DIII-D National Fusion Facility

DIII-D is celebrating a major milestone: 200,000 plasma shots! Friends of the program from government, academia, national facilities, and industry worldwide joined us to mark this incredible achievement representing continuous progress and innovation on the path to making fusion energy a reality. Each plasma shot is more than a test; it's a question asked and answered, a technology or material investigated, and ultimately another step toward fusion energy production. These shots also reflect the evolution of the program, with constant upgrades to the facility and device ensuring that DIII-D's flexibility, world-leading diagnostics, and unique capabilities are used to address the most important challenges remaining in fusion science. But the heart of this milestone? It's the people who make up the DIII-D program. From students to senior scientists and engineers, hundreds have contributed their expertise and passion to build DIII-D into the essential and innovative program it is today. Our program continues to bring together talented people from academia, national labs, and a growing network of private companies from around the world to identify and develop solutions for fusion energy. As we look to the future, we're excited to continue our vital roles in the US fusion program and global efforts to harness clean, virtually limitless fusion energy. Onto the next shot! Learn more about how DIII-D is accelerating the path to fusion commercialization here: https://bit.ly/3UsT5kR Special thanks to our in-person speakers: DIII-D Director Dr. Richard Buttery, Dr. Anantha Krishnan of General Atomics, Dr. Jean Paul Allain of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Congressman Scott Peters, Congressman Darrell Issa, Dr. Ide Shunsuke of National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), Dr. Mickey Wade of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dr. Theresa Wilks of Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, Karl Schultz of General Atomics, and Dr. Kyle Callahan of Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education #fusionenergy #DIIID #fusionenergysciences #DOE #userfacility #milestone #scientificmilestone #scientificadvance #technologicaladvance #commercialization #publicprivatepartnership #tokamak #workforcedevelopment

DIII-D continues to support the fusion industry by providing a highly flexible and well-diagnosed platform for testing the materials and technologies needed for fusion commercialization. Congratulations to Next Step Fusion on their successful testing of their machine learning model for plasma control on DIII-D! Special thanks also to DIII-D team members Dmitri Orlov and Randall Clark from UC San Diego for their key contributions to these experiments! #fusionenergy #tokamak #AI #machinelearning #plasmacontrol #plasmaphysics #fusioncommercialization #cleanenergy

While many solid materials have been proposed for the interior wall of fusion reactors, liquid metal walls have the advantages of being self-healing and handling higher heat flux. One of the leading materials for liquid metal walls is liquid lithium, but there is still little known about liquid lithium interactions with plasma in a fusion reactor-relevant environment. To explore this area, Maria, a graduate student at DIFFER, used the Divertor Materials Evaluation Station (DIMES) system to expose liquid lithium to the DIII-D plasma environment. The liquid lithium sample was exposed in a 3D-printed tungsten capillary porous system (CPS), an additively manufactured mesh designed to function as a protective but porous cage for the lithium sample. The experiment aimed to study the effectiveness of the CPS in limiting liquid lithium leakage and droplet ejection. How lithium moved throughout the tokamak and what effect liquid lithium had on the plasma were also investigated. Maria's results will be used to evaluate the performance of the CPS containing liquid lithium and advance the technology readiness level of liquid metal designs. #fusionenergy #liquidmetal #liquidlithium #reactorwall #materialsresearch #materialtesting #technologyinnovation #TRL #FPP #fusioncommercialization #fusionindustry

Last week at APS-DPP, Alexander Battey from Columbia University presented his research on runaway electrons. These highly energetic particles can be produced during disruptions and cause damage to the tokamak interior, so Alex explored ways to decrease the energy or reduce the confinement of these electrons. Application of electron cyclotron waves, which are routinely used for heating and current drive on DIII-D, mitigated runaway electrons through interactions with the background plasma that expelled the "seed" runaway electrons. As electron cyclotron systems are commonly used on tokamaks worldwide, this work suggests a widely applicable approach for protecting fusion reactors from runaway electrons. American Physical Society #fusionenergy #tokamak #runawayelectron #FPP #fusionpilotplant #ITER #APSDPP2024 #invitedtalk #scienceconference

Xijie, a postdoc at UCLA, presented work from her project as a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison that explored how small-scale turbulence generates self-driven rotation in plasma. This is a key phenomenon for plasma stabilization and improved performance. She showed that the turbulence produces intrinsic torque to drive this rotation and reconstructed this behavior from measurements made with advanced fluctuation diagnostics on DIII-D, validating both the accepted theory in the field and the predictions made through modeling work. Her research will help us better control plasma rotation in future fusion facilities, such as ITER and fusion pilot plants, to make fusion energy production more efficient and sustainable. American Physical Society #APSDPP2024 #fusionenergy #plasmaphysics #studentresearch #invitedtalk #scienceconference #turbulence #FPP

The extremely high density of stars like the Sun promotes efficient fusion, while tokamaks used to generate fusion reactions on Earth have a density limit that constrains performance. While this phenomenon has been observed for decades, the cause remains unknown. Andrew Maris, a graduate student at Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, applied machine learning techniques to data from DIII-D and other tokamaks to investigate this cause and identify potential solutions. He found that the density limit was strongly dependent on the temperature in the plasma edge. As future fusion power plants will be extremely hot, Andrew's study may offer insights on how to achieve higher densities and therefore better performance than previously predicted! American Physical Society #APSDPP2024 #APS2024 #APSDPP #fusionenergy #plasmaphysics #machinelearning #bigdata #studentresearch #scienceconference

We're excited to be spending this week at the 66th Annual American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics meeting in Atlanta, GA. We look forward to discussing all the latest research in fusion and plasma physics with everyone and making new connections to advance fusion energy efforts! If you're on site, be sure to stop by our booth (#5) to talk with DIII-D team members about our innovative science and technology program and how you can participate. We will also be sharing our results from the last year in several invited talks, dedicated sessions, and poster presentations. A full list of our participants can be found here: https://lnkd.in/g9sHHZf2.

Last week, DIII-D team member Shawn gave a talk on the DIII-D Helicon system at the 33rd Symposium on Fusion Technology. This system is the first test of this technology for non-inductive off-axis heating and current drive for tokamak plasmas, which will be needed for future commercial fusion reactors. Shawn's talk described Helicon commissioning for injection of up to 1 megawatt of power and successful coherent electron heating in recent experiments. She also shared the next steps for the Helicon team - performing experiments to study current drive in additional regimes! #fusionenergy #SOFT2024 #helicon #invitedtalk #scienceconference #sciencecommunication #plasmaheating #plasmacurrent #technologyinnovation #FPP #fusioncommercialization #experiment

Congratulations to xi chen, a co-lead of our ITER Research group!

This week, DIII-D is excited to be participating in the 33rd Symposium on Fusion Technology. Our scientists and engineers are connecting with others in the fusion community to discuss exciting developments in fusion technology and how DIII-D functions as a test platform to evaluate and improve fusion technologies. We look forward to presenting the latest advances and experiments done at DIII-D and building new relationships to support fusion technology development and innovation. #SOFT2024 #fusionenergy #fusiontechnology #technology #testbed #engineering #technologysolutions #technologyinnovation