The Ewing Event is an event held yearly by the UK Magnetics Society with a different theme related to magnets every year. This year the topic was The Road to Fusion. From all applications of magnetic technology, nuclear fusion offers perhaps the greatest potential benefit. The ability to generate emission-free electricity from abundant fuels has been a dream for centuries and an achievable goal for decades. The yearly event looked at the different routes to commercial fusion.
The development of new Tokamak concepts based on a very high magnetic field gives rise to the possibility of a new generation of compact systems and creates the opportunity to approach a family of fusion systems beyond the state of the art and thereby initiate the transition from huge machines to smaller systems compatible with concepts such as distributed generation, with less impact on the environment.
In the development of fusion systems, in addition to the conceptual evolution of elements towards new options, such as the “liquid blanket” for example, it is necessary to introduce new materials and new technologies for the construction of suitable magnets to obtain sufficiently intense magnetic fields, since low-temperature superconducting (LTS) materials are not valid for operating at the 20T [1] level required for the new designs. The quality of cables based on LTS superconducting materials is very high, as are the coils based on them [2], but LTS materials are one of the limiting factors in achieving the field values required for the new generations of compact reactors with lower cost and lower impact.
Our Fusion group member, Oriol Fernández has successfully presented his Master thesis in the Master of Modelling for Science and Engineering in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona entitled Experimental Validation of a new HPC Modelling Tool for High-Temperature Superconductors.
This thesis was based on the work Oriol has been carrying out since last February in our group in close collaboration with ICMAB (Institute of Material Science in Barcelona), under the supervision of José Lorenzo and Mervi Mantsinen. The defense was held virtually due to the Covid19 pandemic on the 8th of September.