This past weekend, 28-29 of May, two members of our group, Marina Garcia and Pol Pastells, participated in la Festa de la Ciència, with a talk for the general public in Catalan, titled “T’imagines alguna cosa més calenta que el Sol?” or “Can you imagine something hotter than the Sun?” in English.
This spring our fusion group contributed for the seventh consecutive year to the Fusion Technology Course imparted within the Nuclear Engineering MSc at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain.
This course gives the students an overview of plasma physics and fusion technology, presenting a broad scope of topics, delivered by experts in each of the fusion fields covered, mainly provided by different institutions and companies.
The development of new Tokamak concepts based on a very high magnetic field gives rise to the possibility of a new generation of compact systems and creates the opportunity to approach a family of fusion systems beyond the state of the art and thereby initiate the transition from huge machines to smaller systems compatible with concepts such as distributed generation, with less impact on the environment.
In the development of fusion systems, in addition to the conceptual evolution of elements towards new options, such as the “liquid blanket” for example, it is necessary to introduce new materials and new technologies for the construction of suitable magnets to obtain sufficiently intense magnetic fields, since low-temperature superconducting (LTS) materials are not valid for operating at the 20T [1] level required for the new designs. The quality of cables based on LTS superconducting materials is very high, as are the coils based on them [2], but LTS materials are one of the limiting factors in achieving the field values required for the new generations of compact reactors with lower cost and lower impact.
Tungsten is one of the reference plasma-facing materials in fusion power devices due to its excellent temperature resistance and low tritium retention. The investigation of the electronic structure is key for implementing tungsten-based technologies as it is strongly related to the stability and properties of the material. However, despite the large efforts in studying the electronic properties of tungsten metal, some complex features are still not properly characterised.
The combination of state-of-the-art experimental and theoretical approaches is key to describing the electronic structure of tungsten, as presented in a recent publication in Physical Review B, entitled “Lifetime effects and satellites in the photoelectron spectrum of tungsten metal“.
FusionCAT is an initiative coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC) in which seven Catalan institutions team up and collaborate in the field of research and development of fusion energy technology. The main goal is to develop state-of-the-art tools to simulate coupled physics phenomena that take place in fusion reactors leveraging the advantages of high-performance computing clusters.
Future energy production fusion reactors such as DEMO are based on the massive production of plasma neutrons. This includes their impact and effects on breeding blankets to multiply neutron output and sustain the fuel cycle. To achieve efficient energy production, the fuel cycle must be understood and optimized, which is why the second project within FusionCAT, labelled “Neutronics, tritium breeding and operational fuel cycle”, is oriented towards the analysis of the interaction between neutrons and reactor components. In this project, the first task involves the development of a high-fidelity deterministic neutron transport solver called NEUTRO.
The year 2021 is coming to its end and it is time for us to take a small break to disconnect, rest and celebrate. We would like to thank all our followers for their continued interest in our work.
For us here at the BSC Fusion group it has been a good year despite being still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in our daily lives, including our work.