EUROfusion High Level Support Team adapting to work from home

The High Level Support Team (HLST) is a unit from EUROfusion that provides support to the European fusion community to ensure optimal exploitation of the High Performance Computing (HPC) resources such as the MARCONI-fusion supercomputer at CINECA (Italy).

The HLST consists of a full-time core team at the IPP Garching (Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik) and a number of part-time members in other institutions. The latter include Xavier Sáez from our fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). To guarantee an optimal flow of communication within the unit, there are two face-to-face meetings per year in Garching, Germany, where members share their work and experiences. However, because of the Covid-19 crisis, this year this has changed.

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World’s largest superconducting tokamak is now fully assembled and ready for operation

Left: Top view of JT-60SA during the assembly. Right: JT-60SA central solenoid in the assembly hall. Source: QST.

After more than 8 hectic years, the assembly of the JT-60SA fusion device is finally complete. This achievement is a major milestone that brings the world’s currently largest superconducting tokamak ready for operation.

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How to reach high temperatures of around 150 million degrees Celsius needed for fusion?

On the 15th of April, our group leader Dr Mervi Mantsinen gave an online lecture entitled “Ion Cyclotron Resonance Frequency (ICRF) Heating in Fusion Plasmas” as part of the Fusion Technology Course of the Nuclear Engineering Master organized by the Department of Physics on Barcelona School of Industrial Engineering (ETSEIB) at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

This course offers the students an overview on selected key topics in Fusion Technology, delivered by specialist lecturers from F4E, UPC and our Fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). The course is coordinated at UPC by Dr Shimpei Futatani who moved from our Fusion group to UPC two years ago.

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BSC research on COVID-19

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center’s (BSC) team is working from home to maintain the center’s research activity and the support for users of our supercomputing infrastructures. As an example, our fusion group continues working in the search of a clean energy using online meetings to coordinate and share the work.

The aim of this post is to discuss the numerous ways in which our center is devoted to the fight against coronavirus including new research projects that have been started related to it. Also, it will highlight external investigations aimed at fighting the pandemic which have been granted priority access to the MareNostrum 4 supercomputer and other BSC infrastructures.

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EPS Conference on Plasma Physics has been postponed to 2021

More than two years ago, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) was chosen as the Local Organizer for the 47th European Physical Society (EPS) Conference on Plasma Physics on June 22-26, 2020, in Sitges, Spain. Since then, our Fusion research group has been coordinating the different tasks to prepare for this big event with the support of numerous BSC staff members and the professional conference organizer Bco Congresos.

Due to the on-going coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, our BSC team together with the EPS Plasma Physics Division Board and the Programme Committee came recently to the conclusion that it is best to postpone the conference by one year. Please find our joint official announcement below which is also available on the conference web site.

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Europe’s first D-shaped magnet is ready for ITER

View of the first Europe’s TF magnet. A structural steel case weighing almost 200 tonnes hosts the superconducting winding pack made of niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) cable-in-conduit conductor (CICC). Source: ITER.

After a decade-long program involving more than 700 people and 40 companies, the first of 10 Toroidal Field Coils (TFC) to be procured by Fusion for Energy, ITER’s European Domestic Agency, is ready for shipment to Cadarache, France.

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