 Good afternoon. Thanks for introduction. Thanks for inviting me to give a lecture here for this multicultural audience. I think I have two challenges. The first is that it's after lunch, so to keep you awake. And second challenge is this is nuclear energy management school. And I'm going to speak about research reactors. And they can do many things except energy generation. So I hope I will convince you that research reactors somehow are linked to nuclear energy and nuclear energy management in general. So that's a bit the contents of my presentation. Speak a bit historical background, because before nuclear energy certainly came research reactors. And this is how the all civil nuclear history has started. I will go very quickly through applications of research reactors, highlight some future perspectives. And later on, if somebody is really interested, you can consult some of the references. You recognize a reactor in general. We don't say this is reactor for neutron production or this is reactor for electricity generation. And you clearly identify main features, NPP or research reactor. So we need to start with the fuel. If you want to control chain reaction, you need control rods. You have a reactor vessel. This is also where moderator or coolant comes in. To protect from environment, you also have another barrier, which is called containment. And you need to take away the heat. And that's a cooling tower. So for NPP, you add additional that you take the heat and add turbine and generate electricity. So you see that the principle is there. So first of all, there is this direct comparison between research reactor or reactor in general and reactor which generates electricity. Now to understand how the system works, you need some basic knowledge of nuclear physics. And if you want to go in more detail, some nuclear engineering. So you would need to understand the interaction of nuclear with matter. Understand the process of fission, capture, scattering. You will understand the concept of criticality, role of delayed neutrons, radioactive decay, and also basic of thermohydraulics because there is a heat exchange, either just to cool the reactor or go from higher temperature to lower and turn the turbine for electricity generation. History is equally very important because this is where all reactors have started. So the first two important people, Fermi and Kurchatov, working in the former Soviet Union and US, worked on a project related to creation of nuclear bomb. The research reactor was a source of neutron to generate plutonium as a fuel of nuclear weapons. So the historic first steps of research reactor are not very bright in that respect. The first research reactor, which you really can call a research reactor, was built in Canada with the main purpose for basic research as a source of neutrons and measure some neutron-induced cross sections. And that happened in 1947 in Chopra River laboratories. I know you have a friend from Canada here, so maybe he can explain to you a little bit more about what has happened there. This is the slide which you have to understand because there might be a question in your exam. So if you understand that, you answer one of the questions. So what are the main features? Or what actually distinguishes research reactor from the nuclear power plant? The first is that typically a research reactor, of course, are very small. And you see, this is very powerful research reactor running in France, South of France, in Grenoble. The core diameter is only 30 centimeters wide. So these are very small machines in that respect. Many of them have powers less than 5 megawatts. What is the power of typical nuclear power plants? There, we have orders of magnitude. So this is another important feature to distinguish research reactor from power plants. We touched a little bit today in the morning enrichment level of the fuel. And research reactors would run typically high enrichment fuel compared to nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants today operate up to 3.5, maybe 5%, maximum enriched in terms of uranium 235. Research reactors, still LEU, low enriched uranium, would operate below 20%. And there was a big program, still ongoing, to convert highly enriched uranium reactor cores to low enriched uranium reactor cores. Research reactor can run on natural or forced cooling depending on our power. So there are no way NPP can run on the natural cooling because there is a much bigger power generator. And the research reactor, depending on the design and purpose it was built, can operate in the pulsing capability. That means you enlighten the reactor, get a tremendous pulse of neutrons, and then it shuts it down immediately. So it goes promptly to critical and then shuts it down. Again, what is the purpose of a research reactor? It's a source of neutrons. And these neutrons can be provided inside the core where the fuel zone is located along the core boundary or from external beams. That means going through the shielding, typically concrete, and getting outside of the reactor shielding itself where you perform different kinds of experiments. I repeat, reactor power can go from zero power to tens of megawatt for research reactors. And that's the same for the neutron flux going from very low fluxes up to 10 to the 14, 10 to the 15 neutrons per second space. Research reactors, as a source of neutrons, are used for many different applications. And I will go in more detail to explaining all that. From education and training, from analytical analysis, for the rise of the production, neutron scattering, neutron radiography imaging, nuclear data measurements, computer code validation, et cetera. More about research reactors, you can learn from a research reactor database. So typical exercise, what we give after the lecture or maybe during the lecture, you go there using your laptop and find if you have a research reactor running in your country or in a neighboring country. And what kind of reactor is this? What is built for, et cetera. So this is an interesting thing. So you can look for research reactors in different countries, regions. If this is operational or shut down, and what kind of power level flux, age, and last, but not the least, for which purpose it's operating. Is it mainly for neutron scattering, teaching, training? Maybe that's some geochronology studies, et cetera. So all that can be found in this database. A bit about history. We count today at least this database as more than 707 research reactors registered in a database. That means these facilities have been built historically. We count today 218 operational, 22 on temporary shutdown in 55 countries. You see research reactors are in all continents, as shown in the map. These are very old facilities. Most of them were built as part of the Atoms for Peace program in the 60s and 70s. That means that 50% of operating research reactors are older than 40 years. That means that also there is aging management issues and challenges for these facilities. And it also defines the future trend of operating research reactors. You can see on this slide that a number of research reactors shutting down compared to those newly licensed from the 70s, 80s. There are two times more shutting down than new reactors coming. That means that this number will continue to decrease as the time goes. One of the reasons that these are old facilities, and if a country doesn't have a need, a country does not have a need, or the country has no budget to replace all the reactor by new, meaning a country will not have a research reactor. This is a statistical distribution of number of research reactors providing particular application. So out of 230, 40 research reactors, more than 50% provide support to education and training programs. 