The UK Science & Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC’s) Hartree Centre has formed a partnership with IBM and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), to work on the design of future experimental fusion power plants.
Hartree Centre and IBM’s expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and extreme scale computing combined with UKAEA’s data and modelling capabilities will create a foundation model to underpin the fundamental dynamics of experimental fusion data. The partnership aims to unite fusion scientists and AI experts to drive transformative breakthroughs in applying AI to fusion power plant designs and experimental facility operations.
STFC’s Hartree Centre, located at Sci-Tech Daresbury in the Liverpool City Region, is a leader in advanced computing, data and AI technologies. The centre’s expertise in high performance computing (HPC), extreme scale computing, scalable AI and innovation digital solutions and IBM’s AI and quantum technologies offer unparalleled digital expertise and innovation.
UKAEA will contribute domain expertise and selected data from its Joint European Torus (JET) and Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade machines in accordance with applicable data sharing agreements to the collaboration.
To date, the approach for designing and developing complex fusion machines has been through ‘test-based design’, which timely and expensive. By adopting the latest digital technologies fusion can move towards data-centric engineering to accelerate and de-risk the delivery of commercial fusion power.
Vassil Alexandrov, Chief Science Officer, STFC Hartree Centre, said: “We can now come together to address a key grand challenge and advance state-of-the-art in modelling and simulation of fusion power plants, thereby supporting the UK’s ambition to become a global leader in clean energy innovation.”
Juan Bernabe-Moreno, Director IBM Research Europe, UK & Ireland looked forward to seeing the team explore together the use of generative AI technologies “to approach one of the most challenging problems of our time”.
Rob Akers, Director of Computing Programmes noted: “IBM’s heritage in complex systems engineering and supercomputing and the Hartree Centre’s expertise in democratising HPC and AI into the engineering sector, combined with UKAEA’s leading research and development in fusion energy will be a powerful force for progress in this hugely important field.”
Over the last five years, UKAEA and the Hartree Centre have grown a network of international collaborations designed to accelerate and derisk the fusion roadmap. As a national computing centre, the Hartree Centre focuses upon the industrial application of exascale and high-performance computing through focused collaborations with US Exascale Computing Project partners across the US National Labs. Combined with a long-term collaboration with IBM, the collaboration is expected to facilitate joint research,
