 published a funding opportunity announcement. Now it's called our Notice of Funding Opportunity, specifically for mission-related R&D projects. And we did that at FY20 and FY21, and there's an announcement out now for FY22. And it turns out these grants, we had overwhelming response to them. We were really pleased with that. They're highly competitive. The first two years, 20 and 21, we received over 200 proposals and were able to award 26. And these projects are supported under this program, really do complement the research and development that we're doing here at the NRC in our programs. The reminder that the fiscal year 22 funding opportunity is out there right now and it closes on April 5th. So I hope everybody out there, if your university is listening in, please apply for these grants. As I mentioned before, the grants complement our research portfolio, that I think the added benefit to these grants is directly to engage students, university professors and university programs. And to work that's relevant to the agency that's helpful to us. We really value these projects and it really also is there to help develop the next generation of engineers. One area where I know we could approve in the grant program is participation of minority serving institutions and to encourage greater participation this year in our notice, we encourage institutions to develop partnerships with MSIs. We continue to evolve our UNLP partnership with DOE and the NNSA to ensure our programs are complementary and provide coverage for the various technical areas we're all interested in. All right, with that next, I'd like to just briefly introduce all of the speakers today and then we'll get into the presentations in Q&A. So the format is we'll, I'll introduce the speakers, we'll have presentations from each one of those after each individual presentation we'll have Q&A session. So please submit your questions throughout the session and then at the end we'll all come together with a brief panel discussion. So first of all, I just briefly introduce presenters, Maria Avromova, professor at North Carolina State University, Kadir Siener, assistant professor from Auburn University and he'll be accompanied by graduate student Joshua McLeod. And then David Medich, he's associate professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. So thank you again for all the panelists and we're gonna start with you, Maria, Dr. Avromova as a professor of nuclear engineering and university facility scholar at North Carolina State University. She's founder and director of the NCSU Consortium for Nuclear Power and a founder of and coordinator of the International User Group of the NCSU Advanced Nuclear Thermal Hydraulic Code CTF. Dr. Avromova holds a BS diploma in engineering physics from Sophia University, a St. Clement Ritzky in Sophia, Bulgaria and an MS and PhD in nuclear engineering from Penn State. Dr. Avromova has led several high visibility international programs supported by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the IAEA, the USNRC and DOE. Currently, she's co-chair of the NEA OECD expert group on core thermo hydraulics and mechanics under the working party on scientific issues and uncertainty analysis of reactor systems of the Nuclear Science Committee. And so the topic of her presentation is going to be the development of liquid metal fast reactor core thermo hydraulic benchmarking for verification validation and uncertainty qualification for quantification for a sub channel and CFD codes. So Maria, I'll turn it over to you, thank you. Thank you very much for the nice introduction. First of all, I would like to, let me find a way to look at my, sorry. I don't really see my slides, but I will open. Maria, your slides are up and if you just ask, they'll change your slides for you. Yeah, that's fine, sorry about that. So, but yeah, I would like to thank or to acknowledge the work of the team. This is not just a work done by a single person. It's a joint work between North Carolina State University and Texas AM University. We have Dr. Howar and Kota Katsuki. He's a graduate assistant at NC State and Dr. Rodolfo Vagaton, Professor of Science from Texas AM. Please advance. Next slide, please. Okay, so this presentation will focus or discuss the research and development project with a long name, as we already heard about it. It's OECD Energy Liquid Metal Fast Reactor Core Thermal Hydraulic Benchmark for VVUQ for sub channel and computational for dynamic codes. It's funded through the USNRC University Leadership Program grant and it is in line with this energy strategy and plan for advance of non-whitewater reactor research. It's intended to help energy to prepare for incoming challenges related to validation of codes for new non-whitewater reactor types. And we also hope that we will provide a nuclear industry with well-defined international standard problem based on high fidelity resolution data for validation of such tools. So we really hope to contribute to establishing modeling and simulation tools for licensing and operation of liquid metal fast reactors. Please advance. Next slide, please. So that's briefly the outline of my talk. I'll give you an overview of the benchmark or talk about the uncertainty quantification strategy that you'll be using and then a brief discussion on importance of the benchmark for the industry and regulation and ending with conclusions. Let's go to the next slide, please. So again, that's a benchmark which will employ a series of well-defined problems with complete set of input specifications and reference experimental data. And it's interesting that we have here data from two different facilities. So we have 61 pin test facility, liquid metal fast reactor test facility at Texas AM. This is a very recent data, high resolution, high fidelity, very good quality data. And then we will be using another data, legacy data from TORS experiments perform a long time ago at OccultiNational Labs and TORS stands for thermohydraulics out of reactor safety experiments. So the first set of data, the Texas AM data, we have pressure drop and velocity distribution in a very fine resolution. And for the TORS data, what we have as a data is temperature measurements and pressure drop as well. Next slide, please. Briefly again about the benchmark team, at Texas AM and North Carolina State University, it's sponsored by USNRC, thank you very much for that. But it's important to mention that it's also endorsed by nuclear energy agency at OECD and they provide supporting activities in terms of establishing benchmark website, email distribution list, coordinating the benchmarks, the workshops, which are within this benchmark activity and distribution of materials, preparing reports and so on. We have a website to see the others there. Our benchmarks is also linked to an ongoing benchmark within NEA, that's the Sojourn-False Reactor Uncertainty Analysis in Modeling Benchmark. And it's again sponsored and monitored through the expert group on reactor thermohydraulics and mechanics from NEA. Oakridge will help us for the second phase and you see we have three years, we're just in the beginning of the second year in our activity. Next slide, please. So I'll spend a little bit more time here on this slide and it's a busy one, but I think it's important because the benchmark as we envision to have it, it's slightly different than the traditional benchmarks that we're used to see. So our goal is not only to just predict the measure value and compare and say we are good or bad, that's just the beginning of the task. But let me first talk about the two phases and the objectives of each phase. So we have phase one, which is focused on Texas AM data, also numerical predictions of Texas AM separate effect test. There are three main objectives here. And first one is to provide a high resolution experimental data of isothermal, turbulent flow and pressure drop. And isothermal is underlined because it's very important. We want first to target the fundamentals before moving to heated conditions and so on. So that's the first objective. And we will use that to assess the performance of numerical schemes and different turbulent models currently implemented in CFD code, computational fluid dynamic codes. Finally, we want to establish best practices for uncertainty quantification of module geometry, initial boundary conditions, other associated uncertainties in the CFD calculation. And this is the first link to the sodium fast reactor uncertainty analysis of modeling benchmark, which is ongoing. So now you'll probably have noticed that that's mostly, phase one is mostly targeting CFD codes, but only sub-channel codes can be, of IK as well. Then moving to the second phase, this is on the TORS data. It's more like integral effect test. And we will have here, our targets or objectives are to provide a sodium turbulent flow and heat transfer database. Now for validation of both CFD and sub-channel codes. Emphasis on an importance of the uncertainty analysis in this simulation. And again, we want to establish best practices for quantification of uncertainties propagation. Another link to the ongoing SFROM benchmark. Develop guidance for CFD, model validation for this type of