The 13th International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (ISFNT) symposium took place at Kyoto, Japan, from the 25th to the 29th of September. The aim of the conference was to share the current status of fusion world wide. The speakers gave an overview on ITER construction and DEMO design and as well as present status and progress on a wide variety of fusion reactor topics.
The past weeks have been particularly busy for the MSc students Felipe Nathan de Oliveira and Marc Eixarch in our fusion group. That came to an happy end when they both presented and finished their MSc Thesis on the consecutive days, the 7th and the 8th of September. Both theses were given top marks, proving the relevance and originality of both works.
The 36th Bienal de la Real Sociedad Española de Física was held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on the 17th-21st of July. The charming city was a perfect choice to host the Spanish physical community. Its people, gastronomy and old streets are ideal to let your imagination fly after some really interesting talks.
The conference gives an idea of the research carried out in Spain. The scope of research carried out is very broad and many fields were covered, from our research topic Plasma Physics to Nuclear physics, Thermodynamics, Energy and Sustainability, Molecular Physics, Astrophysics etc. Our PhD student Dani Gallart attended the conference and contributed with a paper entitled “Heating modelling and extrapolation of hybrid plasmas at JET”.
The 44th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from the 26th to the 30th of June, 2017. It is the largest annual conference in the field organized in Europe, with more than 600 delegates each year.
This year our group members Mervi Mantsinen, Shimpei Futatani and Nathan Oliveira de Lopes participated in the conference.
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.