For almost 35 years, General Atomics (GA) scientists in San Diego have collaborated with the U.S. government to enhance homeland defense and advance fusion technology.

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility recently surpassed its 200,000th experimental cycle since it began operations, marking an important milestone in the development of clean fusion energy.

Scientists and researchers have long hailed fusion, the process that powers the sun, as a clean and virtually limitless energy source they can harness on earth.

Scientists and engineers at General Atomics (GA) in San Diego are celebrating this week after members of their inertial fusion technologies team received some remarkable news about their work in creating technology that helped achieve the first controlled fusion “ignitions” in history.

A team led by scientists from General Atomics (GA) has demonstrated, for the first time, an operational approach that is key to many tokamak-based fusion power plant (FPP) designs aiming to generate economically attractive electricity.

A new tool developed by General Atomics (GA) is enabling scientists to optimize the quality of targets used in Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments.

As the global population continues to grow, demand for energy will also increase. One potentially transformative way of meeting that demand is by generating energy using nuclear fusion, which does not emit carbon or consume scarce natural resources and could therefore present a solution that is both equitable and ecologically sound.

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility has completed a series of important enhancements, providing researchers with several first-of-a-kind tools for controlling and understanding the function of fusion plasmas.

Fusion Power Associates (FPA) has awarded one of its 2023 Distinguished Career Awards to General Atomics (GA) fusion scientist Dr. Tony Taylor for his contributions in advancing international fusion energy research. The FPA Distinguished Career Awards are given annually to individuals who have made distinguished, lifelong career contributions to fusion development.

General Atomics (GA) has been selected as a team member for two science and technology hubs funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Inertial Fusion Energy Science & Technology Accelerated Research (IFE-STAR) program to advance IFE science and technologies.

General Atomics (GA) applauds the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announcement that the United States will pursue a global strategy to commercialize fusion energy. This plan will support broad international cooperation to develop fusion as a clean energy source for the next generation.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected a multi-institutional team of data scientists led by General Atomics (GA) to develop a Fusion Data Platform (FDP) for advancing high-priority fusion research.

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility completed its current two-year research campaign yesterday evening, closing out a series of experiments that pioneered many transformational advances for fusion energy. The campaign included a record-breaking 1,600 hours of plasma research as part of 140 ground-breaking studies.

US headquartered General Atomics (GA) and UK headquartered Tokamak Energy Ltd have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate in the area of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) technology for fusion energy and other industry applications.

Last week, Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr. (VA), Chair of the Congressional Fusion Caucus, visited General Atomics (GA) to tour the DIII-D National Fusion Facility and GA’s inertial fusion fabrication facilities.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria visited General Atomics (GA) to tour the DIII-D National Fusion Facility and GA’s inertial fusion laboratories. Mayor Gloria was joined by representatives of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation.

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility has completed an innovative month-long fusion research campaign utilizing a plasma configuration known as “negative triangularity.”

General Atomics (GA) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been awarded funding to advance power and particle exhaust capabilities in commercial-scale fusion energy pilot plants (FPPs) using machine learning.

General Atomics (GA) researcher Dr. Michael Van Zeeland has been selected as a 2022 Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

Scientists at General Atomics (GA), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego (UC San Diego) have been awarded highly sought-after computing time on two of the most powerful supercomputers in the world as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. 

Precision components fabricated and processed by General Atomics (GA) helped to facilitate a record-breaking Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Five researchers at General Atomics (GA) have been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct experimental research in fusion energy, which will be performed at tokamak facilities in the U.S. and around the world. 

Fusion Power Associates (FPA) has awarded one of its 2022 Excellence in Fusion Engineering Awards to General Atomics’ (GA) Nikolai Norausky for his contributions to GA’s ITER Central Solenoid (CS) program.

GA’s FPP concept utilizes a steady-state, compact advanced tokamak design approach, where the fusion plasma is maintained for long periods of time to maximize efficiency, reduce maintenance costs, and increase the lifetime of the facility.

In a new video that introduces the facility, its mission, and its workforce, six individuals from General Atomics (GA) and collaborating user institutions describe their experiences working at DIII-D.

Machine can create heat that’s 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.

The improvements to the laboratory, which is located at the General Atomics campus, bring the world a little closer to fulfilling the decades-long promise of fusion technology, which would offer nearly limitless clean energy resources.

The improvements are one small step in a much larger effort by researchers, scientists and engineers working on projects around the world to achieve the elusive goal of someday building nuclear fusion power plants capable of generating an almost limitless amount of clean electricity to energy consumers.

The DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics in San Diego is starting up after undergoing eight months of upgrades that included new and improved plasma control and diagnostic systems. The DIII-D National Fusion Facility is an Office of Science scientific user facility, operated by General Atomics for the US Department of Energy.

If we could harness fusion, it would transform our world, producing limitless energy, safely and without emissions -- the holy grail of energy.

Yahoo Finance went inside the country’s largest magnetic fusion facility for an exclusive look, to explore the challenges of bringing this technology to commercial use for the latest episode of NEXT.