reactors and updated current TH models for pressure drop and inter-channel mixing for the Corsair TH codes or X sub-channel codes. Finally, develop a hybrid experimental simulation database needed to establish and calibrate the low fidelity Cors resolution models with high resolution, high fidelity data. So again, I just want to underline again, what are the differences to the traditional benchmarks? We are using two different facilities. That's a challenge. And there may be some issues possibly that some inconsistency, but we really want to do that in order to try to derive some lessons. How you can use the old legacy data, a good data, but maybe not well documented, missing, uncertainties, bounds and so on and compliment it in some way with newer data, even with numerical data, if we wish. That's the first one. And we are targeting different fidelity codes, CFD versus sub-channel system, if you think you can use this benchmark as well. And the next important part, the topics here, the subject is really propagation of the uncertainties. High to low, it's very hot topics in the simulations, but there are very little work. There's very little work done on estimating the uncertainties of the models developed based on the data from high fidelity codes being propagated to the low fidelity codes. This is something that we want to address. Okay, let me move then to the next slide because the time is running. Next slide, please. So I'll start with phase one, going over the benchmark phases. That's again the Texas AM data. We have 61 pin wire fuel bundle, completely ice to thermal room temperature. You see the solid material, it's acrylic plastic and then you have specimen as a working fluid. It's a new data, the facilities still on operation, that's very important as well. Next slide, please. Can you move to the next slide? So very briefly, I'm not spending time here, so a lot of information, I just want to show it to you to give you a bit of what we have. Those are the dimensions of the main phase section and nominal conditions. Again, you see it's 69 pin bundles, it's almost two meters total length. Very representative geometrical conditions for the liquid metal pass reactor bundles. Again, system pressure around slightly above 100 kilopascals and room temperature. Next slide, please. What do we have as experimental data for comparison or for the benchmark? So we have a pressure drop and high resolution velocity measurements. As we saw in the very first slide of the presentation. So the measurement techniques are particle image velocity and particle tracking velocity. For the benchmark exercises, we will have the pressure drop among one axial wire bridge and particle image velocity measurements for vertical and axial or vertical axial plane. And you see a photos of the facilities there. So with that, let's move to the next slide where we will see what kind of data we are requesting from the participants. So starting with the pressure drop comparisons. So you see the geometrical details here and we have several or a few pressure top pressure, differential pressure tops with measurements available. Now I really want to spend more time on focus on the requested output. So again, look here, we are not requesting only the predicted value of the pressure drop. We also want the participants to provide the uncertainties. They have to estimate what are the uncertainties coming with that predicted value in order to compare it to measure value with its uncertainties. And similarly for the velocity, please move to the next slide. Similarly for the velocities, again, we have again a very good high resolution velocity measurements here for different Reynolds numbers. Velocity data is measured in fully developed region between the pressure tops. And again, what we will request is velocity prediction plus uncertainties. And I'll talk what kind of uncertainties are being propagated or we'll ask participants to propagate when providing the output uncertainties of their predicted velocity distribution. So let's move to the next slide where we have the moving, we'll move to the second phase. This is the integral effect comparisons to the torque data. So we have a different story here. It's a legacy data. As you can see the experiments were performed in 1970s, 80s. On the next slide, we will see the whole set of available data. We are not targeting the whole database here. It's not needed. We are targeting just selected part of the database. Those are bundles 3C, 6A and 9. We'll see the specification on the next slide. The good things about 3C and 6A, those are public, the data is publicly available. 3C involves steady state, so it blockages, sorry. And transient conditions, 6A, it's natural circulation and boiling. It's very interesting. And then 9 is the one which, bundle 9 is the one which at least geometrically corresponds to the completely almost to the Texas AM data. And over there we have steady state and transient data available. Let's look at the table on the next slide. So that's the entire TORS experimental campaign given here. Again, we have different number of pins in the bundles, blockages, configuration simulated and so on. We, once again, we are targeting the last three here, 6A, 3C and 9 for our benchmark exercises. Let's move to the next slide. So TORS data is again an old data. It's not digitalized. The first thing that the benchmark is facing because the challenge here is data recovery. We have to put it in a nice digitalized format for the use for the benchmark. Most of the TORS reporters still export control, but again, we don't need everything out from the data for this benchmark activities. And we are working with, again, the Gateway of Advanced Innovation and Nuclear Office. They're assisting us with releasing just a part of the bundle nine, which will be used in the benchmark exercises. Again, the other two bundles, 6A and 3C, those data, this data is publicly available. Okay, I think I'm maybe running out of time. So let's move to the next slide, please. Talking about the uncertainty quantifications. So again, we want to wag the participants to propagate the uncertainties. Input propagate the input uncertainties and provide an output predicted value with output uncertainties. So the uncertainties to be propagated include fluid properties, boundary conditions, manufacturing tolerances for the Texas AM data. So we have defined pressure drop and there was the measurement uncertainties for comparisons. And we have the temperature uncertainty for the TORS data. So we are giving the participants the freedom to choose their own available base of QE or EQ uncertainty quantification methods. Coupling to tools and codes as the quota is encouraged and possible. And this is what the benchmark team is actually doing with CTF, the quota and net 5,000 of the quota being coupled for to propagate the uncertainties. Next slide, please. Very quickly where we are. So I'll move quickly through this slide. So the benchmark is open mining somehow. So we are requesting output for measure data plus uncertainties, but as we see needs for adding additional information that can be done as well. So we don't want to limit our self to a particular output format. And also we are doing our independent reference calculations on both CTF sub-channel and CFD site that will assist the participant in that. Next slide, please. I'll have my final slides to kind of conclude on the benchmark. So after the contributions again to summarize briefly, it will provide a liquid metal fast reactor turbine for a heat transfer database for high resolution model validation, emphasis on uncertainties, propagation, how to address these issues. We want to develop guidelines for high-to-wall propagation and even model validations, including the uncertainties as well. And we really aim to develop a hybrid experimental simulation database necessary for the validation. Next slide, please. Now, where we are with the status very briefly. So phase one is already the specification for phase one. It's already released by the end of this month. We will release specification on phase two. That's done through the NEA, the agency. We had our first benchmark workshops this past June. It was virtual. The next one is this coming end of May beginning of June and it's gonna be hosted by CAE trans. And as a deliverable, we have, of course, benchmark specification, results, reports and so on. And I really want to conclude with the last slide, just briefly to summarize what the benchmark it is. So if you move to the last slide, it's the conclusion. Next slide, please. Again, the benchmark, the intention is to serve, to address the modeling challenges by assembling teams of experts. That's, it's very important. We cannot be isolated from the rest of the world. We have to work with experts from around the world. So right now, for example, we have participants from Europe, US and Asia in that benchmark. But again, the focus is not only on comparison to experimental data, but addressing issues with the propagation of uncertainties and uncertainties in the predictions as well and developing guidelines. We really hope that we will be able to assist US and Asia as our sponsor and industry for upcoming challenges, especially