News – Page 33 – Fusion Group

BSC Fusion group improves the performance of fusion codes for EUROfusion

April 21, 2017

On 20 April 2017, our Fusion group researcher Xavier Sáez visited the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany, to participate in the bi-annual meeting of the EUROfusion High Level Support Team (HLST).

Xavier presented the work developed in the group to improve the performance of SFINCS and FELTOR codes. SFINCS is a novel drift-kinetic solver which can be used to predict neoclassical flows in 3D magnetic configurations while FELTOR solves 3D full-F gyrofluid model equations with discontinuous Galerkin method.

BSC Fusion Group teams up to win a PRACE supercomputer project

April 7, 2017April 7, 2017

The project ZONALGENE, led by Dr Jeronimo Garcia (CEA, France), has been awarded with computing time amongst the 117 proposals submitted in the 14th Call for PRACE Project Access. Our fusion group will collaborate in this project to perform non-linear analysis of zonal flow generation in magnetically confined plasmas on the new MareNostrum supercomputer at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC).

Farewell to Helios

March 28, 2017

It is time to say goodbye to the Helios supercomputer located in the International Fusion Energy Research Centre (IFERC) in Rokkasho, Japan, hosted by the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority (JAEA).

From 2011 to 2016 Helios was one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers with a peak performance of more than 1.5 Petaflop/s. Its main goal was to give scientists the opportunity to perform complex calculations in plasma physics.

Our research stays at the world’s largest fusion device with EUROfusion

March 21, 2017March 21, 2017

Areal view of the JET site *(photo: ccfe.ac.uk).*

Our fusion group members Dani Gallart and Mervi Mantsinen are currently stationed at the JET tokamak, the world’s largest fusion device located at the Culham Science Center, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

At JET, Dani and Mervi are taking part in the EUROfusion modelling and analysis tasks in the preparation of the next campaigns. In particular, they are working to improve the preparedness of fusion simulation codes to simulate plasmas with tritium.

New incorporation to the Editorial Board of Plasma journal

March 15, 2017March 15, 2017

Our Fusion Group Leader Dr Mervi Mantsinen has joined the Editorial Board of Plasma journal published by MDPI.

Plasma is a new open-access, cross-disciplinary scholarly journal of scientific studies related to all aspects of plasma science, such as plasma physics, plasma chemistry and space plasma. Topics also include experimental and theoretical results, and progress of interdisciplinary and application sciences in this field.

Fusion Simulation Code Selected for Optimization on Three Pre-exascale Supercomputers

March 14, 2017March 14, 2017

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected the XGC code in Early Science programs for optimization on three powerful new supercomputers, which will serve as forerunners for even more powerful exascale machines that are to begin operating in the United States in the early 2020’s.