Master Thesis at KIT - Karlsruhe, Germany
Report by Albert Garcia. Powered by FuseNet

My name is Albert Garcia and this last year I have performed my Master Thesis in nuclear fusion on the topic "the effect on the Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR) for a distributed ICRF antenna in a DEMO reactor".

I studied in Barcelona in the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (UPC) and I started an Erasmus with the University of Ghent (UGent). As part of this Erasmus, the group in Gent suggested that I move to Garching. Indeed the UGent group closely cooperate with the ICRF group at the Max Planck Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP) in Garching, Germany, which develops the distributed antenna for DEMO. Being in Garching would allow me close interaction with the ICRF group and the DEMO people also located in Garching.

From September to December I was gathering all the boundary conditions about the antenna and DEMO in order to start the calculations about the TBR. In January I moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany, in order to perform neutronics calculations with MCNP. I stayed there until June.

In the beginning of May I had the opportunity to present a poster of my thesis in the 21st Topical Conference on Radiofrequency Power in Plasmas in Lake Arrowhead, California.

All this year has been a great experience for me. I have had the opportunity to develop a lot of skills by working with different people from different countries, both online and offline. Living abroad and dealing with people from other countries is always a challenge which opens your mind and change the way you see the world. Moreover, I have been in some of the most important institutions working in nuclear fusion so every day was a continuous learning.

I would want to recommend everyone to try such an experience and I would also want to thank FuseNet for making it possible.