On Monday 26th June, the Catalan TV Channel 33 interviewed our group leader Prof. Mervi Mantsinen regarding to the prospects of fusion energy and its potential impact on society.
The programme was a part of the documentary series El dia de demà which investigates and discusses many possible future scenarios through the point of view of experts. The topics treated in the various programmes of the series are various, ranging from education to energy sources.
Our group members Mervi Mantsinen and Dani Gallart have participated in the paper “Efficient generation of energetic ions in multi-ion plasmas by radio-frequency heating”, currently available as Advance Online Publication on the Nature Physics website.
The ITER Organization and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center have gone one step further in their collaboration to simulate the process of fusion power generation. Both parties have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in which they agree on the importance of promoting and furthering academic and scientific cooperation in all academic and scientific fields of mutual interest and to advance the training of young researchers.
ITER is the international nuclear fusion R&D project, which is building the world’s largest experimental tokamak in France. It aims to demonstrate that fusion energy is scientifically and technologically feasible.
The Joint European Torus (JET) is going to take a well-earned shutdown after the 2015-16 experimental campaign which is believed to be one of the most successful campaigns of JET history.
According to the Head of the JET Exploitation Unit, Lorne Horton, “the campaign had three highlights: rehearsal of the procedures for future tritium-tritium and deuterium-tritium experiments, the hydrogen campaign during which physicists learned about the dependence of plasma parameters on the mass of the hydrogen fuel used, and the high-power deuterium campaign. And all these experiments achieved expected results.”
Today, Allah Rakha and Dani Gallart, two PhD students from our fusion group under the supervision of ICREA Prof. Mervi Mantsinen, exposed and defended their PhD research plans at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.
Last Tuesday 28/06/2016, our fusion group member Dani Gallart received one of the prestigious grants from “La Caixa” in order to support his PhD studies at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).
The ceremony was hosted at the Caixa Fòrum of Barcelona presided by Jaume Giró, General Director of “La Caixa” Foundation Bank, Carmen Vela, Secretary of State of Research, and Jordi Portabella, director of Research and Knowledge of “La Caixa”.
Dani was accompanied at the ceremony by Prattya Datta, another winner of the 2015 edition from BSC, Prof. Mateo Valero, Director of BSC, and Merce Calvet, Head of BSC Management Department.