BSC Fusion Group at Virtual SOFT2020

Virtual SOFT 2020.

Our team member José Lorenzo attended the 31st edition of the Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT2020) that was held virtually last week. The event was organized by the Ruđer Bošković Institute (IRB), the largest Croatian research institute in natural sciences and technology. In normal circumstances SOFT 2020 would have taken place in Dubrovnik, Croatia, but due to the COVID-19 pandemics the organizing committee decided to run the event virtually. As explained by the Chair of the International Organizing Committee Dr Tonci Tadic, “delaying or postponing SOFT 2020 was not an option due to the fast development of fusion research and the exciting decade of fusion successes ahead of us”.

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Our recent papers published in open-access RF Topical Conference Proceedings

The RF Topical Conference is held every two years by a different host. Last year it took place at Hefei, China. From our Fusion Group Dr Dani Gallart had the chance to participate to the event; you can read more about his experience in this earlier post.

The RF Topical Conference tackles several radio-frequency topics in plasmas such as: experiments, modelling, interactions of wave and plasma edge and other related subjects. Recently, the conference contributions from the 2019 edition have been  published in the AIP Conference Proceedings and are in open-access. The Fusion Group has contributed to a total of 6 papers which are briefly described in the following:

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Privately funded fusion innovations presented at the second FusionCAT webinar

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.

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Our latest papers in Nuclear Fusion journal

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.

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FUSION CODES II: our new research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation

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.

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