News – Page 21 – Fusion Group

How to reach high temperatures of around 150 million degrees Celsius needed for fusion?

April 16, 2020

On the 15^th of April, our group leader Dr Mervi Mantsinen gave an online lecture entitled “Ion Cyclotron Resonance Frequency (ICRF) Heating in Fusion Plasmas” as part of the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by the Department of Physics on Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

This course offers the students an overview on selected key topics in Fusion Technology, delivered by specialist lecturers from F4E, UPC and our Fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The course is coordinated at UPC by Dr Shimpei Futatani who moved from our Fusion group to UPC two years ago.

BSC research on COVID-19

April 12, 2020

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s (BSC) team is working from home to maintain the center’s research activity and the support for users of our supercomputing infrastructures. As an example, our fusion group continues working in the search of a clean energy using online meetings to coordinate and share the work.

The aim of this post is to discuss the numerous ways in which our center is devoted to the fight against coronavirus including new research projects that have been started related to it. Also, it will highlight external investigations aimed at fighting the pandemic which have been granted priority access to the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer and other BSC infrastructures.

EPS Conference on Plasma Physics has been postponed to 2021

April 3, 2020April 5, 2020

More than two years ago, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) was chosen as the Local Organizer for the 47th European Physical Society (EPS) Conference on Plasma Physics on June 22-26, 2020, in Sitges, Spain. Since then, our Fusion research group has been coordinating the different tasks to prepare for this big event with the support of numerous BSC staff members and the professional conference organizer Bco Congresos.

Due to the on-going coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, our BSC team together with the EPS Plasma Physics Division Board and the Programme Committee came recently to the conclusion that it is best to postpone the conference by one year. Please find our joint official announcement below which is also available on the conference web site.

Europe’s first D-shaped magnet is ready for ITER

March 27, 2020March 27, 2020

View of the first Europe’s TF magnet. A structural steel case weighing almost 200 tonnes hosts the superconducting winding pack made of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC). Source: ITER.

After a decade-long program involving more than 700 people and 40 companies, the first of 10 Toroidal Field Coils (TFC) to be procured by Fusion for Energy, ITER’s European Domestic Agency, is ready for shipment to Cadarache, France.

Apply now to BSC International Summer HPC Internship Programme!

March 19, 2020March 27, 2020

The International Summer HPC Internship Programme at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is an international call which opens 8 to 16 intern positions at BSC for a duration of up to 10 weeks within the summer period from June to September, 2020. The interns will carry out research in one of BSC’s Departments (Computer Sciences, Computer Application in Science and Engineering, Earth Sciences and Life Sciences). The BSC’s Severo Ochoa award funds this call.

The programme aims to encourage students to start their research career in our multidisciplinary research center.

JET plasmas burning again with the promise of the D-T plasmas at the end of a long run

March 13, 2020

The Joint European Torus (JET) chamber. Photo: CCFE

The Joint European Torus (JET) is the biggest operating tokamak in the world and the only one capable of performing deuterium-tritium (D-T) experiments. This plasma mixture, D-T, is specially relevant in magnetic confinement fusion as its fusion cross section peaks at relatively low energies as compared to other plasma compositions, in other words, it is easier to obtain a large number of fusion reactions. In fact, D-T experiments were already carried out at JET during the 90s, they are known in the community as the DTE1 experiments, and they have provided an invaluable source of experimental knowledge.