Researchers at the National Institute of Fusion Science (NIFS) succeeded for the first time in the world in conducting a micro-level simulation of a plasma blob in the “edge region” of the plasma. This simulation ran on the Plasma Simulator supercomputer, which is dedicated exclusively to plasma and fusion science use.
Last 23rd December, our group had the opportunity to attend the presentation of the new supercomputer that will be installed at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The event counted with the participation of the companies that collaborate in the start-up of the new machine: IBM, Intel, Lenovo and Fujitsu.
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.
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.
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.
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.”