![CAnes logo[96]](https://canes.mit.edu/hs-fs/hubfs/CAnes%20logo%5B96%5D.png?width=300&height=91&name=CAnes%20logo%5B96%5D.png "CAnes logo[96]")
CANES News
Nuclear Energy in a Low-Carbon Future
August 2023
Nuclear Energy in a Low-Carbon Future NEC23
The 2023 short course “Nuclear Energy in a Low-Carbon Future: Key Facts and Issues” was held at MIT on Aug. 1-3, 2023. The goal of the course is to improve understanding of nuclear energy and its potential role as a tool for decarbonization and energy security. Sixty participants and fifteen speakers attended in person, with an additional forty remote attendees. Participants included local, state, and federal government decision-makers, journalists, scholars, educators, members of NGOs, foundations, energy regulators, and think tanks.
NURETH-20 Fellow: American Nuclear Society Thermal Hydraulics Division
August 2023
At the NURETH-20 conference in Washington, DC, held from August 20-25, 2023, Professor Jacopo Buongiorno was recognized as one of the new NURETH Fellows by the American Nuclear Society Thermal Hydraulics Division. The award was presented to him in recognition of his sustained contributions to the NURETH conferences over the past 20+ years. During the conference, Professor Neil Todreas gave a speech about the 40-year history of the NURETH conference. Neil shared insights and personal experience about the conference's birth, evolution and growth and its significant contributions to the field of nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics.
Screening of Oliver Stone’s Nuclear Now movie
May 2023
MIT Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES) hosted a special screening of Oliver Stone’s NUCLEAR NOW movie on Wednesday, May 3, 2023, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. Nuclear Now explores the possibility for the global community to overcome the challenges of climate change and energy poverty to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy. The Center Director Jacopo Buongiorno moderated a post-screening panel with film director Oliver Stone, Dr. Ashley Finan of the Idaho National Laboratory and Dr. Jake DeWitte of Oklo. The screening was well attended by the community..jpg "ICAPP student winners (a)")
ICAPP Best Paper Award - Three students of Professor Jacopo Buongiorno
April 2023
Three students of Professor Jacopo Buongiorno have won the Best Paper Award at the 2023 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP) held in conjunction with 38th Korea Atomic Power Annual Conference, Korea Republic. The recipients are as follows:Emile Germonpre is a Nuclear Science and Engineering graduate student working in the microreactor group.
Emile Gateau was a visiting student (from Ecole Polytechnique) in Prof. Buongiorno microreactor group last summer. He was primarily supervised by Professor Neil Todreas.
Faris is an Undergraduate student at Tufts University whose research on microreactors has been co-supervising by Prof. Buongiorno. Faris has applied to transfer to MIT NSE this year so hopefully, he’ll be a full Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) student soon.
Best Papers:
- Emile Germonpré, J. Buongiorno, K. Shirvan, J. I. Lee, R. Macdonald, “An economic analysis of the use of nuclear microreactors in hydrogen production”, Proc. ICAPP 2023, Gyeongju, South Korea, April 23-27, 2023.
- Emile Gateau, N. Todreas, J. Buongiorno, “Consequence-based security for microreactors”, Proc. ICAPP 2023, Gyeongju, South Korea, April 23-27, 2023.
- Faris Fakhry, J. Buongiorno, S. Rhyne, B. Cross, P. Roege, B. Landrey, “A Central Facility Concept for Nuclear Microreactor Maintenance and Fuel Cycle Management”, Proc. ICAPP 2023, Gyeongju, South Korea, April 23-27, 2023.
The John Clark Hardwick (1986) Career Development Professor, Koroush Shirvan received the Landis Young Member Engineering Award
April 2023
Professor Koroush Shirvan, the John Clark Hardwick (1986) Career Development Professor, was presented with the Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award during the 2023 American Nuclear Society (ANS)Annual Meeting. The award recognizes early career professionals for outstanding achievement in which engineering knowledge has been effectively applied to yield an engineering concept, design, safety improvement, method of analysis or product utilized in nuclear power research and development or commercial application. Dr. Shirvan received this award for his contributions to applying and using best practice approaches to applications and tools in his research. This is a remarkable testament to Dr. Shirvan’s technical leadership in the nuclear technology community.
Visit by Tokyo Tech and the Japanese industry
March 2023
On March 27, CANES Director Jacopo Buongiorno met with a delegation led by Prof. Yukitaka Kato from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and representatives of various Japanese companies including TEPCO, Hitachi, MHI, Mitsubishi Corporation and IHI to discuss the prospects for nuclear energy in Japan and globally.” in the nuclear technology community.
Daniel Stack former NSE student who founded Electrified Thermal Solutions
February 2023
Daniel Stack won the DOE Energy Storage Innovations Prize ( https://www.energy.gov/oe/articles/doe-announces-energy-storage-innovations-prize-winners ) based on his development of electrically conductive firebrick. The prize and his startup company Electrified Thermal Solutions ( https://www.electrifiedthermal.com/ ) are based on his NSE PhD thesis ( https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/130800/1252204287-MIT.pdf... ) that was completed in 2021. Electrically conductive firebrick provides a low-cost way to convert electricity into high-temperature heat matching the temperatures of a natural gas flame. The conductive firebrick allows heat storage at very high temperatures in firebrick recuperators for industry, gas turbines and Nuclear Air-Brayton Combined cycles with power peaking capabilities.
Jiankai Yu
January 2023
Jiankai Yu joined the Center of Nuclear Energy Systems (CANES) as a research scientist in January 2023. Prior to joining the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) at MIT, he worked at University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK) for a short period on the application of the open-source Monte Carlo code - OpenMC in fusion energy system. Prior to UTK, he was a post-doctoral associate in the MIT NSE department working on OpenMC code development and autonomous control system development designed for a subcritical nuclear facility - the MIT graphite exponential pile (MGEP). Before that, he was a researcher at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) Nuclear Engineering department working on the development of the Monte Carlo (MCS) based Neutronics/Thermal-Hydraulics/Fuel-Performance coupling system.He received his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in 2015 for the methodologies investigation and code development of the neutron-induced nuclear data evaluation, processing, and the application in Reactor Monte Carlo code (RMC).
