Two Texas A&M nuclear engineering graduate students won awards at ICONE-22 in Prague, Czech Republic. Timothy Crook and Saya Lee attended the 22nd International Conference on Nuclear Energy July 7-11, where they were awarded the "Best Student Paper- North America," representing two of the selected best student-authored papers from the United States, Canada, or Mexico.
Crook's paper, "Sensitivity analysis of a PWR response during a loss of coolant accident under a hypothetical core blockage scenario Using RELAP5-3D," focused on accident scenarios and plant-specific features that help maintain plant safety in the event of debris buildup at the reactor core and was performed in support of the U.S. NRC Generic Safety Issue 191 (GSI-191) research. Co-authors include Dr. Rodolfo Vaghetto, Alessandro Vanni, and Dr. Yassin Hassan, department head. Crook completed his undergraduate degree in December 2013 from Texas A&M and is studying for his master's under Hassan. His research currently involves computational analysis using system codes like RELAP5 in support of utilities' GSI-191 responses. Crook is currently serving as the graduate chair for the 2015 ANS Student Conference to be hosted at Texas A&M in April 2015, and is also an active American Nuclear Society member and past chapter president.
Lee's paper, "Head loss through fibrous beds generated on different types of containment sump strainers," focused on the build-up of fibrous debris on the containment sump strainer and head loss through the deposited fibrous porous media as a function of porosity and thickness of the media and the approach velocity of fluid. Co-authors include Suhaeb Abdulsattar and Dr. Hassan. Lee is a nuclear engineering Ph.D. candidate working in Dr. Hassan's research group. His research field is thermal-hydraulics in nuclear engineering, including experimental studies related to the nuclear safety issues and two phase flow visualization and heat transfer using PIV and LIF techniques.