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.
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.”
This week, 14-18 November 2016, Mervi Mantsinen and Felipe Nathan de Oliveira have participated in the 2017 Planning meeting of EUROfusion Work Package on Medium Size Tokamaks (WP MST1) at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasmaphysics, Garching, Germany.
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.
From 2nd to 4th of November, the BSC Fusion group member Felipe Nathan attended the “HPC methods for Computational Fluid Dynamics and Astrophysics” held at CINECA, the facility which hosts the supercomputer Marconi-Fusion, the new European High Performance Computer for fusion applications.
Last week, 24-26 October 2016, our fusion group member Shimpei Futatani attended the ITPA Meeting in Naka, which provides a framework for internationally coordinated fusion research activities.
Shimpei gave an oral presentation on his work ‘Non-linear MHD modelling of pellet triggered ELMs’ at the meeting. The work contributes to the physics understanding of pellet triggered ELM in JET and ASDEX Upgrade tokamaks and has been carried out within EUROfusion, the European Consortium for the Development of Fusion Energy.