Fusion

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Reining in Runaway Electrons

At temperatures hotter than the sun, even a small disruption can interfere with a fusion reaction. Scientists planning for the operations of ITER, an international fusion plant now under assembly, needed to solve the problem of runaway electrons, negatively charged particles in the soup of matter in the plasma within…

Matt LakinJanuary 7, 20255 min

Exascale’s New Frontier: SuperLU/STRUMPACK

PI: Sherry Li, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…

Coury TurczynJuly 9, 20246 min

New Clues to Improving Fusion Confinement

Nuclear fusion — when two nuclei combine to form a new nucleus, thereby releasing energy — may be the clean, reliable, limitless power source of the future. But first, scientists must learn how to control its production. Building on decades of prior research, scientists have developed sophisticated techniques to improve…

Coury TurczynJune 24, 20247 min

Exascale’s New Frontier: EXAALT

PI: Danny Perez, Los Alamos National Laboratory In 2016, the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (1018) or more calculations per second. That leap meant rethinking, reinventing and optimizing dozens of scientific applications…

Coury TurczynNovember 10, 20235 min

Exascale’s New Frontier: WDMApp

PI: Amitava Bhattacharjee Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory In 2016, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Exascale Computing Project (ECP) set out to develop advanced software for the arrival of exascale-class supercomputers capable of a quintillion (10¹⁸) or more calculations per second. That meant rethinking, reinventing, and optimizing dozens of scientific…

Coury TurczynAugust 8, 20235 min

Visualization of an aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 particle with various components inside and outside the particle.

2021 at the OLCF: Year in Review

In 2021, supercomputing at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) enabled new scientific breakthroughs amid the global pandemic. From modeling small particles called quarks to simulating turbulence in fusion reactors, the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility's (OLCF's) flagship supercomputer, Summit, continued to provide unprecedented opportunities…

Rachel McDowellDecember 30, 202113 min

Closing In on Fusion

The same process that fuels stars could one day be used to generate massive amounts of power here on Earth. Nuclear fusion—in which atomic nuclei fuse to form heavier nuclei and release energy in the process—promises to be a long-term, sustainable, and safe form of energy. But scientists are still trying to fine-tune the process of…

Rachel McDowellDecember 13, 20217 min

An image depicting a shock wave propagating through diamond

Team Earns Gordon Bell Prize Finalist Nomination for Simulating Carbon at Extreme Pressures and Temperatures

Are diamonds even stronger than we’ve ever imagined? Can other post-diamond phases appear when diamond is subjected to extreme pressures? A team used machine-learned descriptions of interatomic interactions on the 200-petaflop Summit supercomputer at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to model more than a…

Rachel McDowellNovember 17, 20219 min

Scientists Use Supercomputers to Study Reliable Fusion Reactor Design, Operation

Nuclear fusion, the same kind of energy that fuels stars, could one day power our world with abundant, safe, and carbon-free energy. Aided by supercomputers Summit at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Theta at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), a team of scientists…

Rachel McDowellFebruary 18, 202111 min

Weighing up Plasma Particles

The sun’s energy is the result of a continuous series of nuclear fusion reactions in which ionized hydrogen in the form of plasma collides at high speeds and releases helium and energetic neutrons—producing enormous bursts of energy in the process. For years, researchers have sought a way to harness this…

Will WellsJuly 28, 20209 min

Speeding Toward the Future of Fusion

In 1934, physicist Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues produced the first fusion reaction—the fusing of light nuclei to release energy—in a laboratory by converting deuterium, a heavy hydrogen isotope, to helium. Since then, scientists have built increasingly efficient fusion energy devices with a goal to achieve net fusion energy, or…

Katie Elyce JonesJanuary 2, 20208 min

Artificial Intelligence Approach Points to Bright Future for Fusion Energy

For decades, scientists have sought to control nuclear fusion—the energy that powers the sun and other stars—by developing massive fusion reactors to produce and contain plasma, with the goal of mirroring the astronomically high pressure and temperature conditions of celestial objects. To ensure plasma—the fourth fundamental state of matter—retains its…

Elizabeth RosenthalJuly 22, 20198 min

Science at Exascale: Molecular Dynamics for Materials

Frontier is an exascale computer planned for delivery at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in 2021. The system will support a wide range of scientific applications for advanced modeling and simulation, as well as high-performance data analytics and artificial intelligence. In the “Science at Exascale” Q&A series, researchers working…

Rachel McDowellMay 7, 20194 min

Science at Exascale: The Future of Fusion Modeling