Congratulations to Noah Etter, Lauran Kohler and Nolan Ritchie, faculty adviser Dr. Mihai Diaconeasa and GE-Hitachi adviser Dennis Henneke. At the 2024 American Nuclear Society (ANS) Student Conference, they won the best presentation award in the category of Power Reactor Reliability Operations & Safety. The senior design project was entitled, “Full scope dynamic probabilistic risk assessment framework.”
Lauren Kohler presented for her team which included Jason Clifford, Nusrat Karim, Sivanandan Harilal (PNNL adviser), as well as Drs. Elizabeth Kautz and Xu Wu (faculty co-advisors). They won the best overall paper award for “ML-LIBS: machine learning-based spectra predictions of time dependent lithium emission spectroscopy imaging.”
Senior design projects represented at the Conference included,
- Thermal Power Uprate Fuel Management Studies for a Westinghouse 2-Loop PWR
Student Team: Alina Jugan, Caden Sekelsky, Jake Mikouchi-Lopez
Advisers: Drs. Maria Avramova & Kostadin Ivanov
Co-Sponsored by Westinghouse (Baxter Durham & Blaine Taylor) - Full Scope Dynamic Probabilistic Risk Assessment Framework (best presentation award)
Student Team: Noah Etter, Lauren Kohler, Nolan Ritchie
Adviser: Dr. Mihai Diaconeasa
Co-sponsored by GEH (Dennis Henneke) - Thermal Power Uprate Fuel Management Studies for a Westinghouse 4-Loop PWR
Student Team: Alex Graham, JT Mast, Aaliyah Zuniga
Advisers: Drs. Kostadin Ivanov & Maria Avramova
Co-Sponsored by Westinghouse (Baxter Durham & Blaine Taylor) - Developing a Preliminary Optimized Shielding Design for the NuScale Microreactor
Student Team: Daniel Nevius, Devin Bradshaw, Robbie Leary
Adviser: Dr. Scott Palmtag
Co-sponsored by NuScale (Steven Mirsky) - Natrium Reactor Air Cooling (RAC) Design of Experiments Study
Student Team: Bryce Davis, Alex Murillo, Aidan Flanagan
Advisers: Drs. John Zino & David Holler
Co-sponsored by GEH (John Zino) - Design of a Flow Meter for High Temperature Fluid Reactors
Student Team: India Allan, Andy Fetch
Adviser: Dr. Ge Yang
Co-sponsored by ANL (Alexander Heifetz) - Accelerating Qualification of New Materials for Molten Salt Reactors: An Experimental Design Approach
Student Team: Ryan Eavenson, Jackson Hase, MaKendra Seawright (SCSU)
Faculty: Dr. Lingfeng He
Co-sponsored by INL (Kaurstubh Bawane) - Generative AI-aided System Analysis and Control
Student Team: Spencer Blanchard, Austin Sides, Thomas Benthall, Ciana Moore (SCSU)
Faculty: Dr. Nam Dinh
Co-sponsored by INL (Linyu Lin) - BANR-R: High Temperature Gas-Cooled Microreactor for Research Applications
Student Team: Parsa Banki, Kathryn Livoti, Max Khvostov, Hakeem Bennett (SCSU)
Faculty: Dr. Ayman Hawari
Co-sponsored by BWXT (Ryne Hevener) - Surface charging sensor for plasma fabrication of high aspect ratio features in semiconductor manufacturing
Student Team: Natalie Coon, Alexandra Peevy, Nathaniel Rogalski
Faculty: Dr. Steven Shannon
Co-sponsored by Impedans Systems LLC (Michael Hopkins) - Combined Lattice Physics Fuel Management Optimization for BWRs
Design Team: Josh Yugozinski, Cole Howard
Faculty: Dr. Jason Hou
Co-sponsored by Framatome (Alexander Bennett)
Professor Lisa Marshall, American Nuclear Society (ANS) president-elect, spoke during the opening plenary, women in nuclear lunch ‘n learn panel, awards banquet, along with other sessions during the conference. She commended the organizing committee, Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering, and ANS staff for all their hard work. Her closing remarks focused on “sharing the good word about nuclear science and engineering” with our engineering and non-engineering peers and the public at large. She highlighted projects at the local through international levels, emphasizing the scope of the ANS work.