BSC Talks: Looking at the stars

Earlier this week, BSC has posted in its YouTube account the talk given by our researchers, Dani Gallart and Xavier Sáez, in the last BSC Annual Meeting.

One of the most expected activities of the Annual Meeting was the “BSC talks” that promotes the internal knowledge about the work done at BSC. The “BSC Talks” section aims to be a showcase for BSC researchers presenting the work developed in their group to the rest of colleagues of the research center in the form of brief presentations of 10 minutes.

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Sharing the Need to Know

On Friday April 26, our group leader Mervi Mantsinen joined the fellow ICREA Research Professors and ICREA administrative staff at the ICREA annual meeting, the ICREA calçot-free Calçotada 2019. The event took place in the emblematic premises of the Moritz Brewery in the heart of Barcelona.

ICREA stands for the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. It is a foundation supported by the Catalan Government and guided by a Board of Trustees. Each year ICREA launches a competitive Senior call to choose researchers through a robust, merit-based process that relies on the opinions of independent, high-profile experts who look for quality and excellence, creativity and talent.

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CONICET scientist performs a stay at our group

Alejandro Soba.

From February to August 2019, the Fusion group is receiving the visit of a scientist from Argentina, Dr. Alejandro Soba of the National Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina (CNEA) and National Scientific and Technical Research Council  (CONICET). The objective of Dr. Soba’s stay is to develop a neutron transport deterministic module for the in-house code ALYA.

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Code Camping at ITER

From the 1st to the 5th of April, our group has participated in the Code Camp of the EUROfusion “Code Development for Integrated Modelling” (WPCD) Work Package at ITER Headquarters in St. Paul-lez-Durance (France).

WPCD develops generic and flexible sophisticated workflows for fusion physics applications, aiming at providing a validated modular suite for the simulation of complete plasma discharges of any existing and future tokamaks, including JET, JT-60SA, ITER and DEMO.

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Our fusion lectures in the UPC Fusion Technology Course

Dr Mervi Mantsinen giving her lecture at UPC.

This spring our fusion group contributes for the fourth consecutive year to the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

This course is designed to offer 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 by Dr Shimpei Futatani who moved from our Fusion group to UPC last year.

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Getting ready for new experimental campaigns at JET

Mervi Mantsinen and Dani Gallart at JET.

The Joint European Torus (JET) is getting ready for a new campaign with deuterium (D) fuel mixture at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK. After this D campaign, a tritium (T) campaign is planned to follow. These campaigns are made in preparation for the eventual D-T campaign with a fusion reactor relevant 50%-50% D-T fuel mixture. It will be the second D-T campaign at JET; the first D-T campaign at JET was carried out in 1997. The production and physics of born alphas (He-4) at 3.5MeV due to D-T fusion reactions will be tested and assessed with the ITER-like-wall made of beryllium (Be) and tungsten (W).

As high-performance discharges are sought, the control of high-Z impurity transport will play a key role during this campaign. One of the main goals is to keep the impurity accumulation at the plasma core low. In this regard, large efforts have been carried out by the experimental and modelling team during the preparation of these campaigns.

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