World – Fusion Group

Congratulations to David Zarzoso on his Habilitation thesis in Fusion

June 18, 2020

Last Friday, June 12, our group leader ICREA Prof. Mervi Mantsinen participated as an examiner in the defence of the Habilitation Thesis to Supervise Research by Dr David Zarzoso at Aix Marseille University, France.

Other jury members were Dr Sadruddin Benkadda, Prof. Alain Ghizzo, Dr. Taina Kurki-Suonio, Prof. Jean-Marcelo Rax, Prof. Raúl Sánchez, and Prof. Howard Wilson. The event took place via videoconference due to the present pandemia circumstances with strict social distancing measures which prevented the celebration of this event in person.

Welcome to MARCONI100, a new tool for fusion research

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020

MARCONI 100 (M100) is the new accelerated cluster acquired by CINECA, Italy, within PPI4HPC European initiative. MI100 is based on the IBM Power9 architecture with NVIDIA Volta GPUs and has a peak performance of 32 Pflops.

M100 became available in May 2020 to the European public and industrial researchers. In particular, the access to M100 is granted to users with approved projects for this platform (EUROfusion, PRACE, European HPC programs,…). EUROfusion community has 80 dedicated nodes of M100, which means a peak performance of 2.5 Pflops, to run fusion codes and boost the research in this field.

M100 opens the way to the pre-exascale Leonardo Supercomputer expected to be installed in 2021.

Major milestone reached with the fusion megaproject

June 4, 2020

On May 26, the base of the ITER cryostat was successfully mounted onto its supporting structure in the Tokamak assembly pit. The 1250-tonne component was lifted from it’s mounting frame, carried across the Assembly hall and finally lowered into the pit, culminating a ten-year process to design, manufacture, deliver, assemble and weld one of the most crucial components of the ITER machine.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is the most ambitious energy project in the world, bringing together 35 different countries in the effort of producing clean energy for the generations to come. It is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of confinement nuclear fusion and develop the science and technology needed for a future nuclear power plant. After years and years of preparation, the international project officially started in 2007 and has since been building one of the most gargantuan research sites ever envisioned. According to the schedule, the first plasmas are expected in 2025.

Join us for a webinar on the latest news on DONES

May 6, 2020May 6, 2020

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

EUROfusion High Level Support Team adapting to work from home

April 30, 2020April 30, 2020

The High Level Support Team (HLST) is a unit from EUROfusion that provides support to the European fusion community to ensure optimal exploitation of the High Performance Computing (HPC) resources such as the MARCONI-fusion supercomputer at CINECA (Italy).

The HLST consists of a full-time core team at the IPP Garching (Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik) and a number of part-time members in other institutions. The latter include Xavier Sáez from our fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). To guarantee an optimal flow of communication within the unit, there are two face-to-face meetings per year in Garching, Germany, where members share their work and experiences. However, because of the Covid-19 crisis, this year this has changed.

World’s largest superconducting tokamak is now fully assembled and ready for operation

April 22, 2020April 24, 2020

Left: Top view of JT-60SA during the assembly. Right: JT-60SA central solenoid in the assembly hall. Source: QST.

After more than 8 hectic years, the assembly of the JT-60SA fusion device is finally complete. This achievement is a major milestone that brings the world’s currently largest superconducting tokamak ready for operation.