First in South-East Europe hackathon “Information Technologies in Nuclear Energy“
New Powers participated as a mentor and supporter in the first one in Southeast Europe, which ended hackathon “Information Technologies in Nuclear Science and Engineering”. After an intensive day filled with lectures, conversations with people from science and business, brainstorming, and programming, the five student teams presented the prototypes they developed within 12 hours to address problems and opportunities in nuclear science.
The project of the students from the John Atanasov School is entitled „Nuclear Energy and Its Safe Application”. According to the competitors, there can be no innovation if people are not convinced of the safety of nuclear energy and technologies and do not understand the difference between an atomic bomb and a nuclear power plant. Therefore, the team proposes a common learning platform for the general public and adapting a robotic arm they already developed for handling munitions to be used in radiation environments.
The TEUS team proposed “Optimization of nuclear reactor design using a genetic algorithm“. A problem that this project solves is that the eventual optimization of a nuclear reactor has many different goals, many variables, many local problems – i.e. there is no guarantee that one optimization would reach the best changes in the design. The genetic algorithm is borrowed from nature and contains the phases of population, selection of the most suitable elements, crossover and mutation of the elements placed in a suitable environment. The team simulated a nuclear reactor and applied the genetic algorithm model to outline the most effective optimization of the design, based on variables such as cost, number of reactors, fuel, etc.
NPMG (physicists and programmers) developed demo version of a nuclear physics educational site. The site contains general information on topics, resources, video lessons and case studies (and the team plans to develop a discussion forum). The section with the tests requires registration and is based on the principle of interactive educational games: if you successfully solve a problem, you receive a badge, and if you fail, the site returns you to the relevant resources to learn the material, and then returns you to a new automatically generated test. The site also has an events and news section.
SMG (2nd team) headed to radioactive contamination of water sources and water basins. The example the team is working with is the Rosen mine and the polluted Vromos beach near Chernomorets. Their proposal is to use zeolites (minerals that can absorb certain substances of a certain weight and mass) to overcome the pollution, and clean the beach through sedimentation using a centrifuge.
SMG physicists see a problem in the lack of information in the field of atomic physics. That is why they propose educational site with lots of graphics and images, to help people like them understand and practice this part of physics and prepare for physics competitions. The site offers a connection between theoretical physicists and students. Students compete in real time with each other and track their ratings and success.
The jury ranked the 2nd team of SMG in first place, which received 200 leva and a visit to the European Parliament at the invitation of MEP Vladimir Uruchev. In second place is the team of NPMG, which received 300 leva, and in third place is the team of TUES with a prize of 200 leva. The team of the “John Atanasov” school received a special award for presentation skills, and the first team of SMG – a special award for creative design.