120 reactors do some neutron activation analysis. The third biggest application is radioisotoproduction, material fuel testing and radiation neutrinary work. I will go and explain what these applications mean for those of you who are not familiar with that. A good reference to learn about these applications is the reason nuclear energy series publication on applications of research reactors. Now, this is an advantage and a challenge for a research reactor. As long as nuclear power plants generate electricity, everybody's happy. So you have typically one client or one user. This is consumer of electricity. So in that respect, on commercial basis, NTP provides a service to very broad clients is a public generating electricity. Research reactor is not money generating machine. It will require funds from the state all the time. So if you believe that you can build a research reactor and make a business out of it, I would say no. There are some exceptions, but in general, that will not happen. So that means policy funding and development will be defined by the government. In most duplicacies, research reactor will be a single national facility supporting the very broad area of applications. Nevertheless, there are many opportunities where neutrons can and are used today in different applications. These can be found in sectors of industry, agriculture, energy, medicine, and not forgetting research institutions, including universities. So there is a great opportunity, but at the same time, there is a challenge because research reactor as an organization deals with very broad range of stakeholders. So being a reactor manager, maybe you are a very good operator reactor, but you might be very bad or unknowledgeable to manage different stakeholders. This is one of the challenge today for research reactors because you need to communicate with many different people in understandable language. I will go now one by one to explain you in more detail applications of research reactors. And all of the applications will have two slides. The first one, what do we mean? And the second, how it is done. So research reactor, you learn about reactor physics. So you start learning by visiting the facility, and you will visit NTP. Maybe a research reactor. I don't know if this is in the program, but you will notice that this is nuclear installation. So research reactor can be used for teaching physical biological science students, more adequate for teaching radiation protection or ideological engineering students, nuclear engineering students in particular. And in some countries, nuclear power plants are into training. So how it is done depends on the level of education and training activity. Actually, you will go walk through just introducing, saying that nuclear is nothing dangerous. You can go visit. You leave. You are still alive. This is what is all about. Now you can go and be more serious, really hands-on training, touching different components, performing experiments, loading and loading fuel. All that is possible with the research reactors part of your education curriculum. You can go even more further. In operating room, you will be allowed in some research reactors to start and stop a reactor. You, as a trainer, of course, with the supervisor behind you. But this is a great experience. This is real feeling that you start and stop a chain reaction. You can do that remotely by connecting, operating research reactor with the outside university or organization in another country, for example, not having such a facility. You would perform online experiments. You will transmit through videoconferencing the images what has been done physically, but also reactor parameters. So you can do your lab course not going to reactor. You can communicate and ask operator. I want to start now. I want to withdraw control route. And he or she will do the job for you. And I think this is efficient way to introduce reactor physics and nuclear engineering for the countries and organizations who do not have direct access to such a facility. We also think that research reactor has an important role to participate in overall human capacity building for nuclear power. Because nuclear power personnel requires different areas of technical expertise at different levels. This is an example of two NPP blocks in one nuclear power plant where you would need to train about 1,000, 1,200 people. And this training includes two stages. You need people with the right academic background, meaning graduates of the universities or high schools. Some of them might be required at the bachelor technician level. Some of them master in engineering. And some of them PhDs typically managing the nuclear power plant or projects related to nuclear power plant. This is the area where directly research reactor can contribute as part of the university curriculum. Now, after graduating, even if you had some training on a research reactor, you will not be able to work at nuclear power plant. You need a special nuclear training. And again, depending on the position you occupy, you will need additional from three months to two years to be able really to step in and have a job as a utility staff. So again, in this special nuclear training, in some areas, research reactor can help you to prepare these people. Next application, you're doing very well. Only a couple of you have closed eyes. So it's not so bad. So second application, that's neutron activation analysis. As a definition tells, activation analysis, you put a sample, you irradiate, and you measure something. And that's the qualitative and quantitative analytical technique to determine trace elements in various samples. These samples can come from different sectors. Archeological, atmospheric, dust, hair, nails, skin, plant, animal. You listed it's all kind of samples where sometimes you need to know at impurity level if this matrix has a certain element or isotope. And the research reactor can do that. You start with the sampling. You do the irradiation. You create radioactive elements. And by putting some gamma spectroscopy, you're actually able to determine at which extent gold, lead, iron, lithium are present in this particular sample or object. And sometimes it's very important to know that due to environmental, medical, quality and quality control reasons. The third application is radiative isotope production. So radiative isotopes are used in medicine. And today we cannot run a modern medicine without being able to perform diagnostics and therapy. And these rely a lot on radioactive elements. But also radiative isotopes are used in the industry, agriculture, and research. So if you come from the National Research Institution, you need to calibrate your detector. And without a radioactive source, you will not be able to do that. If you go and explore oil and gas and to see if there is a leak in a pipe, one of the ways is to inject radioactive material and to see as a tracer to see where this leak comes. So