Ph.D. student Noura Elsalamouny (Lithuanian Energy Institute, Laboratory of Nuclear Installation Safety) was participating in Summer School 2021 “Modelling, Experimental and Validation” (MeV) organized through the cooperation of multiple stakeholders, i.e. Argonne, Idaho and Oak-Ridge national labs. The event was hosted virtually due to the global pandemic situation, and was devoted to Holistic Innovations: integrating methods, experiments and people to advance nuclear technology, with a shared goal to improve the training of engineers and scientists involved in the design, licensing, and operation of a 21st century nuclear energy industry through a multi-faceted learning approach of lectures, tours, and other activities. The overall organization and conduction of the school was the responsibility of an international board of senior experts. Top experts from academia, industry and government gave lectures and training.

In addition to lectures and discussion with the senior experts, the MeV Summer School program provided an opportunity for students to work in teams for the entire duration of the school. Each team provided extended presentation of his idea and provided work as a team. Culmination of MeV Summer School was the presentation of each team and awards ceremony. LEI Ph.D. student Noura Elsalamouny worked in the team together with other students and presented joint work titled “The at-home micro reactor”. This futuristic idea was investigated in terms of the conceptual goals set, the necessary safety requirements, the design constraints, and the economic benefits of a micro-reactor installed at-home. In a short term, under joint efforts the PhD students selected the appropriate design of the reactor core, materials for the reactor shielding, reactor cooling system and power conversion technologies. In the work, the experimental data was reviewed as well as modelling capabilities together with validations needs were assessed. The general economic analysis of the chosen system was provided at the end. This teamwork won the Best Team Project Award for Excellence in Shipping Innovation in Nuclear Energy given by Argonne National Lab.

Noura Elsalamouny (© LEI)

Noura Elsalamouny: “Our collaboration as team members has taught us to think critically about how to do good research in a very short time, how to work under stress, how to work in a team, and accept each other’s option until we reach a common idea.”