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Main takeaways from the Colloquium “Advancing methods for fusion neutronics: An overview of Workflows and nuclear analysis activities at UKAEA”

Source: Advancing Methods for Fusion Neutronics: An Overview of Workflows and Nuclear Analysis Activities at UKAEA, PPPL Colloquium.

On 4 August, our Fusion group’s members Ezequiel Goldberg and Martí Circuns i Duxans attended a Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) colloquium entitled “Advancing Methods for Fusion Neutronics: An Overview of Workflows and Nuclear Analysis Activities at UKAEA” with invited speakers Alex Valentine (Senior Nuclear Radiation Analyst) and Jonathan Naish (Lead for STEP Neutronics) from the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).

Ezequiel and Martí found the Colloquium highly interesting, informative and directly relevant to the activities in our group. In particular, within FusionCAT project, we are developing a high-fidelity deterministic neutron transport solver called NEUTRO (an exhaustive description of the solver can be found in here) which solves the Boltzmann stationary transport equation. The solver was created within the Alya system: a Finite Element, parallel, multi-physics framework created at BSC designed to solve different physical phenomena in a coupled way.

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Join us! We are looking for new members for EUROfusion Advanced Computing Hub at BSC

CASE members at a recent retreat

We are looking for Researchers and/or Research Engineers in Computers Science, Engineering, Physics or related fields to join the growing team of the EUROfusion Advanced Computing Hub at BSC.

The successful candidates will participate in cutting-edge European R&D activities in plasma physics science and fusion technology and become members of this reference performance group in an international working environment.

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Webinar: Machine learning interatomic potentials for modelling radiation damage

Professor Kai Nordlund from the University of Helsinki gave a Computational Materials Physics talk about fusion reactor materials.

On 27 June, group members Julio Gutiérrez and Mary Kate Chessey attended a Materials Square webinar (#118) titled, “Machine learning interatomic potentials for modelling radiation damage,” with invited speaker Professor Kai Nordlund of Computational Materials Physics from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

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Top scientists from CIEMAT celebrate the ground-breaking experiments at JET

From left to right: Carlos Alejaldre, Emilia Solano, Elena de la Luna, Carlos Hidalgo, Joaquín Sánchez and Cristina de la Morena. Source: Youtube/Vídeos CIEMAT

Last February, a press release was issued communicating that a team of European scientists from many sites and laboratories working together at the JET fusion reactor in Culham, UK, were able to produce a stable plasma with an energy output of 59MJ, the largest ever achieved at a fusion reactor and a historic deed in the road towards energy production through fusion plasmas.

To celebrate this memorable achievement, the Spanish Centre for Energetic, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT) released a series of videos highlighting the role of CIEMAT and, in general, Spanish research, in the path to this accomplishment at JET.

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Meeting Climate Change Targets: The Role of Nuclear Energy

Source: https://unsplash.com/@mrgt_richd

Last Tuesday 3rd of May, our group attended the Meeting Climate Change Targets: The Role of Nuclear Energy webinar organized by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The main scope of the event was devoted to explore the role of nuclear technologies and their applications toward achieving the globally recognized goal of Net Zero. While our research is focused on developing nuclear fusion as a new source of electricity for the second half of this century, the webinar provided us with an excellent opportunity to learn about the current status of nuclear energy in the present energy policy context as well as to understand the potential role that nuclear energy could have in emission reduction.

The webinar was divided into three parts. It started with brief talks from keynote speakers, followed by a main webinar presentation by Head of the Division of Nuclear Technology Development and Economics at NEA Diane Cameron about the upcoming NEA report, and ended up with a Q&A session.

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