Fall Seminar 2025: Brenda Garcia-Diaz

The tritium fuel cycle is integral to all proposed commercial fusion power plants, but tritium is difficult and costly to process, purify, and enrich. Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has over 70 years of experience in the processing and handling of tritium and is leveraging this expertise for tritium processing for commercial fusion power. SRNL has a robust research program applying its technology portfolio in isotope separation, hydrogen purification, tritium vacuum pumping, impurity removal, tritium effects on materials, and the modeling of tritium retention in process systems to fusion power systems. SRNL is also leveraging the expertise from leading the design and fabrication of the ITER Tokamak Exhaust Processing (TEP) system as well as experience designing and analyzing an IFE fuel cycle for the LIFE project.  Here, we will provide an overview of SRNL’s fusion research programs including the new Fuel Cycle (FC) Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) Collaborative that addresses critical challenges in tritium management for commercial fusion energy systems. The FC FIRE Collaborative aims to deliver scalable, economically viable fuel cycle solutions to accelerate fusion energy’s transition to commercialization while addressing regulatory and societal acceptance challenges. This work directly supports the commercialization of fusion energy, emphasizing safety, efficiency, and innovation in tritium fuel cycle technologies.

Dr. Garcia-Diaz served as a committee member on the 2021 National Academy of Sciences report entitled “Bringing Fusion to the US Grid” and is a member of the DOE Fusion Energy Science Advisory Committee (FESAC).  She has been part of the FESAC subcommittee helping to develop a decadal plan for fusion energy research and commercialization.  Dr. Garcia-Diaz is also the Director of the Fuel Cycle FIRE Collaborative that is developing innovative fuel cycle technologies, developing the fuel cycle workforce, and coordinating fuel cycle development efforts with companies throughout the fusion industry and the fuel cycle supply chain. Brenda worked with community partners to develop research objectives that can help guide Fuel Cycle and Blanket development toward commercialization.

Brenda has worked with Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) since 2007 and she creates and leads dynamic teams that find solutions to clean energy challenges such as fusion energy, concentrating solar power (CSP) corrosion, and accident tolerant fuel (ATF) development.  She has been the overall PI or SRNL co-PI on projects with: 1) the Office of Science Fusion Energy Science Program (FES), 2) ARPA-E, 3) the DOE Solar Energy Technology Office SunShot program, and 4) the DOE Nuclear Energy projects.  She enjoys working directly with companies on technology development and has led projects with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, AREVA, Haynes International, ICL, and others.  She has multiple inventions on methods to electrochemically extract tritium from lithium alloy and FLiBe breeding blankets for fusion.  Brenda led Gen 3 molten salt corrosion mitigation efforts within the DOE SunShot program through three projects led by SRNL and NREL.  Dr. Garcia-Diaz was selected in 2024 to be an ASM Fellow.  She has won the ASM Silver Award, and the South Carolina Governor’s Young Scientist Award. She also serves on the MIT LIBRA Technical Advisory Board, was elected to the Executive Committee of the Fusion Energy Division of the American Nuclear Society and has served as a board member for the AIChE RAPID consortium for Process Intensification.  She is a member of External Advisory Boards for the University of South Carolina Chemical Engineering Department and the Clemson University Materials Science and Engineering Department.