China launches the series production of HTS current leads for ITER

Pair of current leads (in/out) at ASIPP (Photo: ITER)

High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) current leads are a key technology of the ITER magnet system, transmitting the huge currents (up to 68 kA) from the power supplies at room temperature to the low temperature superconducting coils installed in the fusion reactor. ITER’s large coils will need 60 current leads located at the end of the magnet feeders, thus operating in a lower magnetic field and reducing the heat load compared to conventional current leads. In fact, the higher cost of HTS current leads is by far compensated by the savings in the operation of the cryoplant.

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New summer interns at BSC Fusion Group

Marta Florido and Adam Teixido, both 4th year bachelor students at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya’s CFIS programme (Centre de Formació Interdisciplinària Superior), have joined us this summer with an internship program. Both internships are part of the BSC International Summer HPC Internship Programme aims to encourage students to start a research career in our multidisciplinary research center. The Severo Ochoa award funds this Programme.

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Fusion at the 2019 PUMPS Summer School

Participants in PUMPS+AI Summer School at UPC.

As customary in previous years, last week the 10th Edition of the PUMPS Summer School (Programming and Tuning Massively Parallel Systems) was held at Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC). The course is organized by Barcelona Supercomputing Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UPC, and HiPEAC Network of Excellence. Our team member José Lorenzo had the opportunity to attend the course.

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Plasmagic, and more, at ITER Open Doors Day

Interactive displayes at the ITER Open Doors Day.

On 18 May 2019, the ITER Organization and the European agency for ITER, Fusion for Energy, organized the 14th ITER Open Doors Day with more than 800 visitors.

The ITER Open Doors Day is a great opportunity to learn more about the ITER Project and to tour the massive construction works currently underway in Caradache, France. The event is free to charge and is divided into two parts.

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Starting a new experimental campaign at JET

View from the JET control room during this week’s experiments.

The new EUROfusion experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus (JET) located at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), UK started earlier this week.

Our group leader Mervi Mantsinen participates in this new experimental campaign as one of the two scientific coordinators of experiment M18-05 “ICRH scenario support in D and T plasmas” at JET. This means that she is in charge of the scientific planning of this experiment and the coordination of its international team of approximately 45 scientists from various institutions all over Europe.

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