Young scien­ti­sts from NCBJ have obta­ined pre­sti­gious funds to con­duct their work. Seba­stian Tro­ja­nowski, PhD, con­duc­ting the­ore­ti­cal rese­arch, inc­lu­ding rela­ted to the mystery of dark mat­ter, has rece­ived a scho­lar­ship from the Mini­ster of Science and Higher Edu­ca­tion for out­stan­ding young scien­ti­sts. Łukasz Bar­to­sik, PhD Eng, rece­ived a NCN Minia­tura grant for the study of new amino acid-based detec­tors. As part of the NCN Pre­lu­dium grant, Tomasz Kwiat­kow­ski, MSc Eng, will model tur­bu­lent flows of coolant in reac­tor fuel car­trid­ges.

Seba­stian Tro­ja­nowski, PhD, is a gra­du­ate of the MISMaP Col­lege of the Uni­ver­sity of War­saw, where he ear­ned him­self a maste­r’s degree in phy­sics and che­mi­stry and a bache­lo­r’s degree in mathe­ma­tics. He asso­cia­ted his fur­ther career deve­lop­ment with the group for the­ore­ti­cal ele­men­tary par­ticle phy­sics in NCBJ, where he also defen­ded his docto­ral dis­ser­ta­tion with a distinc­tion. Since then, he has been asso­cia­ted with the The­ore­ti­cal Phy­sics Divi­sion at the NCBJ Basic Rese­arch Depart­ment. As a scho­lar­ship hol­der of the Mobi­lity Plus pro­gram, he went on a two-year intern­ship at the Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia in Irvine, USA. Cur­ren­tly he is on a simi­lar intern­ship on the Uni­ver­sity of Shef­field in the UK.

In his scien­ti­fic work, Tro­ja­nowski, PhD, focu­ses on various aspects of phy­sics on the smal­lest scale of the so-cal­led ele­men­tary par­tic­les. He con­ducts the­ore­ti­cal rese­arch, but values the clo­sest possi­ble con­tact with expe­ri­mental phy­si­ci­sts, he would always like to be close to a possi­ble breakthro­ugh scien­ti­fic disco­ve­ries. He is one of the four ori­gi­na­tors of the new expe­ri­ment (cal­led FASER) at the Large Hadron Col­li­der faci­lity. The expe­ri­ment will focus on sear­ching for tra­ces of the so-cal­led new phy­sics, going bey­ond or pre­vious our pre­vious know­ledge of mat­ter, as well as on ana­ly­sing the pro­per­ties of the so-cal­led neu­trino. In his rese­arch, Tro­ja­nowsk, PhD, also deals with the issue of dark mat­ter, which is one of the domi­nant com­po­nents of the uni­verse that sur­ro­und us, altho­ugh its nature rema­ins a mystery.

Łukasz Bar­to­sik, PhD Eng, obta­ined his docto­rate in che­mi­stry at the Insti­tute of Phy­si­cal Che­mi­stry of the Polish Aca­demy of Scien­ces and cur­ren­tly leads the Radio­che­mi­stry Depart­ment at the NCBJ Divi­sion of Reac­tor Rese­arch. His rese­arch, plan­ned as part of the Minia­tura pro­ject, will check whe­ther amino acids other than ala­nine can be used as a gamma radia­tion detec­tors and dosi­me­ters.

The prin­ci­ple behind the usage of amino acids in pas­sive detec­tors is to break the C-N bond in the com­po­und and cre­ate a sta­ble radi­cal, whose struc­ture and quan­tity is deter­mined by means of EPR spec­tro­scopy (elec­tron para­ma­gne­tic reso­nance). Amino acid-based detec­tors can poten­tially be used in bio­lo­gi­cal rese­arch or medi­cine (e. g. BNCT the­rapy). The team led by Dr Bar­to­sik intends to carry out rese­arch cen­tred aro­und ana­ly­sing fac­tors, such as the impact of the radi­cal struc­ture on the inten­sity and dura­bi­lity of the signal (the more sta­ble the radi­cal, the signal sho­uld be more intense and sta­ble over time), the impact of the radi­cal struc­ture on the line­arity of the detec­tor, as well as the impact of sub­sti­tu­ents on the radi­cal’s sta­bi­lity. The rese­arch has two main trends: quali­ta­tive, which con­si­sts of deter­mi­ning the struc­ture of the resul­ting radi­cal and com­pa­ring it with the simu­la­tions of the expec­ted struc­ture, and quan­ti­ta­tive, in which the rese­archers exa­mine the rela­tionship between the dose and the read signal, espe­cially after a lon­ger time.

Tomasz Kwiat­kow­ski, MSc Eng, works at the Divi­sion of Nuc­lear Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Stu­dies in the NCBJ Depart­ment of Com­plex Systems. He sub­mit­ted a pro­ject titled „The use of LES and hybrid tur­bu­lent models for pre­cise pre­dic­tions of coolant flow and heat exchange in tigh­tly pac­ked fuel car­trid­ges” to the Pre­lu­dium com­pe­ti­tion.

One of the basic aspects of safe ope­ra­tion of a nuc­lear reac­tor is the effec­tive remo­val of accu­mu­la­ted heat inside the reac­tor. The most com­monly used reac­tor coolant is water, altho­ugh there are also desi­gns that use liquid metals or gases. A coolant – regar­dless of its type – does not flow uni­formly thro­ugh the space inside the core. The actual flow is full of distur­ban­ces in the form of local tur­bu­lences. Cur­ren­tly, the tools at our dispo­sal are not able to per­fec­tly simu­late the tur­bu­lence of the flow, which is nature is a very com­plex three-dimen­sio­nal phe­no­me­non. The­re­fore, the models that scien­ti­sts and engi­ne­ers use must be pro­perly veri­fied and impro­ved. It is par­ti­cu­larly impor­tant to be able to cor­rec­tly describe the flow and heat exchange in fuel car­trid­ges using advan­ced nume­ri­cal simu­la­tions.

The main pur­pose of the rese­arch pro­po­sed in MSc Eng Kwiat­kow­ski’s pro­ject is the vali­da­tion and/or cali­bra­tion of ava­ila­ble and com­monly used tur­bu­lence models. The imple­men­ta­tion of this pro­ject will deter­mine how good the low-order tur­bu­lent models are cur­ren­tly in rela­tion to model­ling coolant flow and heat exchange in tigh­tly pac­ka­ged fuel car­trid­ges. The author pre­dicts, that as a con­se­qu­ence a set of so-cal­led best prac­ti­ces will be pro­po­sed, i. e. indi­ca­tions of how such ana­ly­ses sho­uld be car­ried out. As a result, the scien­ti­fic com­mu­nity, nuc­lear engi­ne­ers, but also eve­ry­one invo­lved in nume­ri­cal fluid mecha­nics will rece­ive an impro­ved tool to obtain more relia­ble results.