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Budapest University of Technology and Economics

General profile

Fusion education at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) is coordinated by the Institute of Nuclear Techniques (NTI) that is part of the Faculty of Natural Sciences. Strong collaboration with the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences enables us to offer a wide range of fusion courses and research topics.

Research profile

Our research profile includes both traditional nuclear areas with fusion applications and fusion oriented plasma physics topics:

  • Thermohydraulics calculations using CFD and system codes are regularly used to evaluate cooling calability and optimize cooling circuits of nuclear reactors and fusion reactor blanket modules.
  • The BME Training Reactor is a pool-type nuclear reactor that is is in operation since 1971. The core is built of EK-10 fuel assemblies with 10% enrichment. The maximum thermal power is 100 kW, the maximum thermal neutron flux is 2.7e12 n/cm2s. The main purpose of the facility is to support education in nuclear engineering and physics; however, extensive research work is carried out as well. Neutron and gamma irradiation can be performed using 20 vertical irradiation channels, 5 horizontal beam tubes, two pneumatic rabbit systems and a large irradiation tunnel. The facility has been used to perform in-situ irradiation tests of different cameras for fusion applications.
  • The Monte Carlo methods are primarily applied at the Institute for the solution of R+D tasks in the field of reactor physics, reactor technology, nuclear safeguards, radiation shielding and nuclear medicine. Fusion applications included breeding blanket calculations for DEMO and ITER blankets and development of associated diagnostic systems in the EUROBREED and WPJET3 programmes.
  • Fusion research is concentrated in three areas. The first is te development and application of novell signal analysis methods for the study of plasma transients. Methods are applied to mainly ASDEX-Upgrade and JET data in the topics of fast particle modes, ELMs and sawtooth oscillations.
  • Second fusion research topic is connected to the development and operation of beam emission spectroscopy (BES) systems in collaboration with the Wigner RCP. In this collaboration our responsibility is the modelling of BES systems using our RENATE simulation tool. RENATE is being used as a design tool, as well as a tool of interpretation of measurement results and as synthetic diagnostic for turbulence simulators.
  • A third area of plasma physics research is the modelling of runaway electrons that is performed in a wide range of European collaborations including both WPCD, MST1 and Enabling Research projects.
  • Fusion research is accompanied by a range of mechanical engineering activities mainly in the field of diagnostic system development.

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Address
Address
Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME)
Institute of Nuclear Techniques (NTI)
P.O.Box 91
H-1521 Budapest
Hungary
Contact person
Contact person
Gergo Pokol
E-mail