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For a Safer Nuclear Outlook: Learning from Experience within an Adaptive & Generic Probabilistic Safety Assessment Framework

Ali Ayoub portrait
SPEAKER:
Dr. Ali Ayoub
Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, ​Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
DATE/TIME:
Fri, 02/18/2022 - 3:00PM TO 4:00PM
LOCATION:
3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL
Spring 2022 Colloquium Series
Abstract:

The worldwide civil nuclear operations have accumulated more than 19’000 reactor-years of experience providing substantial amounts of data and knowledge. With the goal of more intensively learn from this experience to verify and improve the level of nuclear safety, this talk presents the research carried out at the ETH Zurich covering the following inter-woven parts:

1) The continued development and establishment of a novel open comprehensive nuclear events database; 2) subsequent event and statistical analysis to learn from the past and extract lessons, in particular, for 3) the development of generic & simplified Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) models, with a main motivation of enabling large-scale precursor analysis, and 4) exploiting the simplified PSA models and the performed large scale precursor analyses to offer a comprehensive statistical study of the operational risk in the civil nuclear sector.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Ali Ayoub is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his PhD (2021) and MSc (2018) in Nuclear Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). He has worked and published on various research topics including probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), precursor analysis, uncertainty quantification, safety culture, and risk communication. His general research interests are around the area of risk analysis, nuclear and critical infrastructures safety, resilience engineering, decision-making, and energy policy.

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Hi Vo, our former grad student and NSSC fellow awarded a LANL directors funded post doc.

Hi Vo, our former grad student and NSSC fellow awarded a LANL directors funded post doc.

February 11th, 2022

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Across all divisions, the LANL postdocs went through a competitive process in order to be selected for the fellowship based on previous research merit and the strength of the postdoc research proposal.
Director Postdoc fellowship provides full, 2/3, 1/3 funding for each subsequent year to support Hi Vo's research proposal.
Hi Vo's Director funded research proposal is on the exploration of unit and collective plastic deformation processes using in situ 4DSTEM mechanical testing and 3D-EBSD.

Congratulations Hi Vo! What a wonderful achievement!

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Peter Hosemann, Professor and Chair chosen as 2022 TMS Brimacombe Medalist Award Winner

Peter Hosemann, Professor and Chair chosen as 2022 TMS Brimacombe Medalist Award Winner

February 10th, 2022

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The Brimacomb award award recognizes Professor Hosemann for his sustained excellence and achievements in materials science and engineering, and his record of continuing service to the profession. He received this award specifically for his contribution to micro and macroscale mechanical testing of irradiated materials and in-situ materials testing and continued dedication to TMS and education. Professor Hosemann is a dedicated member to the Minerals, Metals and Materials society which is also a professional home of a wide range of nuclear materials topics.........More Info about the award

The formal presentation of the award will be at the TMS-AIME Annual Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, March 3, during the TMS 2022 Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California. 

Congratulations Professor and Chair Peter Hosemann!

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From Superheavy Elements to the Stockpile: The Journey of a Cal Grad

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SPEAKER:
Dr. Sarah Nelson
DATE/TIME:
Fri, 02/04/2022 - 3:00PM TO 4:00PM
LOCATION:
zoom
Spring 2022 Colloquium Series
Abstract:

TBD

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sarah Nelson, a nuclear and radiochemist, serves as the Director (Acting) for the Office of Experimental Sciences for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (NA-11), including Academic Programs. Sarah joined Defense Programs in mid-November 2015 as the office Deputy Director.

Sarah earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry with Distinction from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Heino Nitsche.

Prior to joining NNSA, Sarah completed postdoctoral research as a Roger Batzel fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and afterward as a staff scientist for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on assignment to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. Sarah also was selected as a Christine Mirzayan Science & Technology Policy Fellow of The National Academies for the Winter 2012 assisting the Board on Physics and Astronomy.

She has received numerous awards including US DOE Secretary’s Achievement Award, DTRA/US STRATCOM Center for Combatting Weapons of Mass Destruction Director’s Award for Public Service, LLNL’s Excellence in Publication Award in Basic Science, and the Gordon Battelle Prize for Scientific Discovery.

