We are delighted to announce that Xavier Sáez from our Fusion Group has been selected as a High Level Support Team (HLST) member by the General Assembly of EUROfusion after a call for candidates that was issued in March. This news reinforces the link between Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and EUROfusion in the fusion research as an energy source.
During the two-week Culham Plasma Physics Summer School organized at Culham Science Center, UK, one of the most expected moments is the visit to Joint European Torus (JET). JET is the world’s largest operational magnetically confined plasma physics experiment. It is based on a tokamak design and is the direct predecessor to ITER, which should be operative in 2025.
JET runs only during some seconds at the time and thereafter it must rest about 20min before a new run. In a good operative day, about 20 runs are carried out. These runs are made for experimentation and no electricity is produced. However, a lot of energy is required (about a 1% of the total energy used at a given moment in the UK). This is why a direct phone line from London to the JET control room can ring at any moment, kindly requesting to stop experiments.
Our Fusion group member Marc Fuster has successfully presented his final Bachelor thesis in Physics entitled “Application of the Edge-Based Finite Element Method for fusion plasma simulation” based on the work he has been carrying out since last August in our group under supervision of Dr Shimpei Futatani. The defense took place at the Faculty of Sciences of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
The 45th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics took place in Prague, Czech Republic, from the 2nd to the 6th of July, 2018. It is the largest annual conference in the field organized in Europe. This year the conference attracted a record number of more than 850 registered participants throughout the world. Our group leader Prof. Mervi Mantsinen chaired the magnetic confinement fusion plasma section of the Program Committee.
Our researcher Xavier Sáez gave a plenary talk on “HPC for solving multi-physics problems” at the 6th International Workshop on Numerical Modelling of High-Temperature Superconductors (HTS) in Costa de Caparica, Portugal.
Xavier focused his speech on the importance of multi-physics simulations to capture all relevant phenomena to model and simulate complex systems, and the key role of High-Performance Computing (HPC) due to the high computing resources required in those simulations.
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.