News – Page 34 – Fusion Group

BSC Turbulence Research features in EUROfusion Newsletter

December 15, 2016December 17, 2016

This month’s edition of the EUROfusion‘s Newsletter reported on the research done by the fusion community on Plasma Turbulence using as an example the last Transport Task Force Meeting, which counted with the presence of our Fusion group member Felipe Nathan de Oliveira.

The meeting, held at Leysin, in Switzerland, was attended by various scientists from around the globe and was an important step in the efforts of a global community in reaching the same goal, a clean and limitless energy source.

JET to validate a key computing system for ITER

December 13, 2016December 19, 2016

A key computing system for the ITER international fusion device has been installed in the JET tokamak and is now being validated on an operational fusion experiment ahead of ITER’s start-up in 2025.

This computing system is the ITER synchronous databus network and it is a core part of the plasma control system. It consists of “a high performance software/hardware stack for interconnecting diagnostic and control systems on a tokamak”, Adam Stephen, CODAS project manager at Culham, explains.

ICREA and ERC contribute to top research in Catalonia

November 30, 2016November 30, 2016

Nature published last Thursday an article on how Catalonia has succeed keeping a high research level getting over budget cuts of 39%. The article, titled “Staying a steady course through the storm“, explains the keys for this success.

Arcadi Navarro, Secretary for Universities and Research, describes the secret for this success: “The crucial thing that guaranteed resilience was to focus policies on people, not on projects.”. Catalonia focused on attracting top researchers with European competitive salaries through an institution devoted to this goal: ICREA. The institute contracts top researcher making them professors for life with internationally competitive salaries.

Shutdown time for JET, lots of work for the fusion community!

November 23, 2016November 24, 2016

cp13j-033-005-720x260 — An internal view of JET reactor (courtesy of EUROfusion).

The Joint European Torus (JET) is going to take a well-earned shutdown after the 2015-16 experimental campaign which is believed to be one of the most successful campaigns of JET history.

According to the Head of the JET Exploitation Unit, Lorne Horton, “the campaign had three highlights: rehearsal of the procedures for future tritium-tritium and deuterium-tritium experiments, the hydrogen campaign during which physicists learned about the dependence of plasma parameters on the mass of the hydrogen fuel used, and the high-power deuterium campaign. And all these experiments achieved expected results.”

Join us! We are looking for a student for internship in fusion modelling

November 11, 2016November 14, 2016

Our fusion group has recently expanded its research activities to the simulation of fusion reactor materials, in particular investigating the formation and evolution of radiation generated defects in metal alloys.

Due to the complex character of these alloys, an accurate treatment is often only posible up to some hundred atoms. The BigDFT code, co-developed by BSC, has potential to go beyond this limitation and treat systems which have not been accessible so far.

First results of NSTX-U

November 8, 2016November 8, 2016

The new NSTX-U center stack (photo by Elle Starkman/PPPL).

Researchers from the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratories (PPPL) presented first results from the research on the National Spherical Torus Experiment Upgrade (NSTX-U) at the 26th International Atomic Energy Agency Conference (IAEA) in Kyoto, Japan.

The upgrade finished in May 2016 made the NSTX-U the most powerful fusion facility of its kind, since it doubled the magnetic field strength, plasma current and heating power capability of the predecessor facility. To achieve this the central stack (solenoid) was widened.