XIIIth Symposium of the Hungarian Nuclear Society

The Hungarian Nuclear Society (HNS) regularly organizes its scientific-technical symposium on nuclear techniques. In December 2015, the symposium was held in Paks, close to the Hungarian NPP. The meeting in the Grand Hotel Erzsébet was attended by about 100 participants. There were many experts from the NPP, scientists from research organizations, representatives of the regulatory body and industrials companies, students and teachers from universities and high schools. The programme of the symposium included 28 plenary presentations and a round table panel discussion with Hungarian experts on the subject of fuel handling and transport. The presentations covered many interesting areas:

the status of construction of the new VVER-1200 units at the Paks NPP site
handling of radioactive wastes from the NPP
introduction of the 15-month fuel cycle
analyses of spent fuel pool accidents
the ALLEGRO project for a gas-cooled fast reactor in Central Europe
instant release from deep geological repositories
the role of nuclear power and renewable sources in the future energy mix
reactor vessel integrity investigations
new results in fusion research

The annual awards of the HNS were handed over during the symposium. The winners are normally asked to give a lecture at the end of the ceremony. The lectures of the 2014 award winners covered the following topics:

Lászó Csatári (Öveges award): Use of Geiger-Müller counters in high school physics
Máté Szieberth (Fermi award): Monte Carlo methods for the investigation of subcritical systems
József Elter (Leó Szilárd award): Generation III safety in a Generation II NPP
István Pusztai (Károly Simonyi award): Kinetic transport models for magnetic fusion systems

The next annual symposium of the HNS will be held in Budapest, in December 2015.