonstrates Stable Pathway to Practical Fusion Energy

Black arrows pointing from left to right to indicate the magnetic field, with a red circle and a blue circle indicating atoms with nuclear spin aligned with the field — Press Release: University-national laboratory collaboration receives DOE Fusion Energy Sciences award to advance spin-polarized fusion at DIII-D, aiming to increase power output by greater than 50%

A man in orange coveralls, gloves, botties and a bonnet works inside the DIII-D vessel — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility Completes Record-Breaking 1,600-Hour Research Campaign

Color maps of the DIII-D cross-section showing the spatial relationship between perturbations and pressure — FES Science Highlights: Resistance in Walls Can Cause Disruptive Energy Loss (Strauss et al.)

Photographs showing new graphite rods and the same eroded graphite rods after high-temperature plasma exposure — FES Science Highlights: Tokamak Experiments Provide Unique Data for Validating Spacecraft Heat Shield Ablation Models (Orlov et al.)

Schematic of positive and negative triangularity cross-sections — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility Completes Highest-Powered Negative Triangularity Experiments in History of U.S. Fusion Research Program

Schematic and data for use of a Powder Injection Tube — FES Science Highlights: Blowing Dust to Cool Fusion Plasmas (Effenberg et al.)

A schematic showing off-axis beam injection — Press Release: Taking A New Angle to Boost Plasma Performance in Advanced Tokamaks

The director of DIII-D, Richard Buttery, sits in front of monitors in the control room — Press Release: In Their Own Words: Fusion Researchers Highlight Opportunities at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility

Three data panels supporting successful shattered pellet injection and a panel showing a scientist standing next to the Pellet Injector System — Press Release: Scientists Demonstrate Technique to Protect Fusion Devices from Sudden Energy Loss

An engineer uses a wrench — Press Release: DIII-D National Fusion Facility Adds Capability to Rapidly Test Key Fusion Science

A scientist uses a screwdriver to align components of a diagnostic — FES Science Highlights: Researchers Stick Out Their Necks to Understand How Fusion Plasmas Fuel Up (Rosenthal et al.)

Spectra showing the frequency of edge plasma instabilities according to wave number — FES Science Highlights: Taming the Plasma Edge: Reducing Instabilities in Tokamaks (Burrell et al.)

Experimental and theoretical data for electron orbit paths and electron temperatures — FES Science Highlights: Avoiding Chains of Magnetic Islands May Lead to Fusion Paradise (Bardoczi et al.)

Plotted data points showing the dependence of performance on divertor temperature — FES Science Highlights: For Plasma with a Hot Core and Cool Edges, Super-H Mode Shows Promise (Wilks et al.)

Schematic and photographs of the small angle slot divertor V-closure with a tungsten coating — Press Release: DIII-D Facility Adds Tool to Resolve Heat Handling in Future Fusion Power Plants

A view through a port looking into the vessel shows an operations team member working on DIII-D — Press: Nuclear fusion energy device at General Atomics coming back online

Join us during Nuclear Science Week! DIII-D will be hosting public tours of our facility on October 21st at 9am and 2pm. Come see how our incredible team of scientists and engineers from around the world are working together to move fusion energy from science fiction to reality.

Advanced registration required: 2026 DIII-D Tours

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