BSC Fusion group joins SC20

Supercomputing 2020 (SC20) logo (sc20.supercomputing.org).

Supercomputing (SC) conference, which takes place yearly in November, is considered the main event in High-Performance Computing (HPC). It is specially booked in the agenda of HPC researchers around the world and it is one of the most important events for many researchers at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The conference is promoted and sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society and has been held since 1988 in the USA. This year, for the first time, it is taking place virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic from November 9 to 19.

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Overview on MAST Upgrade’s first plasma shot

The MAST-Upgrade tokamak commenced operation with its first plasma at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, the United Kingdom on 29 October 2020. As a result of the seven-year upgrade programme for the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST), essentially a complete new fusion device was built with a stronger magnetic field and higher heating power.

Prof. Ian Chapman, the chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority said: “MAST Upgrade will take us closer to delivering sustainable, clean fusion energy. This experiment will break new ground and test technology that has never been tried before. It will be a vital testing facility on our journey to delivering the STEP fusion power plant.”

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Our Fusion Group’s project on Tungsten modelling by Linear Scaling DFT granted by RES

We are pleased to announce that our group has been awarded a new project at the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES). RES will provide over 2 million CPU/h for the next 4 months (November 2020 – February 2021), with a likely extension for a second 4-month period (until June 2021) making a total of 4,397,000 CPU/h. We will use the RES top-quality resources in MareNostrum 4, equipped with 165,888 Intel Xeon Platinum 8160 cores, 2.10GHz with Intel Omni-Path.

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FusionCAT Annual Meeting 2020

The FusionCAT Annual Meeting 2020 took place today, and it counted with the participation of almost 40 researchers from different backgrounds, institutions and expertise. The main development areas of the project were explained and the current status of the ongoing research was presented. Comments, questions and constructive criticism were exchanged during the discussions, helping reach the overall conclusion that the FusionCAT project is progressing well and according to schedule. Each of the groups in the consortium achieved the technical objectives that were agreed upon, and, at the same time, participated in creating an active nuclear fusion community in Catalunya.

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Barcelona fusion experts collaborate with the FuseNet Teacher Day

The first-ever edition of FuseNet Teacher’s Day, a Europe-wide webinar dedicated to promoting Fusion in high-schools, was held last Friday, October the 2nd. The event brought together teachers from all around Europe, scattered into 18 local sessions across 16 European Countries. Our BSC Fusion group, in cooperation with Fusion for Energy (F4E), the b_TEC Foundation and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), organized the Barcelona local session under the umbrella of the FusionCAT project.

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