RESEARCH : EUROPEAN SUPERCOMPUTERS TO SERVE NUCLEAR FUSION.

A partnership between the network of the most powerful national supercomputers in Europe (Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing, or DEISA) and European scientists working on nuclear fusion is expected to help allow a giant step forward for this new source of energy, announced the European Commission, on 23 January. The EU executive will be giving all European researchers taking part in the ITER programme dedicated access to the DEISA network. This will allow them to carry out complex parts of their work, such as simulations of a fusion reactor's operation. Simulations using supercomputers play a key role in the design of fusion reactors and in optimising their performance during operation.

The Commission financed the DEISA project under the 2002-2006 and 2007-2013 EU research programmes for a total of 26...