Författare: Peter Jansson

Tomoko M Nakanishi is awarded honorary doctorate at Chalmers 2019. She is recognised for her interdisciplinary research on plant physiology, and developing pioneering new imaging methods. Tomoko M. Nakanishi is a professor at the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Laboratory of Radio-Plant Physiology, The University of Tokyo, Japan. 

Tell us a little about your collaboration with Swedish scientists regarding radiation research.

Since there are superb scientists in nuclear physics, nuclear techniques, and chemistry in Chalmers University of Technology, I got so many important comments and suggestions from them on my studies, since I began to use neutron beams, about 20 years ago. And then, especially after the Fukushima nuclear accident, we challenged to perform collaborative research and education for radio-ecology.

What would you say is the biggest challenge where radiation studies might hold an answer right now?

Radiation is an indispensable tool and cannot be replaced with any other means. It opens new fields in studies and in industries. The field of application and the market size is steadily increasing in the society now but how to communicate or convince the preference and importance of radiation usage to the public people is the largest problem and it is the challenge for both researchers and the industry people. But we are gradually making progress though showing the marvelous research results using radiation.

You have been active in increasing the public knowledge in Japan about the impact and risks of radiation, not least in connection to the Fukushima-accident. Can you tell us about your experience from this work?

Many people are afraid of radiation because it is invisible. However, using radiation we could visualize images which we usually cannot see. For example, using a neutron beam, I could present water specific image of living plants, even the roots embedded in soil, too. When 137Cs is applied to water culture solution with soil, Cs is firmly adsorbed in soil and the plants cannot absorb 137Cs. To visualize the risk of plant contamination is an easy method to understand the situation and provides relief to the people. The water images of flowers are especially beautiful and give a strong impact and favorable impression of neutron beam usage to many people.

You have visited us a couple of times and also hosted Chalmers researchers. Could you share some thoughts about our radiation research? Where are we strong and where must we improve?

There are two points. One is the necessity of a long-range study for radioecology, and the other one is more utilization of radiation and radioisotopes is recommended, which will surely lead to innovation of the research. The former one means, one of the main targeted radionuclide, Cs-137, in radioecology has a very long half-life, 30 years. We should continue this study to understand the effect of a possible nuclear accident in future generations. The latter means, there are not so many well-developed studies, which make most of the radiation or radioisotopes. For example, in the biological field, fluorescent imaging is now overwhelming and many new findings are reported. But imaging under light conditions is not possible and numerical treatment of the image is very difficult in fluorescent imaging. So both fluorescent and radiation imaging should be developed further.

Will you visit Chalmers in a near future?

Of course, I will surely visit Chalmers again. But right now, since I got a new job as a president of another University in Tokyo from this spring, I cannot decide the date right now. But when I will know about the situation in my new office, I would like to visit Chalmers. In my capacity as a foreign member of IVA, I also plan to attend the Annual Gathering in October, especially that this year is the 100th anniversary of the foundation of IVA.

This is a translation of a press release from Vattenfall, which can be read in Swedish here

Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB and Ringhals AB have signed an agreement with Uppsala University for a bachelor’s degree in nuclear technology. Forsmark and Ringhals support the program financially to secure highly qualified skills well into the 2040s.

– For the nuclear power industry, highly educated personnel are of great importance for a long time to come. Through this cooperation we can secure an essential part of the highly qualified skills that will be demanded in our operations in the 2040s, says Björn Linde, CEO of Forsmark and Ringhals.

The program has the first admission in autumn 2019 and the goal is to attract students on a broad front. The degree designation is ”Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering”.

– More and more people realize the great importance of nuclear power in meeting our major hostile issue, the climate challenge. Nuclear power is a future industry and the education at Uppsala University as well as Vattenfallgymnasiet in Forsmark are important for continued high competence in our industry, says Christopher Eckerberg, HR manager at BA Generation, Vattenfall.

The funding is specifically targeted at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, IFA, and will mainly be used for costs related to the teaching staff, including competence increase through research at the department’s Department of Applied Nuclear Physics. Through the agreement, the institution takes responsibility for the implementation of the assignment and the content of the education.

– This support means that Uppsala University and the Swedish industry in collaboration create conditions to meet the great need for university engineers for efficient nuclear power also in the future. With the competence support that is also included, we from the academic side can ensure that the education lies in the absolute forefront of the research, says Ane Håkansson who is a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University.

Ane Håkansson believes that there will be good demand for the education among the students.

– My impression is that young people today have drawn attention to the conclusions of the IPCC and other researchers that nuclear power must become an essential part of the world’s electricity supply in order for the climate target to be fulfilled. Many engineering students also testify that nuclear technology is very interesting to work with, but that one still hesitates to choose nuclear power as its specialty. This is now about to change completely and we see a boost in interest,”says Ane Håkansson

As part of the Horizon 2020 CORTEX project led by Chalmers, and building upon some earlier successful tests on the applicability of using machine learning for anomaly characterization (reported at two conferences – see here and here), Chalmers has just delivered to the CORTEX partners a unique set of simulation data. The simulations cover an extremely wide range of possible scenarios of anomalies, such as vibrations of fuel assemblies, core barrel vibrations, control rod vibrations, perturbations generated at the inlet of the core and propagating with the coolant, and perturbations generated inside the core. All the simulations were performed using the CORE SIM+ neutronic core simulator (an extension of the CORE SIM tool), developed as part of CORTEX by Dr. Antonios Mylonakis.

The simulations cover all possible frequencies of the aforementioned scenarios and all possible locations of the perturbations. They represent more than 3 Tb of data. The machine learning experts from the University of Lincoln will now, together with Chalmers researchers, extend the machine learning techniques earlier developed so that the different scenarios can be identified from very few in-core and ex-core neutron detector signals, the anomaly characterized and localized. It is the first time ever that such a large set of simulation data representative of a commercial reactor and corresponding to all possible scenarios of stationary fluctuations were created. With this delivery, the CORTEX project has reached a new milestone.

Listen to Prof. Christophe Demaziere, Subatomic and Plasma Physics, Chalmers University of Technology talk about ”Anomaly Detection in Operation Nuclear Reactors: Overview of the Recent Advances in the CORETEX Project” on May 8, at Estrel Convention Center in Berlin.