NE Special Seminar: “Research for New Nuclear Materials and Reactors in the UK: Comedy or Tragedy?”

Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/30/2023
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

Location
Rhines Hall 125

Categories


Simon Middleburgh, Ph.D.

Professor of Nuclear Materials
Bangor University

Professor Simon Middleburgh is a chaired professor at Bangor University and brings experience working with other academic institutions, industry, and national laboratories. His research focuses on combining modeling, often from the atomistic scale, with experimental observations to accelerate our understanding of materials, such as nuclear fuels, in extreme conditions. Simon previously worked for Westinghouse and ANSTO (in Australia) and has over 100 published research articles and 15 patents. He has a team of 10 Ph.D. students and four research associates. He is now co-director of the Nuclear Futures Institute, which aims to support the Welsh Government in its nuclear ambitions to put new reactors and medical isotope-generating facilities in Wales. Simon has brought in over £11m ($13.5m) of funding into universities over the last five years at Bangor.

Abstract

Bangor University’s Nuclear Futures Institute is a leading research institution in the UK and works across the nuclear sector. Excellence in modeling and experiment brings together materials development for commercial reactors, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and space reactor technology.

The Bangor University Fuel Fabrication Facility (BUFFF) stands as one of the UK’s leading uranium active fuel research facilities helping to optimise the manufacture and design of new fuels and link with fuel performance modeling and uncertainty modeling capability. The fuels effort will be expanded upon, and the need to combine experiment and modeling efforts to accelerate licensing and roll-out of these new fuels is highlighted. By collaborating with industry partners, including the National Nuclear Laboratory (UK-NNL) and Westinghouse, Bangor is developing key data on advanced systems and is looking to collaborate strongly with the international community to support the international nuclear renaissance.