Figure 1. ST40 spherical tokamak and expected plasma. Source Tokamak Energy
On September 14th, our Fusion Group had the pleasure to organize the second FusionCAT webinar together with BSC as the FusionCAT project coordinator.
The webinar given by Dr Mikhail Gryaznevich, Chief Scientist at Tokamak Energy Ltd was entitled Faster Fusion through Innovations and it was attended by 53 participants from diverse nationalities and backgrounds. The discussion delved into the increasingly significant role of private funded fusion research and the particular scientific innovations of Tokamak Energy.
The Fusion Group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is looking for candidates holding a PhD in a nuclear fusion related field (see below) or with a research engineering background.
The latest number of the prestigious Nuclear Fusion journal co-published by IAEA and IOP Publishing is a Special Issue of selected papers originating from the 16th IAEA technical meeting on energetic particles in magnetic confinement systems—theory of plasma instabilities. Held in Shizuoka, Japan, on 3–6 September 2019, this meeting brought together about 100 experts from nuclear fusion research sites worldwide to discuss the physics of energetic particles and plasma instabilities, at the first joint meeting from the two scientific disciplines.
The Special Issue contains the following three papers with contributions from our group related to heating fusion plasmas with electromagnetic waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) in ITER and JET.
We are pleased to announce that our group has been awarded a new research project within the State R&D Program Oriented to the Challenges of the Society 2019 in Spain. It was one of the almost 3000 projects financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation with a total program budget of 363.13 M€.
Our new project FUSION CODES II is a continuation of our earlier FUSION CODES project (2016-2019) by three more years. As its predecessor, it is directed towards contributing to the development of nuclear fusion as a safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy source for future generations. In particular, it is directed towards ITER, an international nuclear fusion R&D project, which is currently building the world’s largest experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in southern France. ITER aims to demonstrate that fusion energy is scientifically and technologically feasible. It is the bridge towards DEMO, a first fusion energy plant that will demonstrate large-scale production of electricity.
Three of the 29 Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS) in Spain: Alba synchrotron, TJ-II heliac fusion reactor and MareNostrum supercomputer.
The Unique Scientific and Technical Infrastructures (ICTS) in Spain are facilities, resources and services for the development of top-quality cutting-edge research as well as communication, exchange, and preservation of knowledge, technology transfer, and promotion of innovation. They are either unique or exceptional in their fields, have a high cost of investment, maintenance, and operation, and are of a strategic importance that justifies their availability to all actors in the field of R&D&I.
For example, the Gran Telescopio de Canarias (the Great Telescope of the Canary Islands) is used, among others, to monitor potentially dangerous asteroids and the ALBA synchrotron is used to study the material’s internal structure. They all share three fundamental characteristics: they are infrastructures with public ownership, unique and open to competitive access.
I am Lara San Martín Suárez, and from the 22nd of June to the 30th of August 2020 I have been a summer internship student at the Fusion Group in Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), selected to take part in their annual International Summer HPC Internship Programme.
I started my internship when Barcelona was still in the second phase of the de-escalation government plan, caused by the COVID-19 outbreak that happened at the beginning of this year. Because of that, I started the Programme by working from home, and due to the instability of the pandemic during these months I did the whole internship this way.