there are no most economical savings using, in some cases, such techniques. There are two most important radiative isotopes, I think most famous and most known. In industry, it's a cobalt-60, which also used as irradiator. You can irradiate food, wood, sterilize medical equipment, et cetera, because that kills bacteria, in general language speaking. In medicine, Molybdenum 99, 85% of diagnostic procedures worldwide, finding if you have a cancer or tumor somewhere in your body is, thanks to this particular isotope, because it's a perfect characteristic for imaging purposes. So without this isotope, you would not be able to predict, and most probably prevent cancer development in your body. How this is produced with research reactors? You start with the target material, you irradiate by neutrons, and you create a radioactive element. And this is an example of reactions, how from cobalt-59, by adding one neutron, you end up with cobalt-60. How in case of sulfur, you get a phosphorus, for example. So these are a number of examples. You start with target fabrication, with certain quality foods, quality control program. You continue irradiating at reactor. You perform transportation of irradiated target to the hot cells, extract what is needed for your purposes, the radiative element. Perform quality control, very important step, because you are bringing some of it to the medical hospital. Transportation logistics is equally important, because if you're late, there is nothing to transport. It has decayed, and that's it. And you need to restart from the beginning. So that's another important item in particular for the short-lived isotopes. You can date objects. You can date rock and soil using a research reactor. And it depends if your sample has actinide, or it's actinide-3. You have two possible techniques to date back to the few billion years. So here, you rely on some elements which are naturally decaying with very long period of time. And by looking at different proportions between potassium and argon, or between uranium isotopes, actually you can date back the materials to very long periods in a path. Again, you need to radiate, measure different ratios, and you're able to do that. This is very important application of research today. And it might be even more important for the future if we switch to electric cars for the 10, 20 years to come in the industrial level. Neutrons are necessary to dope silicon, to create some impurities, phosphorous impurities, to improve the quality for the semiconductor applications. And this is done at the research reactor. You also can radiate some stones to add value to them. And you call the process gemstone coloration when a stone without major value becomes a jewelry, as long as it's not too much radioactive. So how it is done? You start with the pure silicon ingots. You see the size, the typical size. Today, industry requires different size of ingots to be radiated from 6, 8 to 10 inches. And this is irradiated in the reactor core in a homogeneous way. And what is happening actually that silicon captures neutron and you create a phosphorous impurity which certainly adds value to the semiconductor material. That's the same. You need, for the gem coloration, you need to calculate exactly what are the neutron and gamma fields required to make a defect in a lattice of the gemstone to make colorless matter to the nice, shiny color. So we can fabricate the jewelry afterwards. Here may be the first application which brings you back to the nuclear power. Research reactors is a source of neutrons. Nuclear power has many neutrons in the core and outside the core. So to see how these neutrons are behaving, you need a lot of nuclear instrumentation. The research reactors as a well-defined source of neutrons can serve, develop, and improve nuclear instrumentation for nuclear power plants. It can test and qualify various materials for nuclear power plants. For one important reason, that irradiation at the high flux research reactor for tens of days because of very high flux available corresponds to a number of years' irradiation in NDP. In other words, thanks to the research reactor, you can predict experimentally what will happen with the structure material or a fuel in a nuclear power plant for tens of years to come. So there is great support in particular for the existing nuclear power plants in terms of extension life operation. But also, I will come back to that in particular for the new generation power plant designs because you need to test them experimentally. This is what is happening. You have dedicated what we call irradiation rigs where you create experimentally one-to-one conditions occurring in a nuclear power plant in terms of coolant, in terms of pressure, in terms of temperature. So irradiate sample will come to you. Irradiate sample in realistic conditions, you add neutrons to that and you analyze samples and you can judge if this particular material can withstand pressure deformation tests after irradiation in the conditions you want to apply. Yes, you just said by the two words. One is for research and another is for testing. There is no major difference. The test reactor actually comes from MTR, material test reactor. So these reactors have dedicated purpose and design-wise, these are high flux machines, sufficiently high to make a difference once you irradiate the material. But these are also research because you're researching about materials. So there is no main difference. Just different definitions. That was a question. You have two questions. Yes? You know, the pressure is the very important parameter in the field. Yes. How you can deal with that? Here, in the Research Act, I just tried to explain to you this is very particular irradiation device in which through the monitoring instrumentation, which you can see online, I make sure that I created the right conditions. So externally, I will apply the pressure, which I want to apply because I know the conditions in NPP. And I will place my sample for irradiation in these particular conditions. I can put environment as a helium, as a water, as a liquid metal for future generations. And in this way, I create exactly the conditions, monitoring pressure online and temperature online to make sure that during irradiation process, it corresponds to the realistic environment. So this device comes to the core of the Research Act as close as possible to reach desired flux levels for irradiation purposes. And then you extract that and do different tests and examination, we call PI, post irradiation experiments, to see the real material either using chemistry, mechanics, or different approaches, or other analytical techniques to see what has happened with the material during irradiation. Yes? Yes, as long as you get money? Yes? Not my needy. No, now there is ethic part of it, right? You're using something natural. You're consuming natural resource, gold, which is always limited. This is the way to create something which is nice. If acceptable, then you replace it. And somebody makes a lot of money of that. Now, in European Union, this is forbidden. You can produce. You can commercialize that outside of European Union. So the politicians decided, we're not going to make jewelry through irradiation process. And that's it. I don't call it justification. I would call it acceptance and policy. I don't benefit people