PSFC Seminars

Ignition and target gain at the National Ignition Facility

Alex Zylstra (for the NIF team)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

In recent years several improvements in the scientific design and requisite technologies have enabled increasing performance of NIF experiments through the burning plasma and ignition regimes, which are prerequisites for high gain in inertial fusion, to the first experiment with target gain exceeding unity.

3:00pm  |  NW14-112 Hybrid

Disruption prediction and avoidance in tokamaks

Alessandro Pau

EPFL

This talk will give an overview of the experimental results, modelling activities and advances in machine learning algorithms for detection of proximity to operational limits as well as the progress in the development of a generic control architecture enabling the integration of active disruption avoidance strategies with exception handling and continuous control.  

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 (hybrid)

Accomplishments of the 100-Gbar Campaign on OMEGA

Sean Regan

Laser Laboratory of Electronics

Research and development will be presented in the science and engineering of implosion physics of layered DT cryogenic targets and the supporting improvements to lasers, targets, and diagnostics that led to an increase of the stagnation pressure from 50 Gbar to 80 Gbar and a corresponding increase in the energy-scaled, generalized Lawson criterion from 0.56 to 0.8 (1.0 corresponds to ignition).

3:00pm  |  NW16-136 Hybrid

Development of plasma facing materials and components at the Max-Planck-Insitute for Plasma Physics

Johann Riesch

Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physic

The focus will be in the use of GLADIS for the development of materials and components for present day and future fusion devices. In the second part of the talk the development of tungsten wire composites will serve as a showcase to illustrate our work. After a quick introduction to the development history this talk will concentrate on the current work and upcoming challenges until its final use as a plasma facing material.

10:00am  |  NW16-136

GET-ART project: an alternative novel method to measure DT fusion power in magnetic confinement fusion based on detection of 17 MeV gamma rays

Marco Tardocchi

Instituto per la Scienza e Tecnologia dei Plasmi (ISTP)

The presentation will describe the main challenges and solutions identified and the results achieved in the recent DT experiment at JET, where the absolute gamma-ray flux has been measured with a LaBr₃ spectrometer installed along an oblique line of sight.

1:00pm  |  NW17-218 Virtual

Changing the game for Inertial Fusion Energy

Conner Galloway

Xcimer Energy Corporation

The National Ignition Facility achieved scientific breakeven in December 2022. While this was a major accomplishment, many challenges remain in making Inertial Fusion Energy a reality. Xcimer Energy is tackling these challenges by developing a novel laser architecture capable of economically scaling to tens of megajoules of energy and delivering this energy to target from a very small solid angle with high beam quality and control.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218

The high-field stellarator path to fusion energy: Where are we, where do we need to go?

Thomas Sunn Pedersen

Type One Energy

This talk will start with a brief introduction to stellarators, then review recent advances in stellarator science and technology, and discuss elements of the roadmap to such a net-power-producing stellarator fusion reactor.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218

Enabling first-principles predictions of core performance in tokamaks with surrogate optimization techniques

Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez

MIT PSFC

This talk will introduce the need of flux-driven simulations to enable profile predictions, will present the fundamentals of the novel PORTALS technique and will discuss recent applications: the study of performance of burning plasmas in ITER and SPARC and the validation of ion-scale gyrokinetics in DIII-D and JET experiments.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

Experimental investigations of tritium transport in liquid breeder materials

Thomas Fuerst

Idaho National Laboratory

This talk will focus on tritium transport in fusion blanket systems and dive into the design and construction of the two forced convection loops.     

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Virtual

Advances in fusion neutronics developed for ITER design

Rafael Juarez

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Demonstration of radiation exposure limitation for public & workers, and compatibility of the electronics with the radiation levels in ITER has revealed notorious methodological challenges addressed in this seminar. Extreme geometry modelling and characterization of detailed 3D delayed radiation sources have emerged as central aspects of improvements entailing consequential severe computational penalties.

2:30pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

The important role of cosmic ray transport physics in galaxy evolution

Philipp A. Kempski

Princeton University

A discussion of theoretical uncertainties in CR propagation and how CR spectra measured at Earth help us constrain their transport physics. The speaker will then use a plausible mode of transport to consider the impact of CRs on the propagation of waves in low-collisionality plasmas, which has implications for the thermal evolution of intra-cluster media in galaxy clusters.

11:00am  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

OpenMC: A one-stop-shop for fusion neutronics

Ethan Peterson

MIT

This talk highlights the challenges of the current fusion neutronics ecosystem, how the OpenMC fusion roadmap addresses these challenges, and presents the first Rigorous 2-Step SDR calculation performed with a single open-source code.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

Fusion22

Speakers: Fusion leaders, including Dennis Whyte, MIT

At this hybrid event, taking place virtually and at the Museum of Science, London, PSFC Director Dennis Whyte will speak on "What does fusion need: Solutions to technical challenges." Register here. 

5:30am  |  Science Museum, London and virtual

A utility company perspective on fusion

Mark Berry

Southern Company

Dr. Berry will share insights from Southern Company's experience with a variety of technologies, including the first new nuclear units built in the U.S. in 30 years at Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle and the development of next-generation nuclear technologies.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

Progress and challenges for fusion materials

Steven Zinkle

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

 As noted during the recent US fusion community R&D prioritization planning evaluation and accompanying DOE-Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee and National Academies assessments, and spurred by increased private sector investments, there is growing interest in boldly proceeding with construction of a fusion demonstration reactor. Advanced materials will be foundational for the successful operation of any next-step fusion energy device. This presentation will provide an overview of some of the key advances achieved with respect to fusion materials during the past 10 years, along with an assessment of several key remaining challenges. A brief summary of potential candidate materials (focusing on structural materials) and key degradation mechanisms (primarily associated with exposure to D-T fusion neutrons) will be given.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

Leveraging peeling pedestal physics in the super H-mode as a platform for integrated core-edge studies

Theresa Wilks

MIT

DIII-D experiments assess compatibility of Super H-mode (SH) pedestals with high divertor radiation using advanced feedback algorithms for density and radiated power control with impurity seeding.  

