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Department of Nuclear Engineering
Department of Nuclear Engineering
About

Research Interests

​Prof. Itzhak Orion
Monte Carlo simulations for gamma, x-rays, electrons, and neutrons
Synchrotron radiation for medical applications
DNA damage by radiation, and Auger Electron Therapy
Gamma rays detectors
Environmental radiation
Prof. Erez Gilad
Nuclear reactor physics
Neutron transport theory
In-core fuel management using genetic algorithms
Safety analysis of nuclear reactors
Experimental core physics
 
Dr. Lior Arazi
Development of a revolutionary method for the treatment of solid cancerous tumors using alpha radiation
Partnership in the NEXT experiment to search for neutrinoless double beta decay in xenon-136
Partnership in the DARWIN collaboration to design a future experiment for the search for dark matter using liquid xenon
Development of gas detectors and gamma and neutron detectors for basic experiments in particle nuclear physics
 
Prof. Emeritus Alexander Galperin
Nuclear power reactors
Fuel cycle and core design
Advanced and non-proliferative fuel cycles
Application of artificial intelligence methods in nuclear engineering
 
Prof. Emeritus Yigal Ronen
Theory of nuclear reactors
Transport theory
Advanced concepts of nuclear reactors

Prof. Emeritus Isaac Jacob
Metallic compounds 
Hydrides and hydrogen storage applications
 
Prof. (Retired) Brenda Laster
Preventing the immortality of cancerous cells by enhancing the radiation dose to tumors and inhibiting the activation of the Telomerase enzyme
Evaluating the biological efficacy of ingesting low, non-toxic concentrations of Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) to control the immune system’s response to reactive oxygen species (ROS)
Exploring the influence of dietary proteins in cancer development
Radio-biology

Nuclear Energy Research Activities

​The Nuclear Energy Group at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) conducts active research in the field of nuclear energy in the last 30 years. During this period, the BGU group acquired and developed a number of computer code systems focused primarily on reactor core simulations. In addition, a number of new reactor concepts were proposed and developed independently and as a part of research cooperation with several leading academic and R&D institutions in Europe and United States.
 
The contribution of the BGU group to the field of nuclear energy technology may be summarized in two areas:

1. Acquisition, maintenance, upgrades and development of new capabilities of computer codes for reactor analysis.
2. Innovative core and fuel cycle designs intended for enhancing proliferation resistance and Thorium-based fuel reactor designs​​​​.
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The research is currently focused on continuation of development and verification of most of the computer systems mentioned above with the emphasis on specific requirements of Israeli nuclear engineering community.
Innovative core and fuel cycle designs will continue to constitute a major part of the R&D effort of the BGU group. The specific reactor projects are carried out on the level of conceptual design evaluations and on the level of detailed reactor core/fuel cycle designs aimed at maintaining a measure of technical knowledge and expertise required for understanding of major developments in the nuclear power technology field worldwide.

The main objective of the BGU group research program is to develop and maintain the nuclear energy engineering capabilities (knowhow and methodologies) to assure efficient introduction of nuclear power into the electricity production system in Israel. The Nuclear Energy Group at the Unit of Nuclear Engineering at Ben-Gurion University is the only academic establishment in Israel specializing in simulation of core physics phenomena in nuclear power systems. For the last 20 years, many graduate students have completed their studies for M.Sc and Ph.D degrees and have successfully integrated in the local and global academic and industrial nuclear communities. It should be emphasized that most of the research projects are based on a comprehensive investigation of a specific reactor or fuel cycle design. This approach is especially important for training future engineers and scientists in the field of nuclear energy. Acquisition, development and maintenance of computer codes are also an important part of maintaining engineering capabilities in the field.​​