 

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Recent inertial confinement fusion experiments at NIF reaching 1.35 MJ and the Lawson criterion for ignition

AnnieKritcher
SPEAKER:
DR. ANDREA (ANNIE) L. KRITCHER
DATE/TIME:
FRI, 01/28/2022 - 3:00PM TO 4:00PM
LOCATION:
via Zoom
Spring 2022 Colloquium Series
Abstract:

The inertial fusion community have been working towards ignition for decades, since the idea of inertial confinement fusion (ICF) was first proposed by Nuckolls, et al., in 1972. On August 8, 2021, the Lawson criterion for ignition was finally demonstrated in the laboratory on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California. The experiment, N210808, produced a fusion yield of 1.35 MJ from 1.9 MJ of laser energy and appears to have crossed the tipping-point of thermodynamic instability according to several ignition metrics. The “indirect” ICF approach at NIF described in this talk uses a hohlraum radiation cavity to heat and ablate the outside of a capsule that contains Deuterium-Tritium (DT) fusion fuel. This ablation causes the fuel to accelerate inward (implode) at high velocities doing work on a central lower density “hot spot” of DT fuel, increasing the temperature and density of the hot spot to the extreme conditions required for fusion. This presentation discusses the development of a platform that increased the hot-spot energy and hot-spot pressure, to achieve record ICF performance.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Annie Kritcher is the HYBRID-E design lead within the ICF program and is a member of the ICF leadership team. She serves as team lead for integrated implosion modeling and is a group leader within the design physics division at LLNL. Annie started at the Lab as a summer intern in 2004, was an LLNL Lawrence Scholar during her time at UC Berkeley, and was a Lawrence postdoctoral fellow in 2009 following completion of her Ph.D. Her current main areas of interest include the design and analysis of inertial confinement fusion experiments (ICF) and high energy density plasmas. She is also interested in extreme equations of state (EOS) measurements. Her work has led to both the highest fusion yields (>1.35 MJ) and the highest EOS measurements ever achieved in the laboratory.

 

 

 

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With great sadness of the passing of Hans Mark

With great sadness of the passing of Hans Mark

January 5th, 2022

Portrait of DoD Mr. Mark Hans Director, Defense Research and Engineering (U.S. Army photo by Mr. Scott Davis) (Released) (PC-193032)

Hans Mark, who served as chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and administrator of the Berkeley Research Reactor from 1964 to 1969, died Saturday, Dec. 18, at the age of 92. Mark was a giant in his field, serving as NASA Deputy Administrator, Secretary of the Air Force, Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Department of Defense, and Chancellor of the University of Texas system. He was a Berkeley alum and a long-time benefactor of the department. Read more about his remarkable life and work here.

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Don Olander and Light Water Reactor Materials: A Personal Memoir and Tribute

Arthur Motta
SPEAKER:
Arthur Motta
DATE/TIME:
FRI, 12/03/2021 - 4:00PM TO 5:30PM
LOCATION:
Bancroft Hotel
Fall 2021 Colloquium Series
Abstract:

This talk is an homage to Don Olander, as a special tribute to the enormous influence he has had on a whole generation of nuclear materials scientists, and a remembrance of my time at UC Berkeley, working under his supervision. The talk focuses also on the co-writing of the textbook “Light Water Reactor Materials” recently published by the ANS.

About the Speaker:

Arthur Motta is Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University. He holds Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Prof. Motta works in the area of radiation damage and environmental degradation to materials with specific emphasis in zirconium alloys. Prof. Motta is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and received the Mishima Award from the ANS for outstanding contributions in research and development work on nuclear fuel and materials, as well as the ASTM William J. Kroll Medal for sustained impactful contributions to zirconium metallurgy. With his thesis advisor Don Olander he co-wrote the textbook “Light Water Reactor Materials” published by ANS in two volumes.

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The Berkeleyan Spotlight: Rebecca Abergel

Removing a potential MRI risk - literally

October 21, 2021

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Prof. Abergel had an article published in The Berkeleyan titled Removing a potential MRI risk - literally. 

"The first use of MRI to scan a patient’s body was in 1977. Today, more than 40 million MRI scans are carried out every year in the U.S. In about one out of three, patients get an infusion containing the metal gadolinium as a contrast agent to improve imaging.

