During this summer mini-term, twelve undergraduate students from UT’s Nuclear Engineering (NE) department participated in a study abroad Experimental Reactor Physics Laboratory class (NE427) led by Ondřej Chvála, NE research assistant professor.
The students spent the first week visiting several sites in the Czech Republic, including a former uranium mine Bukov that now serves for geological repository research, Czech nuclear power plant Temelín, the research institute in Řež near Prague, and the Prague Castle; and in Vienna, Austria: the Belvedere palace, United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Preparatory Organization, and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. During the second week the students worked with a nuclear reactor VR-1 at the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague, performing reactor physics related measurements and working out respective lab reports. Each student actually operated the reactor on the last day of the labs.
The class is open to undergraduate and graduate students interested in nuclear reactor dynamics and hands on experimental work. This is the sixth time this class was held. Contacts with CTU had already led to mutual student exchanges and research collaborations between the NE department and CTU.