who just put their necklaces on their neck and they are being irrigated. Let me put it differently. When you build a house, do you keep natural colors or you're paying something on the top? What's the difference? Because I like yellow. So I'll put something. Is it justified for my taste? Why is that humming you? No, it's not humming you. This one, the irradiation paint is not humming you. All chemistry behind and accidents in the chemistry plant are not humming you. We can have long discussion. This is well-monitored. You can use. Why do I use irradiation? For this stone, you cannot use another method. There is no another method, either neutron irradiation or gamma irradiation. For this stone, which has no value, but after irradiation has a value. So this is what you call add value by irradiation. Yes? Of course. Even before coloring, it's radioactive. It's radioactive. Everything is radioactive. I'm saying after coloring, you can do the irradiation. Yes? There is very strong and consistent quality control. So before it can be released and placed on your test, it says that it's below radiation levels acceptable for public. That's the case. Yeah? These gemstones after irradiation from nine months up to two years to cool down. And it's very important that no long-lived radiotopes are created. So everything decays, and you keep only nice color. I share your opinion, but I have to be neutral. Oh, you share your opinion. Right. To understand reactive physics, you need to learn about basic interaction. And nuclear data is extremely important when you go through the optimization process, because your calculation is as good as experiments were good in supporting your prediction. So you have to know how good cross-sections are known, which are used in different softwares and tools to predict different neutron propagation, either being in a reactor or in other applications. So by knowing decay data, by knowing capture data, by knowing friction fragment data is extremely important, and the research reactors can help you in doing that. So typically, in the research reactor, you irradiate, do measurements online or offline through gamma, beta, or alpha spectrometry. And you can actually measure these important fundamental quantities as part of your research project. The neutrons have been tried to treat the patients. And the process is called neutron capture therapy. So actually, you do not treat the patient directly with neutron. As long as a tumor has been identified, and this is a right tumor for this particular treatment, you inject boron-concentrated material into your tumor cell. Now, when the neutron goes through the body, this is also not a good approach, right? When the neutron goes through the body, in most of the instances, it will not interact or not sufficiently interact with the normal tissue. But as long as it meets the boron, it makes a reaction, and alpha particle is emitted, which burns locally the cancerous cell. So the physics is a bit, I don't know, for some of you, very simple. For some of you, it might be complicated. But the point is, it's not neutron directly interacting with the cancer cell, but it goes through the transfer of one particle to another. Now, how it is done, you see you localize, and this is typically. A lot of work needs to be done before by irradiating those phantoms, because you need to calculate the neutron energy and those the patient would receive during irradiation process. Then you define the time, intensity, position your patient at the reactor through the collimated beam, and you do the irradiation with the presence of medical doctor. Some pictures, less words and some pictures. Radiography is one of ways to attract many different users to research reactors, because it can provide 2D and 3D picture in non-destructive way. And you can go down to the micro level in terms of resolution. So you cannot see atoms yet with this technology, but you can see very fine structure what is inside. This is typical image, 3D reconstruction image of diesel motor filter in the car industry, where you clearly see how metallic particles are distributed within the filter. It's very important for car industry in terms of efficiency to see how filter works and how it captures metallic particles. You can study source cells. In the material construction, you can see how the stones are distributed inside with very powerful technique for anybody who is involved in the construction and cement in particular. You can study plants. You can study how plant takes the water. And this is, you see, the image, how the water is distributed as the time goes as long as the flower was watered. Through dynamic imaging, you can see how the engine works and how different parts of engine receive the oil from the source because it needs all the time to move smoothly. And that also can get done by nutrient imaging. You can apply that to cultural heritage. This is an example to see how neutron tomography gives more information compared to typical X-ray tomography. For example, in X-ray image, because of the thickness of the material and neutron can penetrate deep, this central part was not visible. Neither these interesting structures inside of the Buddha statue. So you would never learn it unless you break it. But who allows you to break a cultural heritage object? You can use that also for quality control, quality assurance. And this is a typical example where you see that the brazing connections for some of it were not done properly. You would not see it with the eye at some point. How it is done, this is your research reactor. You have beam going through the shielding. You have a shutter. You place your different detectors and you perform nutrient imaging of your object. I will take another two or three questions. So that gives you a bit of waking up atmosphere. Because being a nuclear physicist, I would like to go a bit more deeper in physics. So be prepared. Any question or remark or criticism about research reactants? Yes. Right. I was OK with your question until the last two words. I mean, yes and no. Everything is possible. There is no zero risk scenario. So this person can be trained very well at research reactor and later comes to NPP as a future employer and sabotage. This person could do the same without training at the research reactor. This is, I think, security people and clearances should be in place that this person is, as long as he or she works at the research reactor, most probably it will go even faster through security clearance to work at NPP because it already worked at nuclear installation. And it's part of national business. Now, there are different scenarios. Some countries say, going to nuclear power, I don't need a research reactor. Because I'm not developing a technology. I'm a newcomer country. I'm bringing technology and all these people are going to be trained by the provider of NPP, being Russian Federation, France, Korea, US, Japan. Whoever provides NPP. And this is one of the scenarios. Other countries already have a research reactor. So they see which role this research reactor is going to contribute to the national nuclear power program. In most of the cases, we see research reactor organization positioning itself as a technical support organization. Because this is the only way the knowledge stays in the country in nuclear field. But if this role is not given at the