Idaho State University hosts students from around the world attending nuclear engineering summer school

Idaho State University is once again hosting the Modeling, Experimentation and Validation (MeV) Summer School for Nuclear System Simulation and Analysis from July 20 to 29 at University Place in Idaho Falls.

The summer school is sponsored jointly by Idaho State University, Idaho National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Center for Advanced Energy Studies and has enrolled 45 students from 13 countries, including Sweden, France, China, Taiwan and India.  The faculty is composed of internationally known experts from universities and national laboratories throughout the world. The students are early career engineers.

"We are proud to be the host and co-sponsor of this internationally recognized summer school," said George Imel, Interim Dean of the ISU College of Science and Engineering. "While only in the second year, the interest is gaining momentum."

This school prepares students for the key challenges and demands facing the nuclear energy renaissance and provides students with advanced studies in integrated modeling, experimentation and validation. 

In the past, to test the safety of a nuclear reactor, a physical prototype of the reactor was constructed. Now, however, reactor designs can be made using computer models that can be safely tested for validation and reliability at a fraction of the cost. 

"I think it is outstandingly valuable.  Beside knowledge, they’re learning about what is the most recent developments in the field and have the opportunity to network with people from other countries," said Karen Leibert, Program Coordinator of ISU's Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

This year's theme is risk-informed safety margin characterization.  Some of the topics addressed will be reactor safety design and safety analysis methods, basic and advances in probabilistic risk assessment and experimentation including scaling, diagnostics, and data management. 

Students will also be touring two nuclear site facilities. During the day they will attend lectures, and at night students are divided into teams, matched with experts from different aspects of the field of nuclear engineering and given a problem to solve.

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