After two years of virtual conferences, the 9th BSC Doctoral Symposium came back as an in-person event that took place from 10 to 12 May in the campus of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain. Over the three days, numerous students and postdoc researchers presented their work on a wide range of research areas ranging from Electronic and Atomic Protein Modelling, Earth Systems services, Propulsion Technologies and Computer Architecture to HPC techniques and algorithms in Computer Science.
This past weekend, 28-29 of May, two members of our group, Marina Garcia and Pol Pastells, participated in la Festa de la Ciència, with a talk for the general public in Catalan, titled “T’imagines alguna cosa més calenta que el Sol?” or “Can you imagine something hotter than the Sun?” in English.
Family photo of the CASE members at the Retreat 2022.
On Wednesday 18th of May the Computer Applications in Science & Engineering (CASE) department of BSC, to which our Fusion group belongs, resumed its annual Retreat paused since 2019. The full day event was held in the Vertex Building in the same UPC university campus where the BSC’s headquarters is located and was designed for newcomers to know all the department, and for everyone to catch up and bond after 2 years of predominantly working from home. Furthermore, it was an opportunity to have a first hand overview of the current state and future plans of the whole department’s projects and research, from the groups leaders and the head of the department Prof. Dr. José María Cela’s.
This course gives the students an overview of plasma physics and fusion technology, presenting a broad scope of topics, delivered by experts in each of the fusion fields covered, mainly provided by different institutions and companies.
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.
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.
