From 27 to 28 November, our Fusion Group had the honor of hosting the 2nd Annual Meeting of the EUROfusion HPC Advanced Computing Hubs (ACHs) at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Spain. After a successful virtual first meeting, this event marked a significant return to in-person collaboration, bringing together around 29 researchers, 26 attending in person and 3 connecting virtually, from the five Hub centers: BSC-CIEMAT (Spain), EPFL (Switzerland), IPPLM (Poland), IPP Garching (Germany), and VTT (Finland).
The campus of the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching, Germany, served as the venue for the EUROfusion E-TASC General Meeting.
In the context of the EUROfusion consortium, a programme has been established with the objective of coordinating theoretical and advanced simulation activities in order to address some of the inherent challenges associated with fusion research. This initiative is designated “E-TASC,” an acronym for “EUROfusion-Theory and Advanced Simulation Coordination.” The E-TASC is structured around two interrelated components: (1) specific projects, designated as Theory-Simulation-Verification-Validation (TSVV) Tasks, facilitate fundamental research in science, engineering, and technology that addresses pivotal questions pertaining to the fusion roadmap missions; and (2) Advanced Computing Hubs (ACHs) which provide scientific computing, data management, code integration, and/or software engineering support for the TSVVs and contribute to the development of a new portfolio of EUROfusion Standard Software for the R&D program in support of ITER, associated facilities, and DEMO design.
The EUROfusion E-TASC General Meeting was held between November 11 and November 16 at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics in Garching, Munich, Germany. The Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics is one of the largest fusion research centers in Europe.
Hi! I’m Diego Bonato, and I have joined the Fusion group to carry out my master’s thesis! My internship will last 6 months, from September 2024 to March 2025, and it’s funded by FuseNet. I will be supervised by Alejandro Soba and Eduardo Cabrera.
During my stay at BSC, I will be working on the development of a Deep Learning model to accelerate the solution of Maxwell’s equations in the context of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) simulations. This tool will help improve the performance of MAGNET, a package developed in the Fusion group, which simulates HTS in various scenarios. This will be crucial to study the next generation of fusion reactors.
Between October 7 and 9, the 6th MareNostrum Hackathon took place in the Auditorium of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) Headquarters.
The members of the Fusion Group who belong to the EUROfusion Advance Computing Hub (ACH) attended this event to deploy, test, port, and optimize plasma fusion codes on the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer. With the assistance of an extraordinary team of mentors and experts, we worked together on the improvement of several codes assigned to our ACH. The group worked on ERO2, BIT1 and XTORK, sharing expertise, experiences and suggestions.
From April 8th through 10th (2024) the ITER Organizationgathered researchers, industry partners and all members of the international neutronics community in Cadarache, where the fusion reactor homonymous to the organisation is undergoing construction, to host the 15th Neutronics Meeting and Fusion Neutronics Workshop. Aiming to discuss recent advancements, issues and successes in the neutronics field, the meeting covered several topics including ITER neutronics, safety issues, computational tools and nuclear data relevant to nuclear fusion, shielding materials, damage, heating, waste production and management and neutron sources, among others.
Ezequiel Goldberg, member of the Fusion Group, attended the meeting where researchers made presentations from both public and private institutions from Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Slovenia, the UK, the US, Russia, India, Korea, Japan, China, and international organisations such as the ITER Organization and the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).
