ITER’s facilities opened their doors to this media aimed at the Italian public living in Tenerife.
Reporter Benny Franchini from Vive le Canarie magazine conducted an interview with ITER’s CEO, Mrs. Begoña Ortiz Leston, who shared the main lines of work and future development of the institute. The interview focused on several key issues, highlighting ITER’s growing involvement in the aerospace sector. Ortiz highlighted the recent international agreements that position ITER as a relevant actor in this field. In addition, he pointed out the importance of the institute as an engine for innovation and business growth in the Canary Islands, especially in terms of attracting new technology companies.
In relation to supercomputing, Ortiz discussed the new developments that will be implemented with the acquisition of a new machine that will enable quantum computing, which will exponentially reduce response time and open up new possibilities for research. He also addressed the fundamental role of artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting its impact both in the workplace and in everyday life, and stressed the need to integrate ethics in its development and application.
The Vive le Canarie team also visited the ITER facilities. The visit started at the ITER visitor’s center where they were given a short presentation of the main lines of activity and areas of ITER. Also in the visitor’s center they were able to know the European LIFE project – GENERA, of which ITER is a partner and that at this moment has an information and dissemination point in the visitor’s center.
The GENERA project is a project aimed at promoting the energy transition in tourist islands that is currently in the middle of launching the training courses and the energy transition tools that have been developed. GENERA wanted to take the opportunity to reach the Italian community on the island, since Italy is one of the countries that is part of the consortium and because it is of interest to know, through the project questionnaires, their point of view on the energy transition. All the tools developed are available on the website https://life-genera.eu/. In addition, the web site offers the option of joining the GENERA community as a “green ambassador” and committing to the sustainable development of the island.
The visit continued at the emblematic ITER Bioclimatic Houses to take pictures and interview one of the technicians of the sustainable architecture department, Miren Iriarte, who provided them with information about this complex, the result of an international competition and for which, at present, a patrimonial procedure is open for its exploitation by third parties.
They ended the visit at the D-Alix datacenter, from its rooftop they could see the different renewable energy facilities located in ITER and interview the coordinator of the photovoltaic energy department, Elena Llarena, who explained the work carried out in her area. To complement the information about the area, they went to the generation control center from where the operation of all the renewable energy generation facilities linked to ITER is supervised in real time.
Also in the datacenter, they visited the Teide HPC supercomputer, where its manager, Jonatan Felipe, explained the main uses and developments related to supercomputing that are being carried out.
