Winners of the IAEA crowdsourcing challenge for materials for fusion technology announced

A team of four scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics and the Max Planck Computing and Data Facility in Garching, Germany won the IAEA crowdsourcing challenge for visualization, analysis and simulation of materials to build fusion reactors in October 2018. Nuclear fusion, the atomic reaction that powers the sun, has the potential to eventually provide an unlimited supply of affordable and clean carbonfree energy using hydrogen isotopes obtained from water and lithium. However, harnessing commercially viable fusion power presents serious technological challenges, such as protecting the wall and other components of the reactor vessel from extremely high temperatures and highenergy particles. Fourteen research teams from ten countries submitted innovative analyses of simulations of reactor wall damage, which can be caused by high-energy neutrons released by a fusion reaction. The simulations were judged on their scientific benefit, the novelty of the algorithm itself or its use within the domain of material science, and the visualization's utility and expected impact.