related to modeling, design and licensing of new reactor types, particularly liquid metal fast reactors. The very last slide that I have in the presentation are just the references. Thank you very much for your attention and I'm open for questions. Yeah, thank you, Maria. This was really very interesting. It looks like you and your teams made a lot of progress since the award was made. Yours was in the first group of awards. So I really enjoyed that. And I really like how you've brought in a lot of participants in this. I imagine it's a logistical nightmare to get everybody together. And I also wanted to comment on the data recovery that you're doing with the Department of Energy through GAIN. I really encourage that. There's a lot of data out there. Don't give up on trying to get it. It's there, it just may take some time. I think I've always dropped down. Yeah, good, good. You did mention on the benchmark participants or they're encouraged to use the best uncertainty quantification methods that are available to them. When you have multiple participants like this that contribute their results to the benchmark system you're developing, though obviously there'll be differences between the results. Could you comment on how you plan to treat those differences in the overall understanding of uncertainties in the current capabilities of modeling the thermohydraulic phenomenon and the LMS flora cores? Yeah, that's actually very good questions. And we do have some experience here because I personally was involved in other benchmarks for pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors. But important part is when, in my understanding, is when asked for participants to submit the results, you have to ask them to fill or submit answers to questionnaires where it's a really detailed questionnaires where the participants should describe water denumerical methods, nodalization, assumptions, everything to go to the simulations because at the end we will be comparing different codes, different fidelity, different resolutions. You may have user effects when you use different users use the same code but apply different assumptions. You have different modeling fidelity codes, sub-channel versus safety, how it's here, or even using different models to predict the same phenomena. So asking for uncertainty of the predictions and compare those two uncertainties in the measurement, that's one thing, but we want to somehow systematically define different clusters of predicted data and see how to address the uncertainty in that. And let's say one cluster could be, let's say, sub-channel codes using that nodalization or one sub-channel code used by different participants with different assumptions and so on. That's very important. Just to see where the problems could be coming, what are the gaps we have to have a systematic basis for comparison of the predicted results and uncertainties. When I say predicted results, I include the uncertainties there as well. So, of course, each cluster within each cluster of codes to or prediction available, for every participant, you can do the common things like using a main error and standard deviation based on the difference between the mean calculated and measure value and so on. But it is important to compare apples to apples. Let's put it in this way. So, this is why we are asking for a very detailed questionnaire or supplying that questionnaire and asking participants to submit that. I don't know if I answered your question. Yeah, that did. That was very good, Maria. I'm sorry we don't have any more time for questions right now, but thank you very much, Maria. I really appreciate it. And thanks for what you're doing on this NRC-sponsored project. Next, we'll go to a presentation by Auburn University, Dr. Kader Center. He's an assistant professor in the Civil Engineering Department at Auburn since 2019. Dr. Center has been actively involved in numerous research projects pertaining to nuclear structural engineering that were funded by both public and private agencies Prior to joining Auburn University, he devoted much of his time into research on testing analysis and development of design specifications for steel plate concrete composite structures for use in Gen 3 Plus nuclear power plants, such as the AP1000 and the US APWR. He subsequently was the lead research engineer in a project funded by the US DOE to investigate the in-plane and out-of-plane shear behavior of both steel plate concrete and reinforced concrete structures. These projects involved large-scale experimental investigations and advanced computational studies of RC and SC structures to understand their fundamental behavior under extreme loading conditions such as seismic events that involve operational and accidental thermal conditions. The outcomes of these research projects have been incorporated into the code specifications that govern the design and construction of steel concrete posit structures for safety-related nuclear facilities and used extensively around the world by engineers, consultants, and regulators. Dr. Center has also participated in a research project funded by the US DOE through the RPE program, where the project focused on investigating different concrete technologies for deployment in stable salts. His current research interests include investigating topics that will enable the widespread implementation of next-generation nuclear power plants and small modular reactors, including seismic thermal and soil structure interaction behavior. And with Dr. Center is Joshua McLeod, who is also working on this project. So I believe you guys will be tag-teaming on the presentation. And the topic is development of a soil structure interaction framework just in support to enhance regulatory oversight of small modular reactors. So Dr. Center, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ray. Despite being the least experience among the speakers today, I seem to have the longest introduction. I should have cut that short. But yeah, greetings to all the attendees. Again, this is Kadir Center, system professor at Auburn. I'm going to talk about our research project that we recently started working on that was funded in FY21. And again, the title is same as our project as development of a soil structure interaction framework in support to enhance regulatory oversight for small modular reactors. And I should mention that during my talk, I will interchangeably use acronyms, mainly use SSI for soil structure interaction, and SMR for referring to small modular reactors, which most of the audience would be familiar with that. So since we recently began working on this research in this presentation, I'll just give a broad overview of the project and highlight some of the important aspects. But hopefully next year we'll show some research results. So the project team includes myself and Dr. Jack Montgomery at Auburn University. And we have Professor Amit Varma at Purdue University as a co-PI. As mentioned, and also shown on the slide, we have two students working on this project, Brian Hurley and Josh McLeod. And Josh, again, will actually present a couple of slides during this presentation, so you'll soon hear from him. OK, next slide, please. So I'll start with highlighting some important structural attributes of SMR designs that are currently under development. And when we did a survey of general structural layouts of SMRs from publicly available documents, we noticed that a common feature of these structures was the partial embedment of critical compartments below ground level. And this was regardless of the vendor. You see some examples on the slide where we have various SMR designs from several different vendors. And it's a common feature to have partially buried structure by typically placing the reactor compartment below ground level. And this partial burial feature of SMRs is desirable because it adds an additional layer of safety against natural or man-made external hazards and also potentially minimizes the effects of internal hazards by limiting the exposure of contaminants or extreme heat during an accident scenario due to these critical compartments not being directly exposed to the environment. Next slide, please. So the partial burial of these compartments is advantageous, but at the same time, this burial leads to uncertainties in the seismic behavior of SMRs as the dynamic response will largely depend on the soil structure interaction behavior. So understanding the rocking, gapping, sliding behavior, and accurately incorporating these into our models to assess the dynamic response becomes even more critical for these structures. Since SSI effects are less critical for surface structures, most modeling evaluations of these above ground structures typically disregard the nonlinear soil contact and interface behavior. And obviously, there's a lack of large-scale experimental data for validating these models. And therefore, our main motivation is to fill this gap through conducting large-scale experimental studies and developing advanced numerical simulations that are validated against reliable test data. Next slide, please. So our overarching goal is to support regulators in assessing new generation power plants with the specific