On April 23rd, Catalonia celebrates “La Diada de Sant Jordi,” or Saint Jordi’s Day, a deeply ingrained tradition and one of the region’s most cherished occasions. While the original custom involved men presenting women with a red rose and women gifting men a book, it has evolved, allowing anyone to give a book, a rose, or both to anyone they choose.
The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility – Demo Oriented NEutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) has officially started its construction phase in Granada, Spain. On 16 March, the official DONES Steering Committee met for its first meeting in Granada and to celebrate the formal start of construction.
On March 8, coinciding with the International Women’s Day, our group attended the webinar “Improving gender balance in the nuclear sector: Report launch“ organized by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The nuclear industry is a crucial part of our energy infrastructure, providing a significant portion of the world’s electricity. However, the sector has traditionally been male-dominated, with women making up only a small fraction (less than 25%) of the workforce. The same applies to its sub-sectors including fusion where our group belongs.
In the webinar on March 8, a report was launched to address the issue of gender imbalance in the nuclear sector. The report provides insights and recommendations based on the first publicly available international data on gender balance in the nuclear sector. The data was collected from over 8 000 women in the nuclear workforce in 32 countries, as well as human resources data from 96 nuclear organisations in 17 countries. Based on the findings, a comprehensive, evidence-driven policy framework is proposed with practical recommendations.
In celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 Feb, the Fusion Group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center highlights the past women speakers at the Fusion HPC Workshop, held virtually each year since 2020. This workshop covers all computer applications using High Performance Computing (HPC) in the field of fusion research.
The Fusion Industry Association (FIA), a non-profit advocacy organization representing nearly 30 fusion start-ups, released its second annual report on the state of the global fusion industry this July. The report provides an update on the milestones achieved in the last year by each of 33 companies surveyed as well as an aggregated picture of growth in the industry as a whole using data collected from the companies.
Women in Fusion (WiF) is a global platform to inspire and support women in the Fusion field through sharing experiences, promoting leadership, and encouraging greater recognition for women’s contributions to Fusion. Their website, launched earlier this summer, offers information about the platform and participants of all genders are welcome to join. The website provides community forums for discussion which are open to all registered users as well as information about gender discrepancies in the Fusion workforce.
WiF was established in 2021 following a successful webinar at the Fusion Energy Conference (FEC2020) which clearly showed the need to increase the representation of women in Fusion science and research. The organization is the fruit of a collaboration between IAEA, ITER, Fusion for Energy, General Atomics and EUROfusion. The first WiF event is scheduled for 2023.