The webinar is hosted by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) (Fusion Group), coordinator of the FusionCAT project, and is given by Dr Mikhail Gryaznevich who is the founder, the Chief Scientist and a member of the executive board of Tokamak Energy. Tokamak Energy is a private fusion power research company based in the United Kingdom that has built several tokamaks with the aim of reaching commercial fusion power generation.

Date: September 14, 2020
Time: 11:00-  12:30 (CET); connections enabled from 10:30 am (CET) onwards.

Abstract

On the path to fusion electricity over the past 10-15 years, while the ITER construction has been going on, progress in performance improvements in tokamaks has been rather modest. A possible reason for this is the shortage of ITER-relevant innovations in physics and technology that would be compatible with the traditional approach where the increase in the physical size of the fusion device is considered as the main driver for scientific and technological progress.

Innovations are indeed easier to test and use in smaller devices that are also cheaper and quicker to build. The talk discusses such an alternative path to fusion electricity which is based on a compact high-field spherical tokamak approach followed by Tokamak Energy. Among the key fusion technologies discussed are high temperature superconducting magnets and fusion reactor materials.

Register here to attend the seminar by Zoom. 

The webinar is organized under the auspices of the FusionCAT project with reference number 001-P-001722 that has been co-financed by the European Union Regional Development Fund within the framework of the ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020, with the support of Generalitat of Catalonia.

About FusionCAT

The objective of FusionCAT is to establish an active fusion community in Catalonia. FusionCAT is formed by 7 partners that are leading institutions in Catalonia in their respective fields. Most of them have on-going involvement in fusion R&D through participation in the EU fusion research programme, contracts with ITER and Fusion for Energy (F4E), national fusion projects as well as collaborations with CIEMAT.

FusionCAT consists of 11 original R&D projects, organized in 3 focused work packages building on the complementary fields of well-recognized expertise of the partners and the synergies between them, as well as a strong dissemination and technology transfer programme. It aims to establish technology transfer from the partners to industry in order to develop industrial competences in Catalonia for the realization of fusion energy. Transfer of relevant know-how is sought in particular. This is essential and timely because the development of fusion energy requires that the role of the industry changes from being a provider of high-technology components to being the driver of fusion development.

The projects focus on numerical modelling, analysis and design of fusion reactor components and processes, fusion reactor software development (including high performance computing) and validation as well as diagnostic methods and instrumentation. The key fusion technologies addressed are tritium breeding blankets, high temperature superconducting magnets and fusion reactor materials. Seven companies have already expressed their interest to participate in the Industrial Advisory Board of the project. It facilitates the exchange of ideas and contacts with industrial stakeholders. In addition, an Advisory Board is formed by invited world-leading experts in the field. The main key indicators will be the number of highly-skilled jobs created and the number of contracts and collaboration agreements with industry.

At the ICMAB, the SUMAN (Superconducting Materials Group) participates in FusionCAT, with PI Xavier Granados. The institutions involved are the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (coordinator), the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), the Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS), the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB), the Institut de Recerca en Energia de Catalunya (IREC), the EURECAT and the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC).