ARFC

A Return to NPRE

Mon, 13 May 2024 15:00:00 -0500

I (Katy) am pleased to share that, as of May 13th, I’ve returned to Illinois, NPRE, and ARFC. After 3 years serving the U.S. Department of Energy, I am ready to get back to the important (and fun!) research and educational work here in Illinois. I am grateful to Dr. Madicken Munk for her work as Acting Director of ARFC during that time. We are extremely lucky to have had her expertise, leadership, and support.

Of course I’m especially grateful to the students, colleagues, and friends of ARFC who kept putting in such exceptional work in my absense. I’m lucky to be rejoining you. There’s nowhere I would rather be.

While I intend for this 2024 summer to be a time of reflection and rejuvenation, I also intend to leverage this time to review the work that’s been done in ARFC these last 3 years and to brainstorm new directions. Please bear with me as I revive the portions of my brain that may have atrophied during my time in Washington.

As we look to the future, please note that we’ll soon be recruiting new PhD students and at least one postdoctoral scholar. Folks interested in joining the group should reach out directly to me by email at kdhuff@illinois.edu.

Two ARFC Graduate Students Recognized with ANS Scholarships

Thu, 10 May 2018 15:00:00 -0500

Two ARFC graduate students, Andrei Rykhlevskii and Anshuman Chaube were recognized this year by the American Nuclear Society at the national level with the 2018 John and Muriel Landis Scholarship. This award, given by the ANS NEED Committee, consists of a monetary award, a certificate, and placement in the online archive of recipients on the ANS honors and awards website.

This award recognizes students with exceptional potential in nuclear science and engineering who also pursue graduate school despite greater than average constraints. We applaud the committee’s selection of these two students. They each have chosen to pursue their graduate degrees in the face of all challenges presented to them. They each hold extraordinary promise as future nuclear engineering researchers.

Andrei joined ARFC in Fall 2016, and has made significant achievements in graduate research. He has successfully passed his qualifying exam and this semester he completed his MS degree. We are thrilled that he intends to continue toward his PhD in nuclear engineering. Andrei’s research work focuses on high performance multi-physics modeling and simulation and fuel cycle analysis of the molten salt breeder reactor.

Ansh joined ARFC in Fall 2017 and is already working toward two compelling projects. First, he is building a computational model of energy generation and consumption in Japan and is working toward dynamic transition analyses of a reduced carbon future. This work is supported as part of the I2CNER collaboration. Additionally, Ansh has begun neutronics analysis in support of future multi-physics simulations of the Transatomic Power Reactor design.

ARFC is lucky to have an accomplished group of students and we are particularly delighted to congratulate Andrei and Ansh on this award. It recognizes something of great importance to our mission : the humanity and dedication required to pursue an advanced degree in nuclear engineering.

Gyu Tae Park Recognized for Outstanding Undergraduate Research

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 15:00:00 -0500

ARFC undergraduate student, Gyu Tae Park, Jack for short, was recognized this month with the 2018 Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.

Gyu Tae accepted the award at the NPRE Department Honors and Awards Banquet on April 19th. This recognition consists of a monetary award, a certificate, and a listing on a plaque that is permanently displayed in Talbot Laboratory.

In Fall 2016, Gyu Tae joined the group as an undergraduate researcher in ARFC. This semester he is completing his undergraduate degree. Upon graduation, he will return to South Korea to complete his military obligation. We hope he will return to Illinois some time in the future!

Gyu Tae is being recognized for his significant achievements in research as an undergraduate. In particular, he led a project to incorporate geospatial information into the Cyclus nuclear fuel cycle simulator. This work resulted in analytical mapping capabilities which will be very valuable in years to come.
Additionally, Gyu Tae collaborated with other students in incorporating a wealth of data from the IAEA PRIS database into formats appropriate for use in the Cyclus simulator.

ARFC is lucky to have an accomplished group of students. We especially congratulate Gyu Tae on this award as it recognizes a core value of our research group: excellence in scholarship.

Bae Presents Poster at GLOBAL 2017

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 15:00:00 -0500

ARFC graduate student, Jin Whan Bae, Teddy for short, travelled to Seoul, South Korea in September to present a poster at the GLOBAL 2017 Nuclear Fuel cycle Conference.

His poster, titled “Current Status of Predictive Transition Capability in Fuel Cycle Simulation,” was accompanied by a conference paper of the same name. It established the state of the art of predictive fuel cycle facility deployment in exising nuclear fuel cycle simulators.

Bae said:

“Thanks to ARFC, I was able to network with professionals and academics worldwide in my field. I think the experience and things I learned in the conference will help me greatly in my research and my career.”

Andrei Rykhlevskii Recognized with ANS Scholarship

Wed, 23 Aug 2017 15:00:00 -0500

Second year ARFC graduate student, Andrei Rykhlevskii, was recognized this year by the American Nuclear Society at the national level with a 2017 John and Muriel Landis Scholarship. This award, given by the ANS NEED Committee, consists of a monetary award, a certificate, and placement in the online archive of recipients on the ANS honors and awards website.

This award recognizes students with exceptional potential in nuclear science and engineering who also pursue graduate school despite greater than average financial constraints. We applaud the committee’s selection of Andrei, who is simultaneously an exceptionally promising graduate student, a husband, and a father of two.

Andrei joined ARFC in Fall 2016, and has already made significant achievements in graduate research. In particular, Andrei has completed a full core neutronic model of the Molten Salt Breeder Reactor with unprecedented geometric detail. Additionally, he conducted an accompanying online fuel reprocessing analysis for that reactor. For this work, Andrei consulted technically with Prof. Huff as well as the larger Serpent 2 neutronics simulation community. His dedication has resulted in a strong foundation for future multi-physics and fuel cycle analysis of molten salt breeder reactor designs more broadly. This work culminated in two conference paper submissions to the 2017 American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting.

ARFC is lucky to have an accomplished group of students and we are particularly delighted to congratulate Andrei on this award. It recognizes something of great importance to our mission : the humanity and dedication required to pursue an advanced degree in nuclear engineering.

Jin Whan Bae Recognized for Outstanding Undergraduate Research

Tue, 04 Apr 2017 15:00:00 -0500

ARFC graduate student, Jin Whan Bae, Teddy for short, will be recognized this month with the 2017 Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award. Teddy has been invited to attend the Department Honors and Awards Banquet on April 13th, where he will formally receive his award. This recognition consists of a monetary award, a certificate, and a listing on a plaque that is permanently displayed in Talbot Laboratory.

In Fall 2016, Teddy was an undergraduate researcher in ARFC. This semester he is completing his undergraduate degree while beginning his first semester as a graduate student in ARFC.

He is being recognized for his significant achievements in research as an undergraduate. In particular, in Fall 2016, Teddy led a project to quantify the feasibility, benefits, and drawbacks of a creative disposal concept. For this work, Teddy consulted technically with Prof. Huff as well as key NPRE experts, Dr. William Roy and Prof. Cliff Singer. This work culminated in a paper submission to the International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM2017). This paper, “Benefits of Siting a Borehole Repository on Non-Operating Nuclear Facility,” was exceptional work and was enthusiastically accepted. Expert reviewers said about this paper “Wonderful paper! Publish basically as is.” and “This is an excellent paper that maps out an entirely plausible new way to look at nuclear waste storage in the US.”

ARFC is lucky to have an accomplished group of students. We especially congratulate Teddy on this award as it recognizes a core value of our research group: exceptional scholarship.

Kathryn Mummah Rakes in Awards

Wed, 01 Feb 2017 20:00:00 -0600

Senior ARFC undergraduate Kathryn Mummah, Katie for short, has recently received honors from the Roy G. Post Foundation as well as a Knights of St. Patrick.

She is the University of Illinois’ first recipient of a Roy G. Post Foundation undergraduate scholarship and has been invited to attend the Waste Management Symposium in Arizona, March 5-9, in order to receive her award.

Similarly, when The Knights of St. Patrick of the University of Illinois announced their award recipients (by covertly decorating the Grainger Library with St. Patrick’s Day ephemera), Katie was among the short list of 2017 honorees.

ARFC is lucky to have an accomplished group of students and we congratulate Katie on both of these awards which give, in their own way, special recognition of her outstanding record of service and academic performance.

New Group Members Join ARFC

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 21:00:00 -0500

As the first semester of the ARFC group begins this fall, I’m excited to announce that a number of researchers will join the group.

Alexander Lindsay will be joining us a postdoctoral scholar. He received his undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and received his PhD this summer from North Carolina State University. He will be joining ARFC as well as the Data Exploration Laboratory (DXL) led by Matthew Turk. His activities will emphasize open source advanced reactor multiphysics and his collaboration with DXL may advance visual exploration of simulation results.

Andrei Rykhlevskii will be joining the group as a PhD student. He has a degree in Nuclear Engineering from Bauman Moscow State Technical University as well as a Masters of Science in Finanace from the Financial University in Moscow. His work will likely also emphasize open source advanced reactor multiphysics.

Additionally, a small team of undergraduate researchers will join the group this year. These include Kathryn Mummah and Jin Whan Bae of NPRE as well as Matthew Worley and Yukun Tan who will join us through the NCSA SPIN program.

With the help of all of these researchers, I expect ARFC will really be able to hit the ground running.

Huff Featured in NPRE News

Tue, 12 Jul 2016 21:00:00 -0500

I am thrilled to be featured in the NPRE news today. Susan Mumm wrote a lovely article announcing that I’ll be joining NPRE. You can read the article here.

ARFC and ERGS Receive NEUP R&D Award

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:00:00 -0500

The United State Department of Energy announced today that ARFC, in collaboration with the University of South Carolina’s Energy and Resources Group led by Anthony Scopatz (ERGS), would recieve 3 years of NEUP R&D support. The ARFC group will be able to support extensive work on predictive deployment models for the Cyclus fuel cycle simulator and its library of available modules, Cycamore. The abstract for this award, “Demand Driven Cycamore Archetypes” can be found online alongside many other 2016 NEUP awards, including others involving faculty from NPRE.