In the process of fusion energy production based hydrogen heavy isotopes deuterium and tritium as fuel, high-energy neutrons are released. These neutrons have many roles in a fusion reactor.
On one side, neutrons from the fusion reactions taking place in the fuel inside the reactor vacuum vessel generate the heat that, in a fusion plant, will initiate the electricity-producing process. Moreover, neutron interaction with lithium inside the machine will produce tritium.
The Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) Facility will be built in Frascati, Rome, Italy, as has been announced by Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). It will be part of the International Center of Excellence for nuclear fusion research and will have a cost of 500 million euros.
This experimental machine will provide scientific and technological answers to some particularly complex problems of the fusion process (such as the management of very high temperatures) and stands as a “link” between ITER and DEMO international projects. Therefore DTT should operate integrating various aspects, with significant power loads, flexible divertors, plasma edge and bulk conditions approaching as much as possible those planned for DEMO, at least in terms of dimensionless parameters.
From the 3rd to the 13th of April, our fusion group has participated in the Code Camp of the EUROfusion “Code Development for Integrated Modelling” (WPCD) Work Package at Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PSNC), Poznan, Poland.
WPCD develops generic and flexible sophisticated workflows for physics applications, aiming at providing a validated modular suite for the simulation of complete plasma discharges of any existing and future tokamak, including JET, JT-60SA, ITER and DEMO.
On 12th April 2018, our Fusion group member Xavier Sáez visited the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany, to participate in the meeting of the EUROfusion High Level Support Team.
Xavier presented the completed work performed to improve the performance of FELTOR (Full-F ELectromagnetic code in TORoidal geometry), which is both a numerical library and a scientific software package built on top of it.
Our group has appeared in the last issue of “Fusion in Europe”. In the article titled as “Dan Brown, MareNostrum and Postdocs in Barcelona”, the EUROfusion newsletter gathers some data related with our group and center.
The Fusion Group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is looking for an internship student with a degree in physics or computer science. The successful candidate will become an active member of the group. The group is a multidisciplinary team that includes mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists. The research project will be decided based on the research interests of the successful candidate and the needs of the projects.