desired importance, some of the organizations will be left. And this service will be provided by technology provider or by the third party. So it's very much important that the country decides who is doing what. And if this is seen as a national asset, or I go to NPP, we don't need a research reactor. And we shut down the research reactor. All these scenarios, except sabotage, are valid. So historically, up to now, we have not seen a single country going to nuclear power without having a research reactor or having access to a research reactor. Now we have countries who said, we do not need the research reactor, like Sweden, like Finland, like UK. All of them had a research reactor while they were building this capacity and capability. And now they say, if I need a research reactor, I will go to a neighboring country and get myself served. But they say, for our NPP, we don't need that, except the United Arab Emirates, where they say, we go directly to NPP without passing through the stage of research reactor. But this is my personal opinion. Personal not IAEA opinion is a very extreme example, because they have money. They can buy operator, trained operator. It's not necessarily, maybe, we'll develop on their own all necessary capacity to be completely, you know, be the masters of the NPPs. So that's a personal opinion. Yes. You can continue, is there? That's all I can think about. The high enrichment of fuel is key, because more enriched fuel you have, more uranium-5 you have in the small volume. So the flux goes like R squared out of the source. So you aim a compact course and very dense uranium-5 concentration in the small volume. Now, you will put a reflector. You will get some neutrons back. That adds another percentage. But reflector, moderator, you will not have much or fast. So then it depends on the design what kind of neutrons you want to produce. But that's what only allows, I will speak about limitations afterwards, to go to the levels of 10 to the 50 neutrons per second square centimeter. OK, I think I, yes? That's a rector specialist. Depends. This, again, depends. For this one, it can be 30 minutes. It can be a few hours. It depends at the flux level at the sample irradiation position. At your three-guide in Malaysia, you might need a few hours. In, say, German reactor, which is 20, 30 megawatt, it might be tens of minutes. Because they have much bigger fluxes and they can do the projections and rotation of the sample much faster. OK, neutrons. So why neutrons are so particular compared to other particles? Because they can be managed at different velocity, at different energy, we say in quantum mechanics they have right wavelength. Somebody took quantum mechanics course. Wavelength is related how fast and how frequent oscillates the wave if you look at the neutron as a wave package. Neutrons can see nuclear. Through interaction, typically scattering capture or making another reaction. Advantage, another advantage that neutrons can see light atoms, like lithium, hydrogen, boron, together with very heavy ones, like uranium, lead, mercury. And that's not the same with the X-rays. X-rays would see mainly because of different atomic interaction, mainly high and heavy element. Neutrons can measure the velocity of atoms. Every atom, including our body, they move. And to say how fast they move, in which direction, neutrons can help you to do that. Because neutrons have no charge, it can penetrate very deeply. And this is advantage because you can work with very big samples in non-destructive manner. And neutron has a spin. So it's a very good probe to work with magnetic materials. And magnetic materials in some of the areas is their future. So because of these properties, at least, if you understood 50% of what I said, or I hope 90, it allows you with neutrons to study from tens of centimeters real objects down to nanometers, or parts of nanometers, and study human hair, red blood cells, and even down to DNA. So it's very large dynamic range where neutrons can come in terms of structure studies and material studies. It's a very simple concept. That neutrons show where atoms are, and then you can do through what you call elastic scattering. It's a billionth gain, elastic scattering. In most of the cases, no energy was transmitted or very negligible. And you see just a different angle at the same velocity coming the ball. That's elastic scattering. If some energy has been taken or given, this is an elastic scattering. And for these two simple concepts, these guys got novel price. So sometimes life is simpler than it is. So what actually typically you do, you get neutron out, you let it interact with the sample, and you measure, after interactions, the neutron angle and energy. And that allows you to tell a lot what has happening in that particular sample. This is a basic concept of neutron scattering for materials research. So that's why when you visit ResearchYactor, you don't see only the reactor core with the shielding, but you see many beam cubes, what you call beam ports, going out in a scattering area. And some of the detectors look as big as that, because you want to do high level physics with the neutrons coming out and study different materials at different temperatures, pressure levels, et cetera. Now I have to tell you the full story. ResearchYactor is not the only source of neutrons. We can produce neutrons also using particle accelerators. So what is happening in ResearchYactor, you have fission reaction, where after each fission you emit, on average, 2 and 1 half neutron per fission. So some of these neutrons need to maintain chain reaction. Some of them are absorbed, and some of them escape, or can be used externally for research what we are doing. And that still allows chain reaction to continue. That's the principle. So 20 megawatt ResearchYactor, on average, creates this amount of neutrons per second. So it's an almost neutron source. Now you can do similar way by accelerating proton to very high energy. Neutron, proton, that tells you something different, OK? Proton to very high energy interact with the heavy metal target, and after each reaction you will emit up to 30, 40 neutrons per incident proton. If you have high intensity proton machine, it allows you actually to create equivalent neutron source compared to one megawatt power reactor. So the message here, you can produce neutrons in two different ways, without nuclear material, without criticality accident, potential criticality accident, or incident. But how far you can go with two technologies? Neutron has been discovered by accelerators, not by reactor. So they have one point plus, right? Then reactor technology, after starting first critical assemblies in Russia and US, went very fast and reached neutron levels to 10 to the 15, which is typically 20, 50 times more than any nuclear power plant operates today. That's why I said with the research reactor you can predict the future, because neutron flux available is much more in the research reactor than NTP. But that has reached the limit, because we have problems with heat removal from the reactor fuel. So if you want more, the fuel will melt, because we're not able to take away neither geometrically nor technologically the heat from the reactor fuel. So we need a major breakthrough in technology in thinking how to create higher neutron fluxes using research