But over the last 10 to 15 years, physicians have increasingly reported that contrast MRIs sometimes lead to potentially life-threatening complications, particularly in patients with certain types of kidney disease. The FDA issued a warning against contrast MRIs for patients with kidney disease." [read more]

Congratulations Professor Abergel

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Superconducting Magnets and the Path to Fusion Energy

MIT_Brandon-Sorbom_1000x667
SPEAKER:
Brandon Sorbom
Chief Science Officer
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS)
DATE/TIME:
Fri, 10/5/2021 - 3:00PM TO 4:00PM
LOCATION:
ZOOM
Fall 2021 Colloquium Series
Abstract:

MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a new startup company focused on the rapid commercialization of fusion, are jointly pursuing a privately-funded, accelerated approach to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion energy. The CFS/MIT team is currently developing a new generation of high-field, large-bore, REBCO-based superconducting magnets to incorporate into a compact net-energy tokamak called SPARC that will demonstrate net fusion energy gain. The key performance metrics in a tokamak scale as the strength of the toroidal magnetic field to the third or fourth power times the volume of the device. One of the most important consequences of these scalings is that increasing the magnetic field in a tokamak enables a much smaller device to demonstrate net-energy production, leading to dramatic reductions in cost, timeline, and organizational complexity required to construct and operate the fusion device. Over the past three years, the SPARC team has performed much of the groundwork to enable the demonstration of the fundamental superconducting magnet technology and prepare the design of SPARC. A site in MA has been selected and prepared, SPARC will begin construction in late 2021 and will be commissioned in 2025. A fusion pilot plant called ARC will follow, with the aim of putting fusion power on the grid in the early 2030’s.

About the Speaker:

Brandon’s expertise is in fusion energy, compact power plant design and high temperature superconductors. During his doctoral work at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Brandon was the leader of the ARC Reactor design study, a conceptual design for a small, modular fusion pilot plant that formed the basis for a comprehensive high-field pathway to commercial fusion energy. As CSO of CFS, Brandon leads the work in evaluating high temperature superconductor performance and prospects for scale-up, as well as leading the power plant design scoping efforts.

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The Evolving Nuclear Fuel Cycle – Challenges and Opportunities

Dr.Regalbuto
SPEAKER:
Dr. Monica Regalbuto
Idaho National Laboratory, Director, Integrated Fuel Cycle Strategy
DATE/TIME:
FRI, 10/29/2021 - 3:00PM TO 4:00PM
LOCATION:
3105 ETCHEVERRY HALL
Fall 2021Colloquium Series
Abstract:

The United States is pursuing an aggressive plan to combat climate change by reducing carbon emissions in which nuclear power is set to play a vital role. Accelerated development of advanced reactor designs introduce evolving nuclear fuel cycles that deviates from the commercially established light water reactor. As new fuel cycles and technologies emerge, both opportunities and challenges are presented. This presentation will cover the importance of addressing fuel cycles front-end and back-end emerging concepts to ensure the successful deployment of advance reactors.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Regalbuto is a leader in the development of nuclear fuel cycle technologies, combining her knowledge in separations, computer simulations, and proliferation risk reduction. She has over 30 years of experience in radio-isotope processing, recovery and immobilization for environmental remediation, resource conservation and medical applications. She currently leads the integrated fuel cycle strategic initiative at the Idaho National Laboratory. Dr. Regalbuto serves today as a member of (1) the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and (2) the Standing Advisory Group on Nuclear Energy (SAGNE) at the IAEA which advises the Director General. Dr. Regalbuto has served in multiple national leadership roles. In 2015, she was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate as Assistant Secretary for the Office of Environmental Management for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In this capacity, she was responsible for managing the environmental cleanup resulting from weapons production as well as special nuclear materials. As the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fuel Cycle Technologies with DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Dr. Regalbuto managed the nation’s research and development fuel cycle portfolio. At Argonne National Laboratory, Dr. Regalbuto served as the head of the Process Chemistry and Engineering Department in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division. She is a fellow of the American Nuclear Society and has authored multiple journal articles, reports, and presentations and holds six patents.