Fusion, the energy source powering the sun and other stars, holds the promise for a significant provider of base load electricity without producing CO2 and without significant geopolitical resource issues. Within Europe, fusion research is conducted in a number of countries under the loose coordination of EFDA, The European Fusion Development Agreement (http://www.efda.org/). The current big step is the building of ITER (http://www.iter.org/) by the seven ITER partners (Europe, USA, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, India) near Aix-en-Provence in France.
The ITER site, Cadarache, 2010-07-15. (Higher resolution image)
One of the challenges of designing and operating a fusion device is the prediction of fusion performance and interpretation of experimental results using simulation codes. While a number of individual physics simulation modules have been built, the current challenge is to couple these individual models together. This involves bridging the very different time- and space-scales of these individual models. Within Europe, this activity is coordinated by the EFDA Task Force on Integrated Tokamak Modelling (ITM) (https://www.efda-itm.eu//WORLD/html/).
Within the MAPPER project, the emphasis is on applying expertise gained from outside the fusion community to multiscale fusion simulations.