eScience Center Showcases Modelling Tools for Next Generation Fusion Reactors 

1 May 2023 - 2 min

From 20-24 March, the Netherlands eScience Center co-organized the Advances in Tokamak Integrated Modelling 2023 workshop at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER). Our Research Software Engineers Stef Smeets, Victor Azizi and Lourens Veen gave a number of demos and workshops in the area of ‘uncertainty quantification’. The workshop was an integral part of the collaborative DIFFER-eScience Center project “Development of the European fusion reactor simulation framework for experimental design, optimization, and control”. 

The meeting gathered 35 experts ranging from leading stakeholders, developers, researchers and users of the tokamak simulation technologies. A tokamak is a fusion reactor in the shape of a torus (donut). Inside, atoms are heated to extreme temperatures, causing them to fuse together and release energy. Powerful magnetic fields are used to confine the atoms, as no physical material can withstand the heat. The energy produced by the fusing atoms can be used to power a steam turbine and produce electricity, just like in a conventional power plant. 

The workshop focused on major integrated modelling platforms that optimize the performance of tokamaks. So, what did our RSEs do? Smeets and Azizi demonstrated their duqtools framework To automate simulation and analysis pipelines for uncertainty quantification and large-scale model validation. Veen and Maarten Sebregts from Ignition Computing taught the use of the MUSCLE3 coupling framework during the week. 

“One key objective of European integrated modelling (EUROfusion TSVV-11 project) is to allow for large scale automated simulations to explore the impact of uncertainties on boundary and initial conditions on the predicted plasma performance (density, temperature, radiation, heat absorption, etc.),” says Clarisse Bourdelle, co-principal investigator of the project. “Thanks to a synergistic project with the Netherlands eScience Center, the pipeline for hundreds of simulations is now in place.” 

This project is funded by our annual Open eScience Center Call. For more information about our open calls, please visit esciencecenter.nl/calls-for-proposals.