objective of our research of developing a framework to analyze and evaluate the seismic response of SMRs while accounting for their unique structural attributes and nonlinear soil structure interaction. So we identified two major research trusts to accomplish the objective. First, addressing the need for large-scale experimental research to clearly understand and characterize the SSI behavior. And secondly, developing numerical modeling methodologies validating against the physical data generated during the experiments, which can then be used for modeling and evaluating SMRs or nuclear facilities with similar structural attributes. Next slide, please. To accomplish these objectives, we have three major phases in our research. So the first phase, we will conduct large-scale SSI experiments on partially-buried case ons to generate reliable test data for validation. Once we have the experimental results in the second phase, we will develop experimentally-validated numerical finite element models. These models will be based on time domain rather than frequency domain methods, since we know that the frequency domain modeling tools, despite being the industry standard for SSI evaluations, they have several limitations in terms of accounting for nonlinear interface behavior and also requiring separate models than structural models, which is an additional effort. And then in the last and third phase, we plan to validate this more developed modeling approach against actual field data from past events and also perform comparative studies against frequency domain analysis methods to highlight the differences. So next, we'll give more detail about each phase. And now Josh will take over to talk about what we plan to do in the experimental phase and then Josh is obviously our future engineer that we're training through this research program. So please go ahead, Josh. Thank you, Dr. Center. Next slide, please. So as mentioned, the first phase of this project will be conducting a large-scale SSI test to generate some experimental data to validate our numerical simulations. The test will be conducted in our newly-opened Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory, and we use a very unique feature of our lab. As you can see in the pictures on the slide, we have a geotechnical testing chamber that is built into our strong floor that is 20 foot in depth and 24 by 10 foot in plan, which will allow us to conduct these soil structure interaction tests. Having the geotechnical chamber built into our strong floor allows us to apply large loads, as well as dynamic loads into structures that are inside the chamber when it's filled with soil. With this unique feature of the laboratory, we can conduct tests where we closely control the physical properties of the soil, particularly the density and saturation levels. Large-scale tests will allow our results to be more representative of realistic field conditions. Next slide, please. So we plan to have several testing parameters in our experimental program. On the slide, you can see a schematic of our planned SSI experiment layout, where we're going to apply loading on a case on it's located in the center of our geotechnical testing chamber. We're planning for the case on to be as large as possible while still maintaining enough distance from the boundaries to allow potential failure modes to occur. Some of the parameters we'll examine in the experiment are case on shape, including circular and cuboid shapes, different surf materials such as steel, concrete or a geosynthetic liner, and different case on burial depths. In terms of soil parameters, we'll be using a granular backfill to plan to look at two different compaction levels to examine soil density and different saturation levels. The loading types we look at, initially on quasi-static loads, the plan worth increasing amplitudes at low frequencies. Following these low-frequency cycles, we plan to apply sinusoidal harmonic motions while gradually increasing the amplitudes and frequencies until we reach the limits of a hydraulic system in our laboratory. The following loading phases we plan to move towards more realistic loading schemes that will represent the response of structures to ground motions expect in Eastern and Western United States. We also plan to repeat some of these tests at different surcharge loads on the soil to account for different levels of overburden pressure that would be applied by the main structure. Next slide, please. During these tests, we plan to record and monitor the response of the soil and the structure using various sensors, including displacement, rotation, acceleration and pressure sensors. Displacement sensors and inclinometers will be placed on the case-on to obtain the forced displacement and the moment-rocking angle response of the case-on. Vertical displacement sensors will record transient and permanent settlements of the case-on and the soil surface. Accelerometers will be placed in the soil and on the case-on to measure accelerations and pore pressure sensors in the soil and at the interface will monitor fluid pressures in the saturated tests. Surface pressure sensors on the case-on will be used to measure dynamic pressures and to report gap formation. We're also going to take samples of the soil near the case-on after testing to evaluate any park crushing at the interface that may occur. Integrating these results will allow us to determine the dynamic capacity of the soil structure system, which can be compared with static interface strengths and existing analytical models for SSI behavior of case-ons. Next, Dr. Center will take over again to discuss the numerical phases of our project. That was great. Thank you very much, Josh. Can we proceed to the next slide, please? Great. So as Josh talked about phase one, which is the experimental phase, and I'll continue talking about the upcoming phases or the following phases two and three. And so once phase one, the experimental phase is completed, we'll start working on developing benchmark numerical models using time domain finite element software and validate them against the test data. So the models will use nonlinear constitutive material models and nonlinear interfacial models. The soil material will incorporate several plasticity parameters for detailed definition. And the interface model will have features to capture the behavior in both in normal and tangential directions. We plan to use one or more of the software listed in the slide and depending on their finite element and material model capabilities. As we have seen, similar studies performed by other researchers have indicated that either abacus, alastina or mastodon is capable of capturing the behavior that we would observe during our tests. So finite element models will include significant detail regarding the test case on test chamber boundaries and incorporate measured dynamic properties of the soil. Comparisons will be made against the hysteretic and backbone curves of the measured load displacement or moment rotation responses. And we will do qualitative and quantitative comparisons using the various pressure measurements that we obtained during the test against the analysis results. Next slide, please. So once we complete that, we're in the final phase of our project where we plan to use our developed benchmark numerical modeling approach and conduct a comparative numerical study of a real seismic event on a large scale structure. For this study, we chose to conduct an exploratory study on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant due to the available soil profile and ground motion recorded during the major event that took place in 2011. The developed modeling methodology will be implemented to build models and compare against the structural response measured on the plant. Comparative studies against frequency-based, frequency domain-based linear analysis, again, are the current industry standard for the analysis type used in SSI evaluations. We'll do comparisons against that and point out the key differences in the performance of each approach and highlight any shortcomings or limitations of each SSI approaches. Next slide, please. So here's a timeline of our project. We expect that the experimental phase will take the longest by about a year and a half and be the most critical task in our path. We plan to start the benchmarking FE model development as soon as we start having some experimental results and continue with the following computational phases. We're obviously in the experimental phase and hoping to provide results at the next regulatory conference. Next slide, please. So with that, that's all we wanted to present in this session. And again, we're grateful for the generous support of the NRC and looking forward to presenting results in the upcoming conferences. So thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much to both of you and Kadir and Joshua. We do have time for some questions. So let me get started. First of all, the geotechnical chamber, I think Joshua, you talked about, that's really pretty impressive the size of that. I guess I think it was like 24 by 10 by 20. So I don't know how you're gonna unload it once you get the soil in there, but anyway, that's