Grad School

Well, I've been done with school for quite some time now but seem to have forgotten to record anything here for over a year. It was quite an interesting year.

In the Fall of 2010, I took:

Nuclear Material Science and Engineering, Olson, A: As the name might suggest, this class was a materials class. Most of the students in the class were from the materials department and the Nuclear Engineers had to play catch up learning their silly diagrams and grain images. Among other things, we looked the physical properties of Pu and U, along with techniques used to work with these very hard to work with metals. Grading consisted mostly of tests, which I found difficult due to the material science sections.

Nuclear Power and Public Policy, Schneider, A-: Oh this class... Lots of reading, writing, and in class discussion. Which I kinda some coming from an English class. Given that it was an English class, it was ok overall. I felt the reading was worthwhile and the assignments based on the reading were difficult, but reasonable for this level. We read a anti-nuclear book, a pro-nuclear book, and a book about giving unbiased opinions. Like most of the documents I produced my graduate year, I feel I did a good job on these assignments. People that know me are welcome to contact me for a copy of papers written in this class or in the others.

Nuclear Reactor Design, King, B+: This class had a slow start, a slow middle, and a frantic rush at the end. There were seven in the class, split into two teams. On each team students learned a unique transport code (SCALE, Serpent, MCNP, or Attila). I was the only one to choose Attila. This decision brought about some difficulty, as I was the only person on campus that had used the program, I was on my own. Over the semester we all tried to learn our codes as best we could then design, from scratch, a nuclear reactor. Our group designed a molten salt fast reactor aimed at high burnup, ~600MWe. We really only got our act together to start actually designing with a month left in the semester, so I don't have a lot of faith in our final design.

Nuclear Reactor Lab, Debey, A: This was a great class. There were about 10 students. We drove to the USGS Triga Reactor at the Denver Federal Center early in the morning for a short meeting describing the day's activities, a short quiz about covered material, then a hands-on experiment using the reactor. Lab reports of the experiment were due the following week. I am quite happy with the reports I wrote for this class along with the experience I gained operating the reactor.

Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Seminar was good. Show up to 12 talks throughout the year, get an A. There weren't 12 given specifically for the nuclear department, so I had to attend relevant talks in other departments and write a summary.

In the Spring of 2011, I took:

Environmental Stewardship of Nuclear Resources, Kozak, A-: This class was pretty easy. Most of the students were from environmental programs, there were roughly 6 nuclear students. We looked at radiological releases into the environment and methods of cleaning them. We also visited Rocky Flats, which was remarkably un-rocky and remarkably flat. Towards the end of the semester, we were broken into groups for a mock set of meetings relating to the cleanup of nearby contamination. I was in the group responsible for the contamination. Our lengthy final report detailed pathways the contamination could affect citizens and what the consequences of that interaction may be.

Nuclear and Isotopic Geochemistry, Simmons/Humphrey, B+: We looked at various radiological dating techniques. Based on isotopic differences in surprisingly many things, we are able to estimate when that system underwent a certain change. i.e. An animal dies and no longer intakes Carbon-14, over time this radioactive carbon decays, based on the difference between the isotopic carbon composition of the corpse and that of its environment we are able to estimate when it died. The systems we spent most of our time studying were more relevant to Geochemistry, dating rocks and the like. I was the only nuclear student among roughly 7 geochem students.

Design and Simulation of Thermal Systems, Braun, A-: After the first class period I regretted signing up. The homework load was quite high and I really could have used the time for other classes. That being said, I learned a lot. It was a good review of Thermodynamics, Heat Transfer, and System Analysis. Most of the work was done in EES, a simultaneous equation solver with thermodynamic properties built in. I was the only nuclear student in a room of mechanical Master's students. I put a lot of work into the final project and am happy with the result.

Introduction to Monte Carlo Practical Applications, Shayer, A-: This class was pretty awkward most of the time. There were two students in the class and one person auditing. The professor phrased everything as a question, which he expected you to agree with. So, once a week, I got to nod my head for three hours. I liked the assignments in the course. Half of the homework revolved around developing our own Monte Carlo code to simulate radiation transfer, while the other half taught us to use the most common of such codes. There was remarkably little direction in the class, we never got a syllabus, handouts describing homework assignments, or (for that matter) anything on paper. He described the homework assignments and projects to use in two or three sentences, which took us 10+ hours to complete.

Nuclear Science and Engineering Seminar, King, A: Horray seminar!

Benchmarking the Attila Radiation Transport code, King/Self, B+: I built models in the deterministic radiation transport code Attila based on four different experiments I selected from the SINBAD database, attempting to reproduce the experimental results in order to verify that Attila produced accurate answers. I reported on my progress at weekly meetings of the students in the nuclear department who were conducting primarily computational research. Early in the semester, I thought I had finished simulating one of the experiments, so I scheduled my time based on this early success. As the semester progressed and I learned more about Attila, I realized this project was far larger and would take far longer to complete than my early optimistic expectation. Towards the end of the semester, I was spending the majority of my free time simultaneously on two or three of the really nice computers in the nuclear lab. Long rambling short, it all came together and I wrote a paper and made a poster, which I presented at the:

ANS Student Conference in Atlanta: Dr. King, a fellow nuclear student, and I flew out to Atlanta for three nights of conference fun. I consider this weekend as an integral part of my education. There were many people there from all aspects of the nuclear field and I enjoyed learning what all there was. The food, presentations, venues, and sights were all pretty awesome. I shared a room with Brendan from Iowa State. I went to as many of the events as I could, although I would not have missed it if I didn't go to the monologue-play about Madam Currie.

Welp, that's that. In May of 2011, I graduated with a Master's of Science in Nuclear Engineering.

Summer has been quite relaxing, but it is about time I got a job.

-- Michael