Galeria

Whether it’s the 21st Century’s version of Stars Wars is yet to be seen. But advocates of nuclear fusion are saying that it would be life-changing while politicos are helping to bring it one step closer to reality.  

Fusion is responsible for powering the sun and stars. So, the ultimate goal is to imitate that process on earth. Indeed, the countries bankrolling the science hope to have a reactor erected in France by 2019 -- one that could be replicated so as to produce electricity at commercial scale. To that end, the European Commission has drafted a plan to inject $1.7 billion into the so-called international nuclear fusion project, or ITER, to 2018. 

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The supercomputer is operational according to schedule at the International Fusion Energy Research Centre (IFERC) hosted by the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority (JAEA) in Rokkasho, Japan. The machine that was manufactured by Bull and whose mission is to perform complex calculations for plasma physics and fusion technology, has passed its acceptance tests achieving 1,132 Petaflop LINPACK performance. The Computer Simulation Centre (CSC), where “Helios” operates, is an important component of Europe’s contribution to the Broader Approach (BA), an agreement signed between Europe and Japan to complement the ITER project through various R&D activities in the field of nuclear fusion. The European participation to the BA is coordinated by Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Union organisation managing Europe’s contribution to ITER. The supercomputer was provided by France as a part of its voluntary contribution to the BA, through a contract between the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA) and Bull.

The acceptance tests of the supercomputer were carried out between 13-22 December 2011 in Rokkasho, Japan. The tight construction schedule was successfully met offsetting any disruptions caused by the great East-Japan earthquake in March 2011. It’s a first for a large piece of equipment stemming from an international scientific collaboration, to be procured by a European team and get assembled in Japan. The installation of the equipment was completed in early December and by the end of the month a 1.132 Petaflops LINPACK[1] performance was achieved, ranking “Helios” on the fifth position of the TOP-500 November 2011 list.

The operation of the supercomputer will kick off with four high-visibility runs otherwise known as “light-house projects” which are expected to shed light on plasma calculations. From January to March 2012, the four selected codes will run one at a time to test-drive the capacities of the supercomputer and achieve maximum performance. The first call for proposals has attracted high numbers from both European and Japanese researchers, and submissions are under review. It is expected that routine operation will start in April 2012.

Based on the number of proposals submitted to the first call, there has been an oversubscription by a factor of three of the computer’s time, demonstrating the great interest from the European and Japanese fusion communities to use the supercomputer facility. The majority of proposals address issues related to plasma physics (turbulence, MHD, edge physics and integrated modeling) together with an important number of proposals addressing technology issues. Click here to view the distribution chart.

Sorce: F4E

During one busy weekend in January, while plasma operations had paused, another upgrade was installed on JET. The item in question is called a 'collimator'. It weighs about 2 tonnes and it is made of layers of lead and polythene, contained in a stainless steel envelope.

To understand what a collimator is, consider when you were a child and your mother gave you a cardboard tube to play with. You probably put it to your eye and looked through it, pretending that it was a telescope. Of course it does not magnify the image that you see, but it simply limits your field of view, blocking out the surrounding bigger picture. This toy telescope is really a collimator. The main difference between this and JET's new collimator is that light is stopped by a thin layer of card, but the energetic neutrons from the JET plasma need layers of high density lead and of low density, hydrogen rich, polythene to slow them down.

The installation process was almost like an exercise in choreography. Different teams of people were required to complete the work at precisely scheduled times. The shielding doors had to be opened and the shielding beams lifted. 4,000 tonnes of concrete has to be moved to achieve this! The main crane was then able to carry the collimator and its stand into the torus hall. The crane operations team, the 'riggers' had to be ready. A team of scaffolders built a tower a few metres high, for the team of fitters to work from. First the stand was lifted into place and bolted to an existing component. The positions of the feet were then marked on the concrete floor and the stand was lifted away so that the floor could be drilled. Then the stand was re-installed, bolted into position, and the collimator lifted into position, aligned and secured.

Source: efda.org

Researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a two-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat, reported today in Nature, takes scientists a significant step forward in understanding the most extreme matter found in the hearts of stars and giant planets, and could help experiments aimed at recreating the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.

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This time we have decided to combine the sets of pictures from November and December and release them in one go in order to announce two significant developments: the lower basemat of the Tokamak complex is completed and that the PF Coils building is going through the final acceptance procedure.

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