for you guys to figure it out. But how would you, how do you plan to apply the insights from your experiments to real constructions where the structures are embedded in buried in soils that don't have the finite boundary? Is it part of your, you talked about sensitivity studies on the finite element models? Where do you compensate for that from the limitations of, even though it's a large structure, a large experimental structure, how do you compensate for the, for predicting the real life situation? That's an excellent question. And that's one thing we also have been considering when we were trying to come up with the case on size as we're currently targeting a meter, so which is three to four feet in plan. And when we were trying to come up with that size, we were looking at the distance from the boundaries so that the boundaries does not really suppress any of the failure modes that we might absorb with when doing the testing. So although we're trying to have it come up with a case on as large as possible, so it's the, it's a best representative of a actual structure, obviously we have limitations and we don't wanna be too close to the boundaries. So we have about twice the size of the case on on either side so that it doesn't, it has minimal effect on the results. And then in these sensitivity studies will obviously take into account of the boundaries of the chamber and really observe if what kind of effect the boundaries will have on the results. But so at the same time we wanna minimize it, we still want a large case on as possible and then look at the influence of the boundaries in our numerical models. And hopefully they'll be minimal. But that's how we'll reflect to and then real structures in that sense. Okay, thank you very much. The next question in your large scale testing, how do you consider the scaling effects and the cyclic load testing such as the, such as the density of the materials? Scale effects in the sense that we will use just regular soil in it. So there is no scaling in the soil side. And like I mentioned, these are not really simulating a full scale structure, right? So our main intention actually through these tests is to obtain that interfacial response between whatever material we're using, whether it's steel case on concrete case on or some geosynthetic and then look at the pressure at a large scale test. So it's not like these will be directly used for an actual structure, but in a sense that these will become the properties that we use in the interface. So hopefully with the large sizes that we have, we hope to have minimal scaling effect between what we measured in the test versus what's done, what we would use in the models for the large scale test. Because the alternative for these tests was centrifuge tests, which are significantly scaled when doing these type of experimental SSI studies. So at least we're getting much closer to reality as opposed to those very small scale centrifuge tests that are commonly done in the research. Okay, thank you. One last question, Kader. A substantial amount of excavation, soil replacement and soil compaction were done for the Vogel three and four project to address liquefaction. How applicable is that information for the work that you're doing in this project? So part of the specimen test matrix that Josh mentioned had a parameter in saturation, although so we can control the water level in our soil, but we would most likely not consider liquefaction as a main parameter. As mentioned, these structures in real world, when they're built, there'll be large excavations will take place and then the soil will be compacted with granular backfill. So the density levels we expect are in the high range sort of in the 80 to 90% relative densities. So that's what we're mainly gonna target and maybe that's a great follow up project to look at liquefaction effects, but currently we're gonna address more of the common cases and then for special cases, I'm sure that would be a good next project. Well, that's all the time we have for questions. Thanks to you, Dr. Senor and Josh, we really look forward to updates as this project gets going. So thank you very much. So our next discussion will be from David Medich, he's associate professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Dr. Medich received his PhD in physics, studying nuclear and radiological sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 1997. During this time, he was a senior reactor operator and then the chief reactor operator for the UMass Lowell one megawatt research reactor. After receiving his PhD, Dr. Medich spent an additional year as acting director of the UML research reactor. And he says he still tickled pink about thinking about the time he ordered and received the shipment of a new HEU fuel. And supposedly there's a picture of you holding one of the fuel elements. So we'll have to see that sometime. So Dr. Medich then became a postdoctoral researcher at University of Virginia. He was a senior scientist at Implant Sciences Corporation, the director of the University of Massachusetts Lowell Radiation Safety and Materials Program and was ultimately appointed as an assistant professor at WPI in 2012, where he helped develop their new nuclear science and engineering program. He was promoted to an associate professor and granted tenure in 2016. Dr. Medich had been a qualified expert consultant for the IAEA and is presently the vice chair of the ISO Radiation Protection Committee on the editorial board of the Health Physics Journal and is the chair of the operational and medical health physics section of ANSI N13. He also is on the executive board of the American Board of Health Physics and the author of more than 30 published journal articles. His personal mantra is that it is all about, all about the neutrons. That's a good personal mantra, I like that. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, David, thanks. Thank you very much and it is a pleasure being here. The purpose of my research is to adopt a Gen4 microreactor, which is something right now that's being developed for use as a next generation source of university research reactor. And being that it's a next source university research reactor, we're also looking at advancing what research reactors do and operating this reactor as more of a hybrid model where it's not only producing neutrons for research, but it's also going to produce electricity for the campus and I'll talk about how we can envision that. Next slide, please. So based on what I've seen for the topics given at this conference, it seems everyone here probably has a very broad understanding of power reactors, probably much better than I do from my physics background, but maybe not as much for research reactors since I didn't see too many topics here. So I just wanted to kind of remind you or just go through the basics of the status of nuclear research reactors in the United States right now. So nuclear reactors are non-power reactors and their purpose is to be used for training and development purposes. Next slide. When we look at these US university research reactors, we see that they operate between about zero to 10 megawatts thermal. They were developed initially primarily to study reactor operations and provide greater insight into nuclear physics and engineering, especially things like cross-sectional tables, which we now pretty much take for granted half of them were probably obtained from research reactors. Now, as these research reactors started becoming more mature then they really started to be noticed that their neutrons were a very, very good tool for research in other fields, such as chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine, geology, et cetera. But here's the thing. These fields, these research fields oftentimes need high-intensity neutron sources. And when I talk about neutron intensity, I'll talk about either engineering flux or science fluence rate, which is neutrons per square centimeter per second. And you're gonna get these high-intensity neutron sources from research reactors that I'll say operate at about five megawatts thermal or more. Next slide, please. Okay, so to date, the US has built 59 research reactors. Of those 59 research reactors, 25 remained in operation. Question is why? What are the limits of university research reactors? And this is what I wanna focus on. All university research reactors are based on designs made in the 50s and maybe into the 60s. They all began operating between the period of 1955 to 1975. And just because I wanna make sure I keep my time commitment, I'm just gonna kind of gloss over this, these next two areas and say that now that university research reactors are becoming more and more of a source of neutrons for research, I will say that there's only two university research reactors right now that actually can meet all current research needs. And that's the MIT reactor and Mer. MIT runs at about six megawatts. Mer runs at about 10 megawatts. And really what this causes is a huge limit to scientific research, a huge bottleneck. There are plenty of examples, but for example, one of my areas of research that I've recently gotten into is neutron radiography of plant roots, potted plant roots. And