The 13th International Symposium on Fusion Nuclear Technology (ISFNT) symposium took place at Kyoto, Japan, from the 25th to the 29th of September. The aim of the conference was to share the current status of fusion world wide. The speakers gave an overview on ITER construction and DEMO design and as well as present status and progress on a wide variety of fusion reactor topics.
The past weeks have been particularly busy for the MSc students Felipe Nathan de Oliveira and Marc Eixarch in our fusion group. That came to an happy end when they both presented and finished their MSc Thesis on the consecutive days, the 7th and the 8th of September. Both theses were given top marks, proving the relevance and originality of both works.
The 36th Bienal de la Real Sociedad Española de Física was held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on the 17th-21st of July. The charming city was a perfect choice to host the Spanish physical community. Its people, gastronomy and old streets are ideal to let your imagination fly after some really interesting talks.
The conference gives an idea of the research carried out in Spain. The scope of research carried out is very broad and many fields were covered, from our research topic Plasma Physics to Nuclear physics, Thermodynamics, Energy and Sustainability, Molecular Physics, Astrophysics etc. Our PhD student Dani Gallart attended the conference and contributed with a paper entitled “Heating modelling and extrapolation of hybrid plasmas at JET”.
Machine-learning researchers at Google Research have developed in collaboration with researchers at Tri Alpha Energy a new computer algorithm which has significantly speeded up the optimization of its C-2U plasma generator.
On 25 July, the researchers published a report in the journal Scientific Reports describing the “Optometrist Algorithm” , a machine-learning tool that aids in choosing parameters to hold hotter nuclear plasma for longer periods in fusion experiments, one of the keys to cracking the complex code of nuclear fusion.
The Institute of Plasma Physics at Chinese Academy of Sciences have set a new world record in fusion by achieving 101.2 seconds in the so-called H-mode confinement regime in a fusion reactor on the 3rd of July.
The experiment was conducted on Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor at the Institute of Physical Science in Hefei, China.