reactor technology. Accelerators can do that, but they do that only in post-mode. They can create neutron fluxes two orders of magnitude higher than that, but for very short period of time. And then they use this time without neutrons to cool the target, OK? Yes, I will go now for a typical example. What we're talking about, what kind of technologies we're talking about. Research reactor can fit in this building easily with all equipment, critical core, temporary fuel storage facility. To run equivalent accelerator with equivalent source, you need much more infrastructure. You need, first of all, high energy particle accelerator. You need irradiation target and even more. The itself, the target technology looks like that. That's a liquid mercury target with 20 tons of liquid mercury circulating. And this is the size to receive one megawatt proton beam to create neutron flux equivalent to the research reactor. So it's possible, but this is a billion project compared to the hundreds of millions for research reactor. So meaning, not every country can afford that for research purposes. You can combine both accelerator and reactor. Why would you do that? Why you cannot run them separately? Well, there is good features of both of them. This combination allows you to run subcritical core because of the external neutrons coming from acceleration. That means this configuration is zero risk criticality accident, which is a major risk in the reactor technology. So that allows you to do that. Otherwise, it works like a typical good neutron source. Certainly it's going to be even more expensive that you don't pay money for nothing. You pay for zero risk. So you would have a zero risk in that particular situation. It combines reactor core, subcritical, plus accelerator, which is cost machine. Now, be prepared for the second question what you will get during your maybe, I don't know, maybe that was done randomly, but be prepared. These are typical pictures. Maybe you've seen that already, I don't know, or similar. How we distinguish generations of nuclear power plants? Generation one, two, and you see the years coming historically. So where we're standing today, most of the research reactors are still generation three, and some of them generation three plus. What does it mean? It means that compared to generation three, we have not added substantial breakthrough in the technology. We improved in safety. We improved in fuel efficiency. That's why this design is called evolutionary, but there is no major change in the technology itself. So if you want to go to generation four, you need to make a revolution in nuclear technology. And one of the aspects, why we call it revolution, is that we will work with completely different materials, because presently operated materials for light or heavy water reactors will not be able to withstand the new conditions. So somebody asked generation four, plutonium loaded fuels. Today on industrial scale, we're not able to do that, because we don't know yet which materials to use. We can do prototyping. We do some tests, but at the moment, we are not able. There are two parameters. One is easy to understand. These new systems, many of them will operate at much higher temperatures. This is the zone where we have generation two. None of them higher than 350 degrees Celsius. So it's very comfortable temperature for many materials, and we know which materials to use, being steels, alloys, et cetera. Now, if you want to go to very high temperature reactor, gas fast reactor, molten salt reactor, some of these are not speaking about future fusion energy. Very little materials need to withstand much higher temperatures and much higher irradiations. Displacement per atom is a damage of the material due to interaction of neutrons with matter. And most of these today are limited to 50 DPAs for the entire life of the material to be radiated. Now, if you want to go to fast reactor, fast neutron makes more damage than thermal neutron to the material. But fast neutron is needed to breathe uranium 238 to make plutonium and close the cycle. So thermal neutron is not there anymore. That means you need to have structure materials which are able to withstand higher energy. You are receiving a lot of information, and it's OK you don't understand everything. Because I know some of you are not really a nuclear background. Message here that if you want to go to generation 4, you need to find, characterize, and qualify the right material. Without that, you will not have generation 4 technology. My message here, that research reactor will help you. Because of the reasons I mentioned you, you can create very high flux. You can have neutrons thermal or fast. And you can irradiate materials in a realistic environment experimentally to test these materials for the future. There is a bright future for research reactors. And this is the latest research reactor built in the newcomer country, Jordan. And then critical last April, 5 megawatt facility, upgraded to 10 megawatt, low-enriched uranium fuel. It will produce radioisotopes. Now you know what does it mean. It will dope silicon. Also, you will learn about it. It will use neutron beams to perform neutron scattering, do neutron activation analysis, and will contribute. As the country's test, this is our first step to national empathy program. And Jordan is going ahead with the national empathy program as a newcomer. We have a few challenges for research reactors. This is an example of research reactor where you hardly can put a foot, because it's so crowded. It's utilized. People are walking around, even the moment when the photo was taken. You can take many photos in this reactor, and you will not see a person around. So we have an issue of redefining the strategy and enhanced utilization of research reactors in a number of countries. I'm not saying you have to equip a reactor like that, but driving a bus with one passenger doesn't make a lot of sense either. So we need to think about new strategy for research reactors to build on two important foundations, the user, who is requiring access to the neutrons, who is your stakeholder justifying existence of your research reactor. So we need to clearly know whom this research reactor is going to serve. Based on that, I will design and adapt the facility with the budget and with the stuff. So these are two important foundations for a research reactor facility. Then we know that a research reactor can provide the radiation services, can contribute to research, and do educational training. That defines the vision and mission. I'm sure you can use the same model for any project, even non-nuclear, you're going to participate. So once we know our stakeholders and their needs, why they need neutrons, we can design the right facility. And all that contributes to the strategy justifying a research reactor and ensuring its efficient utilization for the future. Research reactor project is a nuclear project. So Milestone's approach applies also to building, considering, building, and operating a research reactor as well. Research reactor has a nuclear fuel, so security, safety, and safeguard regime applies to research reactor facility as well. Therefore, we have a consistent approach how to help member states to develop new research reactor project using almost identical Milestone approach as to NTP. We also have 19 different