World – Fusion Group

Experiments in full swing on Joint European Torus

August 16, 2019August 19, 2019

Control room experimental team following attentively the various displays showing measured key quantities in real time during one of the M18-05 experimental discharges carried out last Thursday.

The EUROfusion experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK is in full swing.

Last week our group leader Mervi Mantsinen and our La Caixa-funded PhD student Dani Gallart visited JET to participate in this campaign. Our focus was in on-site preparation, execution and first analysis of two sessions of the experiment M18-05 “ICRH scenario support in D and T plasmas” for which Mervi is one of the two scientific coordinators. This means that she is in charge of the scientific planning of this experiment and the coordination of its international team of approximately 45 scientists from various institutions all over Europe.

Our new research results presented at EPS2019

July 25, 2019

Dr. Mervi Mantsinen’s presentation at EPS2019.

This year, the 46^th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics (EPS2019) was held in Milan (Italy), from July 8 to 12, 2019. This annual conference is organized by the European Physical Society (EPS) Plasma Physics Division, and it covers the wide field of plasma physics from Magnetic Confinement Fusion Plasma, Beam Plasmas & Intertial Fusion, Low Temperature and Dusty Plasmas to Basic, Space & Astrophysical Plasmas. Researchers from all around the world met at this conference to show and explain their work to the growing community of plasma physicists.

PhD in Collective Thomson Scattering for Fusion

July 18, 2019

View from the campus of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE). Photo: TUE.

On the 24th of June, our group leader Mervi Mantsinen had the honour of being one of the members of the PhD examination committee of Ivana Abramović at the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Plasmagic, and more, at ITER Open Doors Day

June 28, 2019

Interactive displayes at the ITER Open Doors Day.

On 18 May 2019, the ITER Organization and the European agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, organized the 14th ITER Open Doors Day with more than 800 visitors.

The ITER Open Doors Day is a great opportunity to learn more about the ITER Project and to tour the massive construction works currently underway in Caradache, France. The event is free to charge and is divided into two parts.

High temperature superconductivity beats the record high DC magnetic field ever reached

June 20, 2019June 20, 2019

This ‘little big coil’, the size of a half-pint, allowed achieving the highest direct-current magnetic field of 45.5 T. From MagLab website.

The third coil in a series of High-Temperature Superconducting (HTS) coils known as ‘little big coils’ (LBC) has enabled the highest direct-current magnetic field to date at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab), United States. This last coil which barely weighs 400 grams generated a field of 14.4 T while able to retain the superconducting state in a background field of 31.1 T created by a resistive magnet, thus reaching the highest field ever registered of 45.5 T.

MareNostrum 5, the highest EU investment in a research infrastructure in Spain

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019

On 7 June, the European Commission (EC) has officially announced that EuroHPC has selected Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) as one of the institutions that will host a pre-exascale supercomputer in the high-capacity supercomputer network that will operate in the EU in 2021. The EC announcement describes the plan to acquire 3 pre-exascale machines with a peak performance of at least 150 Petaflops: Barcelona (Spain), Bolonia (Italy) and Kajaani (Finland).

The future MareNostrum 5 will be a heterogenous supercomputer that will achieve a peak performance of 200 Petaflops (200 · 10¹⁵ of operations per second), which is 18 times more than current MareNostrum 4.