On 11-15 March our group leader, ICREA Research Prof. Mervi Mantsinen visited the JET tokamak at Culham, United Kingdom, to take part in the Analysis and Modelling Meeting of the EUROfusion Work Package Tokamak Exploitation (WPTE). In total, approximately 85 fusion scientists from all around Europe participated in this meeting in person.
In the realm of computational research, a new tool for HTS simulation has emerged: MAGNET. MAGNET stands as a revolutionary module designed for simulating the magnetic behavior of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS). Embedded within the renowned Alya suite, a software developed by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and optimized for High-Performance Computing (HPC), MAGNET has recently undergone benchmarking that unveils its potential.
The Joint European Torus (JET) already reached the world fusion energy record back in December 2021, but as if that were not enough, it has done it yet again, two years later, during December 2023 with 69 megajoules using a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel, beating the previous record of 59 megajoules. This is roughly the energy needed for a hairdryer to work for 10 hours nonstop. The importance of this new feat stems from the evident new knowledge that the fusion community has acquired in recent times that has allowed for such a steady advancement in the field.
On February 29, in the CIEMAT headquarters in Madrid (Spain), a Workshop entitled “Fusión nuclear: iniciativas hacia DEMO” was organized by CIEMAT, CDTI, and Ineustar/Induciencia in close collaboration with IFMIF-DONES, UNED, University of Sevilla (US) and Technical University of Madrid (UPM). Alejandro Soba and Dani Gallart from our research group attended this event.
The main objectives of the workshop were to encourage public-private collaboration initiatives in the field, analyze Spain’s strengths in the different key technologies and discuss the plans for the future DEMO reactor.
Alfvénic instabilities driven by energetic particles pose a challenge to the efficient operation of magnetic confinement fusion devices. These modes can dispel fast ions leading to the introduction of significant heat loads onto plasma facing components and degradation of overall plasma confinement. One class of Alfvénic instabilities known as reversed shear Alfvén eigenmodes (RSAEs) are of particular risk in devices with reversed shear rotational transform profiles. Reversed shear configurations have recently been of interest because of their enhancement to confinement quality. With this in mind, further study of RSAEs is necessary.
From 12/02/2024 to 16/02/2024, the 2024 JOREK code meeting was held at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, organized with the support of Cristian Sommariva and Mengdi Kong from the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), adopting a hybrid format. The meeting was greatly appreciated by the large community of code users and developers, with over 60 registered people, of which 30 were in-person.