My name is Adam Buchalter, and I had the excellent opportunity to spend the 2024 Summer mini-session studying abroad in the Czech Republic for a Nuclear Research Reactor Laboratory course. During the first week following arrival, we spent each day on various technical and cultural excursions in the Czech Republic’s capital, Prague, as well as in Vienna, Austria. The second week of the trip was spent completing a Reactor Training Course at Czech Technical University’s nuclear reactor (VR-1).
During the first week, we made a technical visit to the nuclear power plant in Temelin, Czech Republic. We were given a guided tour that highlighted the training of reactor operations staff, as well as toured the visitor’s center to get a technical overview of power plant operations. We also got a guided technical tour of the Skoda JS Manufacturing site in Pilsen, Czech Republic. On this trip, we got a good bottom-up perspective on the manufacturing process for reactor parts. The tour guide detailed every aspect of reactor pressure vessel manufacturing, from materials testing in research and development, to forging and milling, and all the way to shipping on-site. Next, we took a tour of the Czech National Research Center, Rez. The guide showed us all the technical capabilities of their nuclear laboratories, as well as some recent research they had completed. They even invited us to submit projects from the states to take advantage of their site’s capabilities, and showed us some projects done by American researchers. The final technical visit we completed was in Vienna, Austria, where we visited the United Nations site at the Vienna International Center. This site is the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and we had the rare opportunity to meet with IAEA officials to get a demonstration of nuclear safeguard components and technology. They gave us demonstrations of radiation detectors often used by IAEA officers, as well as tamper-proofing devices.
For cultural excursions, we had the time to spend a few days exploring the city of Prague, and appreciating historic landmarks and architecture. Prague is a very old city, with a castle dating back to circa 880 AD. America was only founded a couple hundred years ago, so being able to see such old architecture was a rare opportunity. Through several cultural tours, we were able to see the evolution of European architecture over hundreds of years. One particular style of note was Baroque architecture, which reflected a period of prosperity following the renaissance era. We had the chance to see many impressive Baroque buildings, coated in ornate decor and often plated in gold.
Finally, during the Reactor Training Course, we received a very broad, bottom-up approach to understanding the way nuclear reactors are controlled. We started by learning about the basic principles of reactor behavior and operations, and slowly built up to starting up a reactor from nothing and employing digital controls. On the final day of the course, we had the unique opportunity to manually control the reactor through several different states, as well as to press the emergency shutdown, or SCRAM, button. Overall, this trip has been an enormous contribution to the breadth of my understanding of nuclear engineering, as well as to the breadth of my cultural experience and appreciation.