10:00am  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

On molten salts in fission and fusion nuclear reactors: Why we care about the chemistry

Raluca O. Scarlat

University of California Berkeley

This talk will provide examples of new observations in molten fluoride salts relevant to nuclear applications, including reactions of the molten salt 2LiF-BeF2 (FLiBe) with hydrogen, graphite, and transition metals.

4:00pm  |  MIT Building 24-213

CPS-FR: Magnetic control of TCV tokamak plasmas through Deep Reinforcement Learning

Federico Felici

Swiss Plasma Center, EPFL

A key challenge in tokamak operations is to shape and maintain a high-temperature plasma within the vessel. This requires regulating the plasma position and shape via magnetic fields generated by a set of control coils. This work presents a new architecture for designing a tokamak magnetic controller based on deep reinforcement learning. The controller is entirely trained on a physics-based simulator and then deployed on the TCV tokamak hardware, where it was successful in controlling a diverse set of plasma configurations, including a new configuration featuring two plasmas in the vessel simultaneously. The control architecture replaces separate controllers used in traditional architectures with a single control policy. This lecture will provide details about the training and deployment of the reinforcement learning algorithm, as well as providing a comparison with more traditional control engineering solutions to the magnetic control problem.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://mit.zoom.us/j/97529245485?pwd=U3M1bCszSFhWVDRaUWpGSUhveHovQT09

Password: 843110

4:00pm  |  Virtual

CPS-FR: Software Productivity and Sustainability in Computational Science

Anshu Dubey

Argonne National Laboratory

In this lecture I will describe challenges of improving software productivity in computational science projects, especially those that involve high performance computing. I will also describe various efforts in mitigating these challenges through distillation of practices that have been found to be effective. The topics covered will include software design for performance portability and sustainability, and methodologies for increasing both the scientific output and the developer productivity.  Join Zoom Meeting
https://mit.zoom.us/j/92868962660?pwd=UUxSdDMwQXlsYksrSXpzRXFJdlJuUT09

Password: 783470

4:00pm  |  Virtual

CPS-FR: Machine learning and Bayesian modeling at Wendelstein 7-X

Andrea Pavone

Institute of Plasma Physics

Through applications related to the Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment, the speaker will demonstrate how Bayesian inference can enhance the exploitation of interdependent heterogeneous sources of information, such as plasma diagnostic measurements, in a complex system through physics-based modeling and conventional inference methods (MCMC, MAP), and how it can benefits from recent advances based on deep learning to scale up to the large amount of data and systems found in nowadays fusion experiments.  Join Zoom Meeting
https://mit.zoom.us/j/98802368263?pwd=aVY2djlVMitoSk94N1VFdHVwYUkzQT09

Password: 671462

4:00pm  |  Virtual

CPS-FR: Part 2. Optimizing the performance of fusion reactors with transport in the loop

Noah Mandell

MIT PSFC

As we approach the breakeven era of fusion, optimizing reactors to make them more efficient and less expensive will be critical to the wide-scale adoption of fusion as a commercial energy source. The main challenge is to achieve and maintain high steady-state pressures in the core of the reactor to reach self-sustaining fusion conditions. Since turbulence is the main source of heat transport and losses, there is an opportunity for improving reactor performance by optimizing the design for turbulent transport.  Join Zoom Meeting:https://mit.zoom.us/j/94599468081?pwd=NThBbW1sTVQrYUVJcURsVmNXYytoQT09
Password: 649687

4:45pm  |  Virtual

CPS-FR: Part 1. Optimization projects for the advancement of fusion energy

Pablo Rodriguez-Fernandez

MIT PSFC

This talk will present examples of the application of surrogate-based optimization techniques to solve fusion-relevant modeling problems, such as a gyrokinetic profile predictor and an equilibrium solver suitable for exploratory applications. The use of gaussian process regression within a Bayesian optimization framework is demonstrated to accelerate the design process of fusion reactors through the development of computationally efficient modeling workflow.   Join Zoom Meeting:https://mit.zoom.us/j/94599468081?pwd=NThBbW1sTVQrYUVJcURsVmNXYytoQT09
Password: 649687

4:00pm  |  Virtual

Computational Physics School for Fusion Research (CPS-FR) 2022

The CPS-FR aims at providing young researchers with critical skill sets to tackle modern fusion energy research challenges through hands-on tutorials and classes. Topics:  High Performance Computing (HPC);  Parallel Programming and GPU Computing; Computational Statistics; Machine Learning;  Registration closes May 29.

9am - 5:30am daily  |  MIT campus building 4-231

There and Back: The journey to 20 T on the SPARC Toroidal Field Model Coil

Ted Golfinopoulos, Brian LaBombard

PSFC

Mission: Demonstrate 20T operation in no-insulation HTS DC magnet for fusion power application; risk-retire SPARC TF design.

3:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hybrid

Neutron irradiation effects on the superconducting performance of REBCO coated conductors

Michael Eisterer

TU Wien, Atominstitut, Vienna, Austria

I will review our findings of neutron irradiation experiments in our in-house research reactor over the last 15 years. After having established the peak in critical current as a function of neutron fluence, we investigated the universality of this behavior followed by attempts to explain it by the competing effects of added pinning centers and reduced superfluid density. Recently, we started annealing experiments to devise mitigation strategies against the adverse effects of neutron radiation.

2:00pm  |  NW17-218 Hypbrid