My experience carrying out an Undergraduate thesis in the BSC Fusion group

I am Eric Planas, and as part of the BSc in Engineering Physics program at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), in February 10th I joined the Fusion Group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) in order to carry out my Final Degree Thesis. Now that I am finishing the project and my journey as an undergraduate student is coming to an end, I am writing this post to relate my experience in this group.

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Mark the date! Join us at the European Fusion Teacher Day 2020

Source: FuseNet

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the European agency Fusion for Energy (F4E) and b_TEC Foundation invite all Secondary and High-school teachers to take part in a live webinar, coordinated by the European Fusion Education Network FuseNet, with connections in Catalan and Spanish from Barcelona and English from several spots in Europe on the 2nd of October 2020.

The webinar will aim at giving teachers the tools and knowledge they need in order to introduce fusion in the classrooms. Such state-of-the-art concepts can certainly be hard to introduce into schools, thus we truly think this is a fantastic opportunity to learn how to do it.

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DEMO Oriented Neutron Source attracts record participation in the first FusionCAT online event

Figure 1. IFMIF-DONES Lithium Target Facility. Source: ifmif.org

On May 20th, our Fusion Group co-organized, as part of the FusionCAT project that we are coordinating, a webinar on the DEMO Oriented Neutron Source (DONES) project given by Dr Ángel Ibarra, the Director of the Division for Fusion Technologies at Laboratorio Nacional de Fusión, CIEMAT, Madrid (Spain) and the EUROfusion Work Package Early Neutron Source Definition and Design Project Leader.

In his talk, which attracted a total of 113 participants with a variety of backgrounds and profiles from several countries, Ángel discussed the background of the project together with its present status and near-future plans.

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How to experiment with a fusion reactor that does not yet exist?

On the 6 May, our group member Xavier Sáez gave an online lecture entitled “Simulation Codes in Fusion Technology” as part of the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by the Department of Physics on Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

This course offers the students an overview on selected key topics in Fusion Technology, delivered by specialist lecturers from F4E, UPC and our Fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

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Join us for a webinar on the latest news on DONES

Schematic principle of the DONES facility. Photo: IFMIF-DONES candidature blog.

We are excited to announce that we will host a webinar on the DEMO Oriented Neutron Source (DONES) project given by Dr Ángel Ibarra, the Director of the Division for Fusion Technologies at Laboratorio Nacional de Fusión, CIEMAT, Madrid (Spain) and the EUROfusion Work Package Early Neutron Source Definition and Design Project Leader.

Please join us to hear the latest news on the project!

Date: May 20th, 2020
Time: 12:00-13:30 (CET); connections enabled from 11:30 am onwards.

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How to reach high temperatures of around 150 million degrees Celsius needed for fusion?

On the 15th of April, our group leader Dr Mervi Mantsinen gave an online lecture entitled Ion Cyclotron Resonance Frequency (ICRF) Heating in Fusion Plasmas” as part of the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by the Department of Physics on Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

This course offers the students an overview on selected key topics in Fusion Technology, delivered by specialist lecturers from F4E, UPC and our Fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The course is coordinated at UPC by Dr Shimpei Futatani who moved from our Fusion group to UPC two years ago.

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