Although her daughter was only two months old at the time, Casali knew she had to make the trip to the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego to lead the first-ever experiments at high radiation in the new revolutionary negative triangularity tokamak configuration.

Through extensive analysis of data from the DIII-D National Fusion Facility program, the researchers showed that this shaping was inherently free of instabilities across various plasma conditions.

Experiments carried out using the DIII-D National Fusion Facility tokamak investigated the use of negative triangularity shaping to restrict the formation of highly unstable and energetic ELM.

In experiments at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, the researchers demonstrated their model, trained only on past experimental data, could forecast potential plasma instabilities known as tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds in advance.

At the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, scientists showed that their AI model, trained using old data, could predict tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds beforehand.

Experiments performed with the DIII-D tokamak demonstrate that magnetic islands exchange energy, or couple, to each other when they rotate at similar speeds.

New observations at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility offer vital insights into energetic ions in fusion plasmas, key for fusion power development and space plasma understanding, with implications for satellite technology.

Schuster, who directs the Lehigh University Plasma Control Group, recently received a $1.6 million grant from the DOE to conduct experiments on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego that will ultimately serve to improve the operation of ITER, FPP, and future reactors through the development of advanced controls and the application of machine learning.

Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a Department of Energy user facility, have used the first measurements from a new diagnostic system, the Imaging Neutral Particle Analyzer (INPA), to observe the flow of energetic ions in a tokamak.

TECHNOLOGY: DOE taps company expertise

In experiments at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, researchers provided the first demonstration of applying magnetic perturbations and experiencing increased plasma density across the pedestal. In this new regime, magnetic perturbations caused the pedestal confinement to improve.

The hubs will be led by researchers at Colorado State University, the University of Rochester, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where last year a team successfully achieved fusion ignition for the first time, proving that creating energy from fusion is possible.

San Diego-based General Atomics applauded a White House plan unveiled Tuesday to encourage global commercialization of nuclear fusion to produce clean electricity.

The projects focus on advancing innovative fusion technology and collaborative research on both small-scale experiments and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, the largest tokamak operating in the United States. CMU will receive about $1.2 million over three years.

Staff Scientist Xiangdong Wei will lead Jefferson Lab’s segment of the effort, which includes researchers from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; University of California, Irvine; and General Atomics’ DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego.

The Department of Energy has selected nine projects to receive $16 million in funding to conduct small-scale research experiments on the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, an Office of Science scientific user facility operated by General Atomics.

San Diego-based General Atomics assisted in the experiment by making the target capsule and its assemblies.

General Atomics and Tokamak Energy to collaborate on advancing powerful magnet technology; GA will also assist Bay Area company on laser research

UK nuclear fusion outfit Tokamak Energy is teaming up with General Atomics in the US to work on high temperature superconducting magnets for fusion reactors and other potential industry applications.

Mayor Todd Gloria took time off from local politics this week to tour two San Diego laboratories where a limitless source of clean energy is being developed.

General Atomics (GA), a San Diego, California–based developer of advanced technology solutions for government and commercial applications, is a leader in the quest to harness fusion energy. To better understand what this achievement means, what a fusion power plant might look like, and what still needs to be done to bring fusion power online, I spoke with Wayne Solomon, vice president for Magnetic Fusion Energy with GA’s Energy Group, and Brian Grierson, GA’s Fusion Pilot Plant hub director. Both men were extremely excited about the announcement.

Fusion energy is having a moment – an increasingly fruitful one – but as radio astronomers and particle physicists know, bigger and better experiments and simulations mean data deluges that quickly become difficult to manage. In a paper for the 22nd Smoky Mountains Computational Sciences and Engineering Conference – hosted virtually last year – researchers from General Atomics, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Virginia outlined their vision for a science gateway to help manage and share fusion data that the authors expect to “substantially balloon in the near future.”

A magnet so powerful it could lift an aircraft carrier six feet into the air was designed in a project managed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It will be used in an international experimental reactor in southern France to produce energy using fusion, the same process used by the sun and other stars to create heat and light. Six modules for the reactor’s central superconducting magnet, plus a spare, are being made by General Atomics in Poway, California.

The dramatic and historic breakthrough on fusion energy at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is expected to bring an injection of cash into the clean energy source — even though it’s still many years away from becoming a mainstream power source.

The Department of Energy on Tuesday celebrated a major fusion energy milestone, outlining how scientists for the first time were able to produce more energy from a reaction than was consumed. “This milestone moves us one significant step closer” to having zero-carbon fusion energy “powering our society,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a DOE ceremony celebrating the results of an experiment by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Nuclear fusion has long been the Holy Grail of truly clean energy. The smashing together of hydrogen atoms promises limitless electricity with zero carbon emissions, a minimum of radioactive waste and zero chance of catastrophic meltdown. But for a half-century fusion scientists have been limited by the power of their lasers and the strength of their magnetic fields — never before figuring out how to milk more energy out of their atom smashing than they put in. Until now.