It’s like a painting. Behind the lake of Geneva mountains rise with snow-topped caps that
form the beautiful background of the EPFL campus, the location of the 2024 JOREK general
meeting. The JOREK general meeting is a great opportunity to meet other JOREK users and
show new results, discuss problems and generally help each other, which I was able to
attend thanks to the generous funding from FuseNet.
JOREK is a 3D non-linear magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) code which is continuously
developed and has strong involvement with the European fusion research program and is of
high relevance for the ITER project. I’m lucky enough to be working with this code for my
master thesis (also funded by FuseNet) where I’m working on the implementation of an
avalanche source for kinetic relativistic electrons. During this meeting I had the opportunity
to give an oral presentation on the current progress in my project. The JOREK general
meeting was a very friendly environment to give a talk in (for me my first talk that wasn’t for
my university) and I really appreciate the feedback and the experience. The slides didn’t
always cooperate with me (see the picture), but I did my best to keep calm and carry on.
This meeting gave me the opportunity to have some discussions regarding disruption
physics and hybrid particle-fluid modelling which will be useful for the rest of my project. I
was also able to discuss the implementation of small-angle collisions and some other
aspects that will be very important for me to create a benchmark which is the crucial step I
need to take in my project. I’ve also had some further discussions on possible coding
problems and solutions with someone who is working on something quite different, but is
also using kinetic particles.
The other presentations covered a wide range of topics such as plasma core instabilities,
disruptions including vertical displacement events, runaway electrons, plasma instabilities at
the plasma edge, control and mitigation of instabilities, modelling of the scrape-off layer and
divertor region, stellarator MHD modelling, kinetic PiC modelling methods, code
development, data management and more. It’s amazing to see how varied the applications
of the JOREK code are and what the current topics of research are. Furthermore, it’s very
nice to see what everyone has been working on.
Of course we did more than just listen to presentations and there was a tour where we saw
some plasma experiments and we got to see TCV. Afterwards there was the JOREK dinner
where we enjoyed the Swiss fondue. On the other days we’d find dinner in larger groups and
although it wasn’t always easy to find somewhere with large enough tables, both the food
and conversation were great and I’m so happy to have been able to join. It was a great
group and the social activities were a lot of fun.
