Industrial Metaverse essential for UK fusion energy development
Summary
The goal of future fusion powerplants is to emit no greenhouse gases and they are not expected to have long-lived, high-level radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission. This includes the design of advanced materials that can withstand extreme conditions inside a fusion powerplant to confine a super-hot gas, known as plasma, to produce energy. Overall, advanced hardware and software can make the journey to commercial fusion power lower risk and accelerated – a key benefit on the path to sustainable energy.” Dr Paul Calleja, Director, Research Computing Services, University of Cambridge, said: “UKAEA’s moon-shot mission to put clean fusion energy on the UK grid in the 2040’s is a hugely ambitious goal, needing equally ambitious advance computing and AI technologies to fuel the virtual engineering effort to create a complete digital reality of the power plant that can be developed and tested in silicon, which greatly accelerates the process. To this end the Cambridge Open ZettaScale Lab in partnership with Intel, Dell, UKAEA and a team of HPC experts from across UKRI have been working together for the past two years on a world leading co-design activity called “Project Dawn” to design and prototype a candidate UK exascale class converged AI & simulation GPU/CPU supercomputer, with the computation power capable of helping UKAEA meet it its vast computational requirements. The collaboration will allow scientists and engineers throughout STEP’s entire supply chain to perform the advanced research and development necessary to help meet the world’s growing energy demand while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.