Marat Margulis, a doctoral student from the Unit of Nuclear Engineering (UNE) at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), won the second place among six finalists in an international student competition held at a conference on research reactors in Munich, Germany (RRFM 2018).
Mr. Margulis was commended for his research work and for his presentation as part of the “Three-Minutes Thesis” challenge. The participation of Mr. Margulis in the conference was highly professional. Mr. Margulis’s lecture at the conference can be viewed here.
The International Conference on Research Reactors is organized annually by the European Nuclear Society (ENS) and serves as experts, scientists, and operators for mutual updates, collaboration initiatives, research status and discussions on future directions and development of research programs, with an emphasis on activities in the European Union. Among the conference participants this year were leading scientists from Europe and the world, national labs, reactor operators, and industry representatives.
For the first time in the history of the conference, a student competition was held. In the competition format, which was based on the “Three-minutes Thesis” challenge, each competitor must present his research thesis in three minutes and use at most three presentation slides. Of the dozens of articles submitted, the prize committee chose six outstanding articles to be presented within the challenge format and as a poster during the conference. The doctoral student Mart Margulis was among the six finalists. Mr. Margulis is conducting his research under the supervision of Dr. Erez Gilad, head of the reactor physics research group at UNE@BGU, and Dr. Patrick Blaise of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
Margulis’s study is carried out within an international scientific collaboration between UNE@BGU and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and deals with the feasibility of conducting an experimental program to measure the neutronic effects in the reactor’s core under severe accidents conditions. The study focuses on severe accidents in fast reactors (Gen-IV) during which the nuclear fuel temperature exceeds 2,500°C, and the fuel and other core materials undergo meltdown.