issues. And indeed, member state appreciates that saying that going through 19 infrastructure issues and building a research reactor, that's a step forward to cover, maybe not completely, but in part, in preparation to the future NTP. And this is exercise for Morocco. When they did, they say, OK, out of 19 issues, majority of them, at least we considered, we touched, we progressed. And we feel more comfortable now to go for NTP. I believe that's the same applies to Jordan. And these are two newcomer countries recently went through research reactor, and now making future steps for the national NTP program. For the research reactor, it's very important. Yes. It is. Here, preliminary strategic plan. Even before decision is made. It's on the utilization. This is 19 infrastructure issues of NTP. So issue 9, electricity grid is replaced by utilization issue. That's the only name of the issue or different issue compared to, because as I said, NTP, electricity. Research reactor, everything else, except electricity. On the issue 9, which is called utilization. Yes. Even that, there is no paper. Of course. It should be even in the phase 1 before, that helps you to make a knowledgeable decision. Your strategic plan has a role to help you to make a knowledgeable decision. Research reactor is constructive. Strategic plan will guide you how to utilize the facility efficiently. So there are different roles of strategic plan as the time goes through your project. All that is explained in this milestones document for research reactor project. Okay. I think I'm done with my first presentation. I would need another 10 minutes for second short presentation, just to take any questions or remarks. Yes. The presentation. Yes. Yes. Research reactor. Because you know, there are many, there are many types of research reactor. And, I mean, all the samples are running. So, and even for the future of the generation. Yes. What is the safe guard? The safe guard regime applies to any installation where the nuclear material or radioactive sources are in place. So, I mean, it doesn't really design. Safe guards will not tell you how to design a facility. Safe guards will tell you how to monitor an account for material which is used for the facility. I mean, it will be very good. Oh, that's another thing. I'm not a specialist in the future generation for reactors, but I think it will be equally challenging. In particular, when some of the designs include reprocessing online. So, safeguarding of such facilities will be even my personal opinion, even bigger challenge than the facilities where you have load and unload of the fuels. When you have liquid molten salt running all around and reprocessing, extracting fishing fragments, maybe sometimes a bit plutonium, that's a different story. These designs and concepts, in my personal opinion, will be more challenging than we have with present technology. It brings many different features. They can operate with natural uranium, but natural uranium only from the beginning, because later on you will have closed cycle, sufficient plutonium generated, or uranium-233 generated to keep the chain reaction at equilibrium core configuration. So, challenges will be there. We will have more work at the agency with this concept. Right. Yes and no. There is a challenge, or the safety, also with the new reactors. Safety, yes. It depends on the system in place, the experience of the staff, the design of the facility itself. I don't want to say challenges. It's the situation that you can control if you control properly. Now, for the facilities which are old, which did not have aging management, integrated management system in place, is additional challenge, because these facilities may be operating one day per week. So, there are no normal shifts. Information sometimes is not properly kept. There are more challenges in such situations, I would say, for the facilities. But we know a few old facilities, 50 years after operation, still they run more than 300 days, 24 hours, 7 days per week today. One is in South Africa. And this is a major contributor to the world's Molybdenum 99 market. They run more than 300 full power operation days and contribute to 30% of the world markets of Molybdenum 99. And it's facility more than 50 years old. So it's possible. It depends. You can drive old car forever if you manage and take care of the car for a long time. Again, now, because in some cases, major refurbishment project will require sometimes more money than the facility was built. So that is a policy decision. You might go through the strategic plan from the beginning for such a facility and say, do I need this facility? Do I have sufficient arguments to continue its operation? Because everybody knows it costs me 500,000 or 2 million to keep this facility, including staff salaries, just like that. In a safe mode. Not necessarily operational, right? But do we need, can we justify this spending? In some cases, yes or no. And then decision can be, OK, we go for refurbishment. We update it, upgrade it, and use it properly starting from year plus three or we shut down in the commission. It's a strategic point. My question is more of a patient coming to this place. I would imagine, take an example, for example, if we had advised them, to work from experience, what are the challenges? I'm imagining, I want to buy a car, I don't have a car that I can afford, but then I'm able to buy a motorbike first and buy the vehicle. Yes, it's very similar experience. It depends for which purpose you would like to have a research reactor as a toy for doing some experiments time to time, or country goes for nuclear power. And I see this facility, well designed to train nuclear engineers, safety authority specialists, radio protection specialists, future managers, etc. If I define the role, for this particular purpose, I will design a reactor of low power, low operation costs, operating team, one shift, and I will spend most probably 50 million for reactor, and I will spend every year for this type of reactor, maybe 200, $300,000 per year. And my utility company will pay for me because their budget is much bigger and they see the added value for their human capacity building in this facility. This is a hypothetical scenario. Now countries don't like one single use facilities. They say this is your reactor, even at this small power can do much more. It can do neutral activation analysis. Analysis of one sample on commercial level costs you $50. So if you analyze, if the reactor can analyze easily, if there is a market, up to 1,000, 3,000 samples, you see how much you can earn. But remember what I said at the beginning. Research reactor will never generate sufficient revenues to cover operational costs. I'm not speaking about capital investment costs, shutdown, decommissioning, and final waste storage facilities. You will always require government support and funds. Yes? New generation? Jordanian. Jordanian, yes. Sorry, if it has... Doesn't it have an NDA? Of course it would. It depends where in the reflector you place your thematic system. Closer to the core, closer to the fuel element, or more further away in the reflector. And then moderation rate is different and you will have epithemal capability. Yes? It's pre-designed. He is far away. So I can see him hardly. So please, yes. Not power, it was a flux. Yeah. Correct. What is more