The Research Proposal defence of the BSC fusion group’s PhD student Tomás Bensadón took place on Wednesday 20th of October via Zoom. The topic of Tomás’ PhD research project is “Analysis of ITER performance with different heating schemes using predictive integrated plasma modelling“. The project is supervised by the group’s leader ICREA Research Prof. Dr. Mervi Mantsinen, tutored by UPC Prof. Dr. Lluís Batet and funded by EUROfusion.
The BSC Fusion Group’s researcher Julio Gutiérrez Moreno will be attending and will present our recent progress on the FusionCAT ab initio materials modelling activities at the next International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials (ICFRM-20) conference. ICFRM is the premier international conference and the leading platform for materials experts studying, developing and qualifying materials for fusion energy facilities from all over the world. This biannual conference focuses on fusion related structural, functional, plasma facing materials, including also irradiation effects, and materials engineering and technologies.
Earlier this month, our BSC fusion group attended for the first time the Annual meeting of the Spanish Nuclear Society (Sociedad Nuclear Española). The 46th edition of this annual event (link to full programme with papers) took place in Granada from 6th to the 8th of October. This congress is a key event for stakeholders from state, industry and research sectors with interest in the Spanish nuclear energy sphere to meet, network and discuss the future of the field. Our group member Pedro Bonilla presented BSC’s multi-physics simulation capabilities as a first step to enhance our collaborations in the field.
During the weekend of October 9 and 10, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) organized several activities to celebrate the opening of its new corporate headquarters, a 12,000-square-meter building with a capacity for 530 workers which will allow greater interaction between the researchers at the center.
Physicists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have combined a new machine learning strategy with their computer models to drastically improve the accuracy of simulations modelling Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). This technique leverages past experiments to calibrate simulations, enabling to predict the outcome of new experiments with higher accuracy than simulations on their own.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Centre -Centro Nacional de Supercomputacion (BSC) coordinates FusionCAT, an initiative that brings together seven Catalan institutions to collaborate in the field of research and development of fusion energy technology. The cutting-edge tools to develop are focused on High-Performance simulations of several coupled physics phenomena that take place in fusion reactors. These go from fuel production to energy harvesting, including plasma and neutron transport and new materials development.