On 28 June 2023, at 4:00 PM, the Association of Young Scientists and Specialists of JINR invites you to the next seminar that will take place at the hall of the JINR Scientists’ Club (6, Joliot-Curie street, left side).

Ahmed Hassan (a FLNP engineer) will make a report “Nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel cycles”.

About the seminar. Just a year after the discovery of neutrons by Chadwick in 1932, Leó Szilárd came up with the idea of a nuclear chain reaction and calculated critical mass to produce it with the release of energy and neutrons. Leó Szilárd, a participant of the Manhattan Project, together with Fermi determined the critical mass of U-235, he was developing the first nuclear reactor during 1940. In 1954, the world’s first nuclear power plant with an electric capacity of 5 MW was launched in Obninsk.

In the world, there are currently about 439 operating reactors for power generation and 219 research reactors with neutron and gamma-ray quantum fluxes created in the active zone that are used for research in the fields of nuclear physics, solid state physics, radiation chemistry, biology, for testing materials designed to work in intense neutron fluxes, for the production of isotopes.

One of the most important problems that arise during the operation of nuclear reactors is the accumulation of fission products (FP) and minor actinides (MA). The solution to this problem is to consider spent nuclear fuel (SNF) not as waste suitable only for landfill, but as valuable nuclear materials (NM) with primary and secondary nuclear fuel that can be recovered and reused many times (development of a closed nuclear fuel cycle (NFC)).

The use of neptunium isotope Np-237, first synthesised from spent nuclear fuel, significantly contributes to closing the nuclear fuel cycle and opens up new horizons in the development of physics of nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel cycles.

The lecture will cover the main types of nuclear reactors, their main parts and principles of operation, features of the unique reactors in Dubna. The speaker will present various nuclear fuel cycles and the importance of using neptunium as a fuel for the first time in the world.

There will be a small coffee break at 4:00 PM, which precedes the seminar. The report will start at 4:15 PM.

If you are going to join the event of 28 June, please take part in the survey via the link not later than 4:00 PM 27 June.

Records of AYSS seminars are available via the link