Speaker
Description
GRE@T-PIONEeR - GRaduate Education Alliance for Teaching the PhysIcs and safety Of NuclEar Reactors - is a new project funded by the Euratom – Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. The project started on November 1st, 2020 for a duration of three years and gathers eight universities throughout Europe.
The project aims at developing and providing specialised and advanced courses in computational and experimental reactor physics at the graduate level (MSc and PhD levels) and post-graduate level, as well as the staff members working in the nuclear industry.
Although reactor physics has always been a core discipline in nuclear engineering, computational reactor physics relies on sophisticated models, databases and algorithms, which the engineer needs to understand, so that the tools are used most efficiently and in relevant applications. Moreover, these computational courses are often taught via advanced courses with fewer students.
One of the Work Package of GRE@T-PIONEeR is devoted to a specific course on the nuclear data pipeline processes and the role of nuclear data for calculations of nuclear reactor systems. It covers all steps starting from the measurements to their validation and final use in nuclear reactor calculations. The main topics covered in this course are: i) the process of generation and evaluation of nuclear data libraries, ii) the processing of nuclear data libraries for use in nuclear applications, iii) the assessment of nuclear data uncertainties, iv) the importance of nuclear data adjustments, v) and, finally, the presentation of activities, projects and international networks on nuclear data.
Beyond the technical contents of the courses being developed, the novelty of the project lies with the use of innovative pedagogical methods, such as flipped classes, aimed at promoting student learning. Before attending interactive sessions organised under the close supervision of the teachers, the students will have access to a handbook with the whole content of the course jointly with short videos summarising the key concepts, and online quizzes allowing testing one’s understanding of those concepts.
The interactive sessions are based on active learning, during which the students have to implement and use the techniques they learned in hands-on training exercises designed to promote learning. These exercises are computer-based assignments with existing open software and tools such as ENDF Utilities, NJOY, PREPRO, JANIS, DICE and NDaST. Finally, the students will be introduced to nuclear data adjustments algorithms and machine learning advanced techniques applied to the nuclear data field.
Furthermore, a set of experiments with direct application to cross-sections measurements will be carried out in research reactors: i) activation analysis experiments for a set of irradiated foils , ii) Doppler feedback measurement in the BME Training Reactor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and iii) reactivity worth of samples using pile-oscillation techniques in the research reactors: AKR-2 at the Technical University Dresden and CROCUS at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
In addition to the flipped classroom pedagogy, most of the interactive sessions are offered in a hybrid format: the students can decide to attend the interactive sessions either on-site or online. The sessions are also given in a condensed format. Combined with the hybrid set-up, the courses are very well suited for lifelong learning.
Acknowledgement. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Euratom research and training programme 2019-2020 under the Grant Agreement n°890675.