when I first got into that area of research, I did my due diligence and I was looking at what is the state of the art through all these review articles. And half of the review articles I looked at would talk about, in one sentence, they would say, we have neutrons that they actually have a higher contrast between the different tissues and they have higher resolution, but it's impossible to get neutron beam time. So, and it's true. I mean, you're oftentimes making beam time six months in advance. So, because of that, they said this is not a great opportunity. The other half of those review papers didn't even mention neutrons at all just because so few people could use them because they're not easy to use. Next slide, please. So, what does it mean? Our reactors, our research reactors are roughly 50 to 60 years old and the vast majority, I would say 23 out of 25 US research reactors can be considered underpowered. I did work at the UMass Low Reactor and I know all the different things that our one megawatt reactor, when I was working there, what our one megawatt reactor couldn't do in terms of research, brachytherapy, nuclear medicine, small-angle neutron scattering, the list goes on. So, next slide, please. Okay, concurrent with that problem is another issue that's going around in the United States right now and that is universities are really pushing to become more sustainable and reduce their carbon emissions and it's all about, you know, can a university become carbon neutral? This was the easiest slide to make in my whole slide deck because it took me all of about two minutes to get these topics. On the left, it's, my screen is a little blurry in terms of the slides, but on the left, I just did a simple Bing search where I looked at university sustainability and I got page after page after page of all the different universities and their sustainability programs and the middle and then the right, I looked at the news and I was able to get from pretty high profile university websites, talking about university actions and life, all talking about how campuses are going green or should go green or et cetera, et cetera. So, next slide, please. So, you take those two issues and you bring them together and what I think is that a nuclear microreactor might be the best option for replacing these research reactors originally designed in the 50s. And I'll quickly remind or I'll quickly summarize some of these things about a nuclear microreactor. So, a nuclear microreactor is a type of Gen 4 reactor currently being developed. They aren't being built right now, but they are in the development stage and the idea of a microreactor is they're small. So, when we talk about their power, you know, we've talked about in previous talks, small modular research, or excuse me, small modular reactors, microreactors have a lower power than these SMRs, typically around 20 megawatts electric or less. Next slide, please. Okay, so specifically what is a microreactor? First, its output is gonna be low. So, this slide which is nice and sightable and it has nice graphics I decided to keep. It says that an output is usually less than 50 megawatts electric. Oftentimes, if you do search on the internet, you look at publications, they'll talk about 20 megawatts electric. So, you know, you can go somewhere between that. You can compare that to a current power plant, which is on the order of 1,000 megawatts electric. So, you know, again, you're looking at something that's maybe 50 to 100 times to even 1,000 times if they're operating a megawatt lower in power than current power reactors. Next slide. They're also designed to be modular. And of course, as you know, we've seen with TVs, the whole goal of a modular design is that, yeah, in the beginning, first off, it's actually safer to produce a modular design rather than having a completely new structure every time you go to a different facility but an easier to construct. But over time, you'll see modular designs have market decrease in prices. And again, if you look at your TVs, you can talk about what happened when HDR TVs came out. They were very expensive. Then as the science became, and the engineering became standard, then the prices went down and yada, yada. So, you know, modular, these modular designs really can have longer term effects for the viability of all these next gen reactors. Next slide. The thing that really got me going, and this was really the first, my first introduction to a microreactor is that these microreactors have not only be small in power, but these microreactors were being designed for use in places like, you know, places that are off the grid, essentially, they're remote or they could be used for military deployment sites or they could be used, you know, the thoughts, they could be used to help out regions that are overcoming a natural disaster. So, they have to be transportable. And with a microreactor, the idea is a microreactor has to fit on the bed of a truck. All right, so within a truck. And that includes the part of the microreactor that generates electricity. So, the entire system can fit on a truck bed, which is amazing. Next slide, please. The other thing about these Gen 4 reactors are that they have to be inherently safer than the Gen 2 reactors of the past that are currently being run. And so, what happens is, you know, you'll have your, for example, negative temperature coefficient where, you know, you'll inhibit the reactor from having a positive temperature coefficient of as it gets hotter, it gets more efficient to producing neutrons, which makes it hotter, et cetera, et cetera. And you lead to a Chernobyl incident. Okay, you won't get that with current Gen 2 reactors in the United States. So, that's a safety, a passive safety system. But one active safety system with current reactors is you have to have someone there to ensure that, for example, if the reactor is shut down, that the reactor is being cooled, right? That there's water in the reactor vessel to make sure that you can remove that decay heat. Now, and of course that was the issue with Three Mile Island, right? So, with these next generation reactors, the idea is to keep all of these safety systems passive, including the need for having someone intervene to ensure that there is appropriate decay heat removal during a shutdown. And so they do that in many ways. There's new types of fuel that has a much higher melting point, like, for example, trisofuel. And a lot of places are looking at things like, for example, nuclear grade graphite as a moderator. So, what it means is these huge reactor control rooms of the past, if I can go to the next slide, will not be needed. And so, when I talk to, for example, our colleagues, we're working with Westinghouse on their evincing reactor, as I'll mention slowly, shortly, really these microreactors are meant to be, seeing that they're supposed to be employed in these places that may not have a lot of people that can take the time to constantly be ensuring that the reactor is operating safely because they have this passive safety systems, you don't need these huge control rooms. And when I talk to the people at Westinghouse, their comment was, yeah, these reactors can be run off of a laptop. So it's kind of an interesting and different paradigm. Next slide, please. Okay, so putting all these things together, what are the advantages of using a microreactor as the basis of a next gen university research reactor? First off, these microreactors are going to be operating at equivalent thermal powers to a lot of these high demand university research reactors. So for example, if you're talking about a reactor, the one we're working on is a five megawatt electric. So five megawatt electric means you're probably gonna be producing about five megawatts thermal of power. And that puts that reactor, at least the one we're investigating, that puts it a little above the Merre reactor, the 10 megawatt Merre reactor and a little below the 20 megawatt NIST reactor, both of the research reactors. So that's really good. You now have a way to inexpensively, hopefully, and quickly be able to perform a lot of this research, which is now bottlenecked. So next, interestingly enough, these microreactors can meet most universities power needs as we're gonna show, at least in the case of WPI, and of course, meet those university carbon reduction goals. And so where universities now are giving these 50 year plans towards being carbon neutral, which quite honestly, if you can't do it in three, I'm not sure what they're assuming to become carbon neutral in 50 years from now, other than making some really difficult and possibly not very accurate assumptions on what they think the world is gonna be 50 years from now. Now, you can have an immediate huge impact on university carbon reduction goals. Of course, because they're modular, they can be stationed at a university fairly quickly and economically. And last, this is just the side thing, we've had university research reactors operating in the United States for over 50 years. And these research reactors, there haven't been any major safety issues that we can point to, such as with power reactors. And they're in major cities, Cambridge, and all sorts of other big