Scientific Contest 2018 (Autumn Edition)

On Thursday, November 29, the BNS-YG (Belgian Nuclear Society Young Generation) Scientific Contest joined for the first time the SCK•CEN Best Master Thesis Contest and took place at the SCK•CEN Lakehouse in Mol. In total, 9 manuscripts were submitted.

For the Oral Competition, the ranking is as follows:

1. Sara Vanderheyden, from the Hasselt Univeristy, for her PhD work on “Enhanced cesium removal from real matrices by nickel-hexacyanoferrate modified activated carbons”;
2. Niels Cautaerts, for his PhD work at SCK•CEN and the University of Antwerp, titled “Tailoring the Ti-C nanoprecipitate population and microstructure of titanium stabilized austenitic steels”;
3. Alberto Ottonello, from Tractebel Engineering, for his paper submitted to the Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection & Shielding Division of American Nuclear Society, titled “Activation analysis of the concrete in the Fleurus cyclotron facility”.

The ONDRAF/NIRAS Master Thesis Prize was attributed to Célestin Piette for his work at Tractebel on “Economic and financial analysis of a lead-cooled Small Modular Reactor (SMR)”.

For the Poster Session, the prize went to Riccardo Rossa for his PhD paper prepared at SCK•CEN: “Comparison of the SINRD and PDET detectors for the detection of fuel pins diversion in PWR fuel assemblies”.