More good news linked to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS). After being awarded the construction of the new European supercomputer MareNostrum 5 ---with an associated investment of more than 220 million euros---, this key infrastructure in the Catalan capital has been commissioned to create an advanced computing hub for the development of fusion energy.
EUROfusion, a consortium formed by 28 countries to make this new form of clean energy generation a reality, has entrusted the BSC-CNS with the creation and management of one of the five advanced computing centers that will support scientists working on this project, which could be key to drastically reducing CO₂ emissions associated with electricity generation.
The new BSC-EUROfusion Advanced Computing Hub (ACH) will become operational on July 1, 2021, and its team will progressively grow to 8 members. It will be led by Dr. Mervi Mantsinen, ICREA research professor and leader of the BSC's fusion group. "Having the confidence to create and manage an Advanced Computing Center in fusion is a great achievement for the BSC. I look forward to all the advances we will make in this field to bring us one step closer to making fusion energy a reality," says Mantsinen.
In addition to Barcelona, advanced computing centers for the EUROfusion program will be launched in Switzerland, Poland, Germany, and Finland; the five centers will receive an investment of 15.4 million euros.
Fusion consists of imitating the energy generation processes of stars like the sun. The goal is to make this non-polluting and risk-free technology a reality by the middle of this century. To do this, it is first necessary to launch an experimental reactor that demonstrates that fusion energy is viable, the Iter, in Cadarache (France), a project that is also coordinated from Barcelona. For plasma expert scientists to be able to reproduce in experimental reactors the reactions that take place in the sun's core, it is first necessary to work with computational models that reproduce these processes and allow the design of the reactors, and for this reason, it has been decided to create these advanced computing hubs.