Fusion energy took a small step forward with a successful simulation performed on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar supercomputer.

A team led by C.S. Chang of New York University recently used the XGC1 code to verify that turbulence in the well-confined edge of plasma in a fusion reactor can penetrate the core and boost its temperature.

While this has long been believed to be the case, this simulation provides proof and sets the stage for the next step, which would use all 150,000 cores of Jaguar and simulate the entire ITER device.

The XGC1 code used 20,000 cores, consumed more than 1 million CPU hours and gathered more than 1 terabyte of data. Unlike previous codes, this one provides far greater resolution as it tracks individual particles in a given state and simultaneously simulates plasma at the edge and core.