Thursday 24 January: IT at JET – A Challenging Fusion Research Environment

IT at JET – A Challenging Fusion Research Environment

Sverker Griph

Our January speaker, Sverker Griph, gave us a brief rundown of the history of fission and fusion, starting with the failed physics teacher, working in the Bern patent office, who published four ground-breaking papers in 1905 and introduced e=mc**2 to the world.

JET was set up to pursue the goal of clean electricity from nuclear fusion. It provides many challenges: for the IT people the huge amount of data which the experiments generate in a very short time, and for the national grid the challenge of handling a sudden demand for up to 1.2GW to power the experiment.