important than what is told about your... We cannot do better than today can be done by just exactly what you reached the limit, 100 megawatt. Because you cannot, for the same reason, what is limiting factor is power density. So to have 200 megawatt reactor, you'd explode your core. Geometrically it's much bigger, power density is lower. There is no power, but you will not increase in the flux. That's the thing. And you're doing alternative calculations so you know this one. Why you ask the question? Yes? How do you know that? Really, how are they going to enlighten the reactor? To my best knowledge. I'm not a nuclear engineer. I'm a nuclear physicist. You need external source coming from americium beryllium, plutonium beryllium or this kind of technology, or they might have a spent fuel element which can serve as external neutral source, but you need external neutral source to enlighten. If the spent fuel element has sufficient high level actinides, which are spontaneous fission emitters, you might enlighten the reactor. Only physics thinking, not engineering thinking. They would need external neutral source. Otherwise, they cannot start to see it. They have some secrets. Maybe. This is Russian design? For Egypt? I can check. Maybe I can give you the answer, but at the moment... It should be. It should be. Maybe this is internally external. All right. I think I need... I have five minutes for the... I'm not going to finish the next presentation, but I'm... I think this lecture, I hope, reached the objective what I said. I had some challenge to keep you awake and to show you that Research Act can do many things except electricity generation. I think this is done more or less. So what I'm going to say is that we have four major actions at the agency where we help the government and the state to use better research reactor for capacity building. And I will just highlight these instruments and this presentation, I believe, comes with the old package so you can study that all. This is just about cross-cutting. Research reactor is a complex machine, so you need to take care of utilization. That's the Department of Nuclear Science and Applications. You need to take care of the reactor itself, fuel management, infrastructure. That's within the Department of Nuclear Energy and safety. So that's within the Department of Safety and Security. Security, I forgot. Now everything has to be said, safety and security. This is a new, unseparable term within the agency language and, of course, safeguard because you have nuclear materials. So Research reactor is like NPP where we have so much different areas and technical expertise. That's why for Research reactors we created a cross-cutting group all along the departments within the agency. I wanted to introduce you Internet Reactor Laboratory, Regional Research Act of Schools, Eastern European Research Act Initiative Group Fellowship Training Course, Advanced Training through the international centers based on research reactors. This has been shown. This has been shown. This has been shown. Again, these three main instruments very quickly. I explain you the concept of Internet Reactor. Reactor is there in one country. Students are there receiving video conference and also signals to perform the experiment. Where we are standing with this project. We are running successfully since last year two host organizations in Argentina Research reactor and in France Research reactor. They are delivering course on periodic basis to Europe and Latin America. These courses are in Spanish and here to Europe and to Africa. So typically, simultaneously, we can offer the course from Research reactor experiment to four or five guest institutions. That means class of 20 students four times 80 people are watching the experiment and participating in experiment. This is what we call efficient way of teaching. It's not the same like being on a reactor and doing experiment, but you also can count how much money we saved in terms of investment for sometimes near the same outcome. We are planning to work with Korea so we can cover Asia Pacific region and we are planning to work with Morocco so we can cover African continent so French reactor can concentrate on Europe. That's our future for the IRL. We are promoting and assisting organizing regional reactor schools. The idea is that in two weeks course up to 15 Chinese can go to two different reactors in two different countries. Somebody said to me, Research reactor have so much designs. Even for the same design, you will notice that the same experiment is performed differently. That's why it's Research reactor. So we are successful to bring students to Safari 1 in South Africa, where we organize the first AFRA Research reactor school. Next school is scheduled in October in Morocco. We have two schools in Asia Pacific, Indonesia and Malaysia one week in each country. A different reactor 2015 Thailand, Vietnam this year and we are planning the course for 2018 most probably coming back to Indonesia and Malaysia. We intend to expand this kind of hands-on training for Russian speaking countries in Europe in cooperation with the Russian Federation and in Latin America in Spanish. These are real hands-on training where students go to the reactor to perform experiments etc. Eastern European Research Act group fellowship training course this is advanced course. It's six weeks course compared to two weeks course where you go through everything what is needed for the future Research reactor team. It goes from theory operation, maintenance control, fuel inspections some part of safeguard is covered safe to security etc. This is very comprehensive course typically for the future Research Act operating team in six weeks at least content-wise you will experience what does it mean to work at Research Act. Now volume-wise you will need much more you might need maybe one or two years depending on your background to be part of the team including receiving license as a license for Research Act operation. So this course has been organized since 2009 we in total because this is hands-on we can accept maximum up to 10 trainees we train close to 100 fellows and the next course starts we just finished selection 11 trainees are going to Trigar reactor at Atom Institute in Vienna and Budapest Technical University reactor in Hungary in a combined course for six weeks starting on 25th of September. We have created and started designations of international centers based on Research Actors. So these are capable facilities which receive a recognition from the agency that they are state-of-the-art facilities as long as it comes to nuclear technology not nuclear technology in general, but based on Research Reactor. So we have given this recognition to CEA in France and RER and we are about to recognize Belgium Center and two DOE labs in U.S. Idaho National Lab and Oak Ridge National Lab where the Research Reactor is a key component for the organization. So we can propose thanks to these designated centers advanced training and access to these facilities for the countries who need to participate. So in summary we believe that these four important instruments are at least part from the member states of different target audience from students to young professionals and professionals depending on using IRL instrument, regional schools, IRI or ISER concept. Thank you very much.