cities. And so really, right off the bat, this is a good way to promote public support for next-gen reactors because we're gonna say, okay, well, here we have these research reactors that already have been operating safely, but now we're having this next generation of research reactors. And now we wanna use them to not only be built, but also to enhance fields. Like no one could argue that you can't be doing a good thing if you're making medicine that's used to treat cancer or diagnostic equipment that's used to detect disease. These things are like, oh, that's really great. So next slide. So you take these four items. Next slide, you add them together and you get happy graduate students. And actually you really get a happy public, but for me, as long as I have happy graduate students, my life is easier when my graduate students are unhappy, that's kind of a miserable time for me. So next slide, please. All right, so as I mentioned, we're using the Westinghouse EvenSea Micro Reactor as our basis for our advanced or next-gen research reactor. The EvenSea is a very high-temperature reactor. Its designs were just finalized. We are also a second-generation recipient of the research proposal of the NRC Research Grant. So we're still kind of in the early phases of our plot project. And not only that, but as I mentioned, Westinghouse just finalized their design in the fall. So now we're kind of really up and going trying to start development on our project. It uses a solid core and advanced heat pipe technology. And this is another advantage because you want a compact microreactor. What's gonna happen is when we developed these original reactors, the whole idea was, we're not going to be worrying about anything like optimizing neutron flux. You just wanted to get to see, you wanted to see how reactors operate. So long story short, because these microreactors are being built with more compact cores, because you really want them easily transportable, then what's gonna happen is at the same power level as let's say a current research reactor that may be more distributed, you'll be producing the same number of neutrons roughly between the two reactors. But because the microreactor has a more compact core, that will mean a more intense neutron source. So right off the bat, you're operating at the same energy, let's say, and you're getting an enhancement in terms of your neutron intensity, which is the key to all these research projects. So it'll really help with research. Power output of the EVINS needs up to five megawatts. It's claimed for a 40 year design life with three year refueling, targeting less than 30 day onsite insulation. And that's typical for all these microreactors. So that means everything from soup to nuts once the reactor goes onsite, that within 30 days it's producing electricity and sending out electricity to the region. It is, as other microreactors, being designed to be operated autonomously. And as a very high temperature reactor, it's also able to provide heated water for building heating and superheated water for desalination and hydrogen generation. And with the hydrogen generation, I can see this as another advantage for universities that might need hydrogen for their research. Next slide. Okay, so the question is, can EVINS need WPI's energy needs? In 2020, WPI produced about 25 million kilowatt hours, or used 25 million kilowatt hours of electricity. So if you do the math, that turns out to an average amount of electricity at any point in time during the year of 2.8 megawatts, which is well within EVINC's five megawatt power capabilities. And according to our facilities director during that year, our peak electrical energy was 4.1 megawatts electric. So actually the EVINC seems to be able to meet all of the power requirements for WPI based on our 2020 numbers. And I will say based on our 2020 numbers, because we did do, we just built a new building onsite. So they're gonna change a little bit. Next slide, please. Now from all our campus activities, in 2020 again, we generated about 15,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases. Next slide, please. And those greenhouse gases, the EPA can divide them into two types, scope one and scope two emissions. Scope one emissions are due to things that happen onsite that produces greenhouse gases. Scope two emissions are due to us using electricity, which further away causes the power source to generate carbon gases. So actually, if you look, first off, as I've already mentioned, we can not only meet the electrical needs, the scope two needs for electricity on campus, we can probably exceed them, which would put us in kind of a scope, or a potential for a negative carbon, carbon impact. And this is unfortunately blue. I pulled it off a report from WPI. Our scope one emissions, 90% of it, if not more, is all from burning natural gas to heat water. So also being able to use water to heat some of the buildings at WPI could have a big impact on those emissions. So yeah, this could really impact greatly the amount of carbon that we produce per year on campus. Next slide. So the main aspect of our research, and again, we really haven't been able to advance too far in this because we're still in the version of designing a Monte Carlo model for the Evincy reactor, but we will be designing an MCMP model for the Evincy reactor, we're right in the middle of it. And then once we do that, we're gonna use the model to determine the shielding needs of the reactor, and that's gonna be our base for generating our research reactor. And once we do that, we're gonna compare it against Westinghouse's scale model, and we're gonna use that to validate the two models, their model and our model to make sure that everything looks reasonable. Now, once we do that, and as we're hoping that we could like to call this a next generation research facility, we're also looking at advancing some of the facilities that have been used at research reactors for 50, 60, 70 years. First off being thermal columns, and in our plan, we're looking at using a micro column array to image at higher resolution influence rate rather than the single long columnators currently used. And we're also looking at the prospect of using fast gathering materials in surrounding the X-Core neutron activation ports that we're planning on building. And we wanna look at the cost, not only the cost, but also the increase to neutron intensity to see if you can do this, and which would be an interesting thing. Research modular reactors as they are, be modular, they're built in a certain way. And so it might be an issue that you probably will not have in certain models the ability to have a center flux trap and the difference between irradiating something in the center of a reactor versus, let's say immediately outside a reactor vessel could be a loss of intensity on the order of a factor of 10 or more. And again, that's not too bad with these micro reactors because one, because they have a smaller core, you really won't have such a decrease in power in intensity because again, you're gonna be creating a more intense beam to begin with. Westinghouse has other very high temperature reactors are using graphite in their system to as a way of removing heat and other piping technologies. But there is a center flux trap or a center area that's filled with graphite that they would like to create into a flux trap. And they're talking about using two models, a research model and a pure energy model. So they might be able to get a center flux trap and we'll be looking into that. But in addition to that, we'll be looking at beam ports, cold neutron sources, et cetera. And we will be doing a structural analysis for facility shielding. Next slide, please. I'm gonna go over this very quickly. We had a few years ago, we wanted to, when we started learning about small modular reactors in this case, we wanted to see if indeed these more compact cores would increase the flux at a given power. We did a simple, our capstone students, our senior thesis students, we did a simple project for them where they simulated an SMR reactor at the minimum level of power needed to get a given K effective and compared it just against a few other reactors. And we did see that increase. Next slide, please. And this is work that just recently came about with our micro columnator arrays. And so the key is currently when you wanna make an imaging source for neutrons, you have these columnators, which to get a really high resolution columnator, you're talking about something that's three to four meters long. And of course, during those three to four meters long, you're suffering a significant one over R squared reduction in intensity. And then of course you also have to, in the columnator, if you don't vacuum out the tube, if it's not evacuated, you'll also get attenuation of the neutrons just from the air present. So you tend to get a big loss in signal. And when people do a lot of imaging at high resolution, it takes a long time. So what we're trying to do is replace it with an array of micro columnators. These micro columnators that we're testing, we actually have some experimental data that I didn't throw in yet. These micro columnators have a 10 inch diameter holes and