Last Friday while in Los Angeles I was very fortunate to have scheduled a pre-arranged private tour of General Atomic’s DIII-k Tokamak Fusion Facility in San Diego California.
I was met by Richard Lee senior Scientist in overall charge of the Fusion Energy Education Group. He was kind enough to go above and beyond and insure that I had a complete understanding of their facility in the 2 hours we spent together.

The General Atomics Tokamak is currently the 3rd largest in the world with an even larger one, ITER under construction in France. Built in 1976 and replaced with an upgraded version in 1986, this is a magnanimous device! Constructed primarily of high grade Stainless Steel and Aluminum. There are huge copper coils that circumscribe the machine, placed every several feet around the chamber. Additionally smaller copper coils are placed around the chamber perpendicular to the main copper coils and there are also diagonal coils as well. all electrically charged and used to guide and direct the reaction when the Tokamak is ignited. It uses Deuterium and Tritium as fuels for the machine, however because of the dangers of Tritium, and the lack of ability to handle tritium, they are only using Deuterium. Tritium is not needed for most plasma experiments. The facility is completely funded by The Department of Energy.

Last Friday while in Los Angeles I was very fortunate to have scheduled a pre-arranged private tour of General Atomic’s DIII-k Tokamak Fusion Facility in San Diego California.
I was met by Richard Lee senior Scientist in overall charge of the Fusion Energy Education Group. He was kind enough to go above and beyond and insure that I had a complete understanding of their facility in the 2 hours we spent together.

The General Atomics Tokamak is currently the 3rd largest in the world with an even larger one, ITER under construction in France. Built in 1976 and replaced with an upgraded version in 1986, this is a magnanimous device! Constructed primarily of high grade Stainless Steel and Aluminum. There are huge copper coils that circumscribe the machine, placed every several feet around the chamber. Additionally smaller copper coils are placed around the chamber perpendicular to the main copper coils and there are also diagonal coils as well. all electrically charged and used to guide and direct the reaction when the Tokamak is ignited. It uses Deuterium and Tritium as fuels for the machine, however because of the dangers of Tritium, and the lack of ability to handle tritium, they are only using Deuterium. Tritium is not needed for most plasma experiments. The facility is completely funded by The Department of Energy.