University of Bristol students David Kumar and Stacy Moore have both won prizes to attend prestigious international workshops on corrosion, as part of their PhDs sponsored by NNL on corrosion in nuclear environments.
David started his PhD at the University of Bristol in 2018, with NNL providing industrial supervision. David is investigating the commissioning chemistry used in Light Water Reactors (LWRs) and fusion power plant coolant circuits, and is using high temperature testing facilities to optimise the coolant chemistry regime and in turn to enhance corrosion mitigation measures. In February 2019, David was awarded a grant to cover his attendance at the Nuclear Corrosion Summer School, to be held in Slovenia in July 2019.
The summer school will be delivered by internationally renowned experts and will cover all necessary topics to provide a self-consistent understanding of nuclear corrosion issues. This presents a unique opportunity for David to build his technical understanding and to mix with leaders in the field at an early stage of his doctoral studies.
Stacy’s PhD focuses on using Bristol’s bespoke High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy (HS- AFM) facility to capture real-time corrosion events that occur on the nano-scale. Her research will help to further understanding of corrosion initiation, propagation and termination mechanisms, which in turn could lead to more effective corrosion mitigation methods. Her work has already been recognised by the Institute of Corrosion when she was awarded the Galloway Prize for "outstanding research by a student in corrosion science or engineering" in 2018.
Stacy has won a student grant to attend the 2019 meeting of the International Cooperative Group on Environmentally-Assisted Cracking of Water Reactor Materials (ICG- EAC) Stacy presented her work at the 2018 ICG-EAC meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee, and received a great deal of interest from the corrosion community.
It is perhaps no surprise that she has since been awarded a grant to present her latest results at the 2019 ICG-EAC meeting in Taiwan in May 2019! The ICG-EAC group is a closed invite-only workshop and as part of Stacy and David’s efforts their co-supervisor Tomas Martin will be also attending the 2019 ICG-EAC in Taiwan to accept an invitation for the University of Bristol to join the workshop as an official member.