My internship was held at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, near Munchen. The institutional supervisor was Matthias Hoelzl. I was part of the MHD group, in the theory department. The goal of my internship was to look for inconsistencies between the MHD codes JOREK and STARWALL.

The program JOREK-STARWALL can simulate tokamak plasmas with free boundary conditions and external coils. When the external coils in STARWALL were applied, some inconsistencies were found in the magnetic field produced by JOREK. The result was an inconsistency between the applied theory in the two programs; JOREK uses a reduced form of MHD while STARWALL doesn’t.

It was really nice to see ASDEX Upgrade in real life and to be a part of the Max Planck Institute. Gaining this experience makes it a bit easier to realize how huge the research is for Fusion power. It also makes you wonder if we will ever crack the problem. It is also interesting to gain a broader experience, next to a company and at the university. In the picture, a stellerator coil is seen at the entrance of the Max Planck Institute.