On October 2, a group from the Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (CASE) department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC) visited the ITER Organisation in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France. The group included CASE director J. M. Cela; Fusion group members M. Mantsinen, D. Gallart and F. Cipolletta; and Data Pre & Post Processing group members F. Cucchietti and T. Andrade.
The ITER Business Forum 2025 (IBF) was held during 23rd–25th April in the sunny city of Marseille, France. This Forum is designed to attract the global industry involved in the realization of fusion energy, from the supply chain to companies and startups. This is a great opportunity to connect and explore new collaborations in the industry ecosystem.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center participated with representatives of the Fusion Group: Mervi Mantsinen, Federico Cipolletta, and Dani Gallart. Moreover, BSC members Andrés José Román from the Innovation and Business Development department, and Mario Ejarque and Sara Ibáñez from the Communications department, also participated, providing support in several relevant aspects. Special mention to María Paz Baghetti, our Dissemination Officer, who coordinated the preparations of our participation to the event.
On February 12, the French experimental reactor WEST (W-Tungsten Environment in Steady-State Tokamak), one of the EUROfusion consortium medium size Tokamak facilities, set a new world record by sustaining plasma stability for 1337 seconds—over 22 minutes. This milestone, announced by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), marks a significant step because maintaining plasma stability for extended periods is one of the most significant obstacles in bringing fusion power to commercial viability.
This new record surpasses the previous benchmark set by China’s EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak), which managed to sustain plasma for 1066 seconds on January 20. WEST’s world record has exceeded the recent achievement of the Chinese reactor by 25%.
From 28 to 30 January, our group leader Mervi Mantsinen attended the 32nd European Fusion Programme Workshop in Granada, Spain. More than a hundred experts in fusion physics and technology took part and shared their progress and visions within the European Fusion Programme.
This year’s theme was “Nuclear Engineering and Physics for Fusion Power Plants”, and key topics included “Materials Testing”, “Fuel Cycle and Shelter”, “Fusion Reactor Life Cycle and Safety” and “Towards Fusion Power Plants”. Participants also had the opportunity to visit the University of Granada-DONES Research Centre in Escúzar, Granada.
It is our pleasure to host the 5th Fusion HPC Workshop as an online event on November 21-22, 2024.
This workshop follows the virtual 4th Fusion HPC Workshop, which took place on November 29-30, 2023, and attracted 385 registrations worldwide.
