Nuclear researchNuclear academics, professionals meet for 6th annual ATR NSUF Users Week
The sixth annual Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF) Users Week was held 10-14 June at University Place, the satellite campus for Idaho State University and University of Idaho in Idaho Falls. This nuclear research-themed week was the user facility’s opportunity to update the user community on nuclear energy issues and tools, conduct a research forum where users can come and present their research, run specialized workshops, and build collaboration among academic, industry and government institutions.
How do you design a nuclear reactor experiment? Why are experiments crafted in a particular way? How do I propose research that will be funded? These questions and more were answered at this year’s sixth annual Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF) Users Week, held 10-14 June at University Place, the satellite campus for Idaho State University and University of Idaho in Idaho Falls.
An Idaho National Laboratory (INL) release reports that this nuclear research-themed week was the user facility’s opportunity to update the user community on nuclear energy issues and tools, conduct a research forum where users can come and present their research, run specialized workshops, and build collaboration among academic, industry and government institutions. INL says that Users Week is key to fulfilling the user facility mission to provide nuclear energy researchers access to world-class capabilities to advance nuclear science and technology.
“The goal of Users Week is to encourage nuclear scientists and engineers to pursue research that will impact the future of our country’s energy needs and enable them to build relationships with INL and other nuclear fuels and materials researchers,” said Frances Marshall, ATR NSUF program manager and acting scientific director.
Each Users Week event is modified to offer users something new. This year the event was organized around the user experience — how a user can successfully propose and get research done. Organizers kept the most popular aspects from previous years, but expanded the focus beyond ATR NSUF research and techniques. This year’s event highlighted how specific experiments align with some of the main goals of INL and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) in the areas of: Light Water Reactor Sustainability, Fuel Cycle Research and Development, and Advanced Reactor Concepts.
“With this change in format, participants should gain a greater understanding of current DOE-NE programs, research trends and issues, ATR NSUF research, and our partner facilities,” said Jeff Benson, ATR NSUF education coordinator.
The release notes that understanding the interaction with DOE-NE is important because a key criterion to receiving an ATR NSUF proposal award is that the proposed research must be consistent with one of DOE-NE’s missions.
The week-long event opened with a workshop on ATR NSUF research and capabilities, and then continued with sessions grouped together under one of the DOE-NE programmatic goals. Users Week also featured a Site tour highlighting INL research capabilities and a specially tailored workshop
