Nuclear academics, professionals meet for 6th annual ATR NSUF Users Week
on post-irradiation examination of nuclear fuels and materials.
Yongho Sohn, professor and associate director of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Central Florida (UCF), attended the very first Users Week and returned as a presenter this year. He found the event particularly valuable to students and brought four with him from UCF this year.
“I recommend the event to my students because at the university they typically work on a small and focused piece of the nuclear puzzle,” said Sohn, “but Users Week shows them the big picture and how the research they’re doing fits into the larger objectives of the technology.”
Most of the week’s presenters were directly involved in ATR NSUF research projects. In addition to sharing their research, presenters gave potential users advice on working through the proposal and research process. Full irradiation experiments — those that begin in the experiment design stage are irradiated in a reactor and continue all the way through post-irradiation examination — have great value, but can take a long time to complete.
Presenter Darryl Butt, Materials Science and Engineering professor at Boise State University and an associate director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, explained this lengthy process during his presentation on Light Water Reactor Fuels. “Be patient with irradiation experiments,” he said. “These experiments are complicated and require extensive planning and analysis, but the valuable research that results makes the planning and time worth the effort.” He encouraged users to recognize that the timeline for these experiments can span several years, but not to let that discourage them.
Organizers invited three ATR NSUF partner facilities to give spotlight presentations on the capabilities their facilities offer and discuss any current research projects utilizing their facilities. Guest speakers presented on partner facilities at the Westinghouse Materials Center of Excellence Laboratories (MCOE) Hot Cell Facility, the Microscopy and Characterization Suite in the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reactor.
In his presentation, Gordon Kohse, a principal research engineer at MIT, said being an ATR NSUF partner facility has enabled the MIT reactor facility to gain more experiment experience, which makes it more desirable to both ATR NSUF users and other customers. It has also helped build technical relationships and boost visibility for their capabilities.
After a full day touring INL Site facilities, participants returned to the Center for Advanced Energy Studies for a combined poster session and social event. Students shared their research posters with other attendees and the top three student poster submissions won a 2013 Neutron Award.
“The goal of the poster session is to encourage students to study problems of interest to the nuclear community and give them a place where they can show their work and teach others how to do the same,” said Jeff Terry, chair of the Advanced Test Reactor Users Organization and associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
At stake were the Golden, Silver, and Thermal Neutron awards based on several content categories. Each winner received a certificate and a one year gift membership to the American Nuclear Society. This year’s recipients of the Neutron Awards were:
• Golden Neutron Award Winner: Ahmad Alsabbagh, North Carolina State University, “Consequences of Neutron Irradiation on ECAP Steel”
• Silver Neutron Award Winner: Somayeh Pasebani, University of Idaho, “Spark Plasma Sintering of Lanthana Bearing Nanostructured Ferritic Steels”
• Thermal Neutron Award Winner: Harn Chyi Lim, Arizona State University, “Microstructural Effects on Thermal Conductivity of Uranium Oxide”
“I’m very proud of all of the 2013 Neutron Award winners,” said Terry. “The future is in great hands.”
