Six Rings to Rule the ITER Plasma

PF5 lifted with 18 clamps before cold tests in F4E Poloidal Field Coils Winding Factory at the ITER site, Cadarache. Source: F4E.

Due to their exceptionally large dimensions, four of the six poloidal field coils that will be installed in the ITER machine cannot be produced off site and shipped, and therefore have to be manufactured in the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility, a factory set up on the ITER site in Caradache, France. Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Domestic Agency, is in charge of procuring five of these magnets, and manages the Poloidal Field Coils Winding Facility and the contractors involved in their fabrication.

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Virtual tour to the MareNostrum supercomputer

Screenshot MareNostrum supercomputer online tour. Source Matterport.com

The Barcelona Supercomputer Center has enabled a virtual tour of the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer. This tour allows to discover one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe located in the beautiful chapel of Torre Girona. The chapel maintains ornamental elements such as stained glass and religious images that can be appreciated in the online visit. Moreover,  the tour gives access to parts restricted to the public such as the inside of the supercomputer cage.

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Join us for a webinar on “Faster Fusion through innovations” by Dr Gryaznevich from Tokamak Energy

We are excited to announce that we will host a webinar “Faster Fusion through innovations by Dr Mikhail Gryaznevich who is the founder, the Chief Scientist and a member of the executive board of Tokamak Energy. Tokamak Energy is a private fusion power research company based in the United Kingdom that has built several tokamaks with the aim of reaching commercial fusion power generation.

Date: September 14th, 2020
Time: 11:00-12:30 (CET); connections enabled from 10:30 am (CET) onwards.

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Congratulations to David Zarzoso on his Habilitation thesis in Fusion

Photo: David Zarzoso

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.

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Welcome to MARCONI100, a new tool for fusion research

MARCONI 100 (Photo: CINECA)

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.

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Major milestone reached with the fusion megaproject

Source: ITER.

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.

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