they're separated by like 12 micrometers center to center. I think they have like a 60 to 70% opacity for transmission for neutrons. And the key is that these holes and their separation is so small that they wouldn't be noticed as a grid structure if you make the image. Because in our case, we were looking at trying to get a resolution, a system resolution of about 30 microns. And looking at the thickness of the micro columnator versus the whole diameter size, I used to use L over D for anyone who's familiar with that, but I wanted to stay away from it here just not to confuse you because this is a different application. Typically a T over D of 75 was able to hit our target of 30 microns. Next slide, please. One of the biggest interesting things I've been dealing with was when I deal with colleagues of mine who are like, well, how do you get a license to this reactor and they talk about their questions. And so, actually this was in our application to the NRC. Our original thoughts was, what we wanna do is we wanna initially license this reactor as a research reactor because it's a very, I shouldn't say simple, but a very more streamlined application. So we wouldn't initially use the reactor. We don't envision using the reactor as a power reactor originally. So we use it as a research reactor. We collect data for a couple of years and then after that, if there's enough data to justify it, we'd apply for a power reactor license. Now, that's it. If everything goes right, we'd analyze data for another couple of years and what we then would like to do is see if there's really any difference between operating as a power hybrid reactor versus just a research reactor. And it's very doubtful that it would be since it's just turning on power is essentially flicking the switch. So what we would like to do is at least see if we can make the recommendation of having all these micro-reactors at least at a certain power range to be licensed equivalent to a research reactor. Next slide. Okay, with that, I wanna give my thanks to all my students who have been helping out. I have two PhD students who are working on this project and two senior students who are doing their, we call them an MQP, but their senior capstone project. And they're all happy, which all makes me happy. Next slide. I also have five junior students. WPI is a project-based university. So we do, we require junior theses also. And so we have five students looking at the energy portion of this research. And I'd like to thank them. This was captured during the Zoom interview. Next slide. And of course the students that worked previously to give us the preliminary data that we used in our application. Next slide. So with that, I would like to sincerely thank the USNRC. We had two of their research awards that have been used to support this work, their research and development grant and their fellowship grant. Darren Roshback is the co-PI for the research award. And my fellowship co-PIs are Isabella Stroh, Germano Aina Keoni and Sinhaal Kadam. Next slide. And with that, I'll take any questions. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, thanks, Dave. I know we're short on time. So I just wanted to make a comment. We won't have time for questions because I want to bring the panel back on. But I think, I know it's early in the stage you talked about the attributes of a test reactor, flux traps, beam ports, that sort of thing. But it's going to be interesting how you weigh getting an all-in-one reactor. What do you have to compromise with respect to operating cycles and flux and experiment capabilities uptime and downtime, that sort of thing. That's I'm going to be anxious to hear about that. So I'm sure we'll be visiting with you about this later. That's a very good question because the idea is this is probably operating more as a research reactor. I guess it depends on the facility. But if it operates more on a research reactor where it could have up and down times, it would be operated similar to how solar cells are placed in a house, meaning that if you produce excess energy, it can go into the grid and you could use that as credits for times when you're not producing energy. So all in all, it looks like on average, we should, even with down times, we should be able to meet the full energy needs. But even if it meets half or anything, it's an added benefit because the true benefit really is the research that we've been inhibiting. Yes. Well, thanks, David. I'd like to bring on the other presenters back in and I know we're running short on time. I think we can run a little bit over because there's no sessions after this. But I did wanna pose a question to all of you, maybe give each a quick minute to answer. And this is more of a pitch for this program. As you know, we just started it in fiscal year 20, we've made two rounds of awards and obviously you folks were successful in that. But I'd like to know as we try to look ahead and improve the program, what attributes of the FOA or the grant program as you've experienced it were attracted you to apply for it and what should we be doing differently that could improve the program and the outcomes? So who would like to start with that? Maria, how about you? Okay, I can start. So I'll be very short. What I like, I like the focus on the advanced reactors because that makes our students happy. They're curious about new things most of the time. Yeah, and that's really good, the focus on new technologies and what could be helpful in my opinion is continuation as put it in this way. So sometime three years or period of time it's not really enough to completely finish one development. So maybe it's good to have a continuation on the subject. I know that probably that means more funding but this is what we like. Okay, well, thanks for that input. Kadir, how about you? How about from your standpoint? Yeah, so obviously we're, so our team is more composed of junior professors and so we're a little less experienced with grants overall with learning them as we go. So in this case, it'll be similar and we'll learn as we go but so far it's been great for in our field especially in civil engineering related work or work related to nuclear, there's few alleys and having an energy fund our research is first of all that's the main thing. What we see and obviously since we're new whatever opportunity that's out there we go for it. So that's grateful for it. And then I think one aspect would be especially for juniors like us would be to have more feedback and more communication between NRC staff for example, maybe next year this conference will be in person and we'll get to meet the NRC staff and have conversations with them and get feedback because obviously there's many vendors that are trying to get licensed and they have their issues which it's hard for us to know if you're not directly working with them and talking to NRC staff and engineers we can get an insight on those and then make our work more relevant and be more applicable eventually by getting some of those inputs from them which I think it would be very beneficial. Well, that's good feedback. I know we have been conducting some internal seminars where PIs are presenting their projects internally in NRC. So you might wanna think about doing that where we'd be more open to any of you to do that as you progress and we'll set up seminars for you as well within the NRC. So I'm glad, Josh, I'm glad you're here because I wanted to get from a student perspective what it helps you besides surviving, how does it, what do you see of the program? How is it helpful for you? My student program is a way for me to get a direction where I wanna go following the completion of my PhD. I'd really like to stay involved in research and it gives me an opportunity to get my foot in the door, learn how the grant process works to continue this after my education is done. It's great, thanks. And you have the last word on this, Dave. How about you from your perspective? I think that this is an outstanding program, honestly, because I remember that period of time, maybe there was 10 years where there was no real such support for the nuclear field and during that time, I mean, these universities, that's when you really started to see a lot of universities losing health physics and nuclear engineering programs. So this has done a huge service to these fields and in propping them up and the research program in specifically, I think is now giving a way of allowing a lot of these new tenure track faculty to show research that they're doing to get tenure. There's been a lot of support with students. There's been a lot of support with hiring faculty, but I think that this research program is truly a great avenue to help support the faculty on all levels at these universities. Well, great, I thank you all for that feedback and I appreciate you coming to the RIC and presenting your projects. I'm really excited about this and I hope I can hear good updates from all of you in the future as the projects progress. So thank you again. And with that, I'd like to close the session. I know we ran a little over, but it was very, very enjoyable to me. And here's some contacts if you have any questions after we close. So thanks, everybody.