​​The capabilities of BGU is acquired as a result of decades of experience in the field as well as continuous active research in collaboration with leading academic and research institutions around the world. The group is maintaining and constantly improving an extensive computational infrastructure for the analysis of nuclear reactor systems, which includes state of the art computer codes and modern nuclear data libraries. This infrastructure is used for the students’ training as a part of the nuclear energy related courses at Ben-Gurion University and for the studies aiming at the design of innovative reactors and their fuel cycles. The financial support for these activities is partially provided by the Israeli Ministry of Energy and Water Resources in addition to foreign research grants.
The group employs several senior academic staff member who conduct active research in the field of nuclear energy, including Prof. Y. Ronen and Prof. A. Galperin (emeriti), Prof. E. Shwageraus (on sabbatical in Cambridge, UK), and Prof. Itzhak Orion and Prof. E. Gilad who are responsible for the supervision of graduate students and teaching the nuclear energy and reactor design courses at Ben-Gurion University.
The computational infrastructure for the analysis of current generation and future reactors includes a number of computer codes as well as basic nuclear data libraries in various formats. The group has joined a High Performance Computing (HPC) project initiated by the Computation Center at Ben-Gurion University. Multi-processor computer cluster built as a part of this project allows performing reactor core physics simulations on multiple CPU cores simultaneously. This capability greatly reduces the simulation time, improves the calculation accuracy and opens up new opportunities for including various core physics effects that previously were impossible to account for because of the prohibitively long computation times. Currently, the group is actively working on adaptation of the existing computer codes to multiprocessing environment and developing new codes that would take full advantage of these parallel processing capabilities.
A short list of the codes used by BGU includes
- MCNP – a Monte Carlo generalized geometry particles transport code, which can be very effectively executed in parallel processing environments. This code can be universally applied to a wide range of criticality or fixed source problems. The code was developed at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and acquired through Nuclear Energy Agency Databank.
- BGCore – a flexible software package for the analysis of virtually any type of reactor system. It couples MCNP code with independently developed by the group fuel depletion and decay routine as well as thermal hydraulic feedback module. Highly efficient coupling procedure, developed by the group and implemented in BGCore, reduces dramatically the computation time and allows high accuracy simulation of coupled multi-physics phenomena. The code explicitly tracks atom densities of over 1700 burnable isotopes and, thus, can also be used for the analysis of spent fuel environmental emissions.
- VSOP – a code system developed specifically for comprehensive analysis of gas cooled reactors with both, pebble bed and prismatic fuel types. The code was developed in Forschungs Zentrum Julich in Germany.
- DYN3D – a computer code for analysis of reactor core for static and dynamic simulations. DYN3D is transferred to our group within a framework of cooperation agreement between BGU and Institute for Reactor Safety at Helmholz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf in Germany.
- ​Serpent – a Monte Carlo neutron transport code developed at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland with a number of unique innovative features which allow much faster execution times than typical for other Monte Carlo codes. Serpent was specifically designed to replace deterministic fuel lattice transport codes that are commonly used for generation of homogenized cross section libraries for 3D full core simulators.
​In the recent years, the group has participated in a number of international research projects, which are briefly described below.
The group has a long time experience and high level of expertise in the use of Thorium as nuclear fuel. One of the main advantages of using Thorium fuel is that it can significantly reduce Plutonium generation rate improving proliferation resistance of the civilian fuel cycle. In collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" in Russia, the group took part in an international multi-year research project in order to develop proliferation resistant Th fuel for LWRs. The project was partially sponsored by the US Department of Energy.
In 2010, the group, headed by Prof. Shwageraus, was awarded a research grant from the US-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation (BSF) for a 3-year project with an objective to address the issue of nuclear fuel resources sustainability. The project examined the possibility of achieving break-even breeding in Light Water Reactors operating on Th-233U fuel cycle. The US partner for this project is Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Additional projects completed in the last few years include:
- ​Sustainable Trans-Uranic (TRU) actinides recycling within the existing reactors. Basic feasibility of such "zero waste" producing reactor core was successfully demonstrated on the basis of the performed analysis.
- Completion of the alpha-version of BGCore system, addition of the thermal-hydraulic feedback module. The work on expansion of thermo-hydraulic module capabilities to model two-phase flow phenomena continues and ultimately aims at acquiring BWR analysis capability.
Currently, the Nuclear Energy Group is engaged in several projects, including:
- The development of innovative techniques for measurement of the kinetic parameters of the MINERVE Zero Power Reactor. This study is done in collaboration with CEA Cadarache Nuclear Research Centre.
- Participation in the MIT BEAVRS benchmark using the coupled codes system Serpent-DYN3D. BEAVRS is a detailed pressurized water reactor (PWR) benchmark containing real plant data for assessing the accuracy of reactor physics simulation tools. This study is done in collaboration with researchers from the Institute for Reactor Safety at Helmholz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) in Germany.
- Burnup Evaluation of IRR-1 MTR-type Fuel Elements by Gamma Spectrometry. This project involves both gamma spectrometry measurements of spent fuel elements and depletion calculations using both BGCore and Serpent. In this study the irradiation history of a fuel element is estimated using the activity relations between several specific isotopes, e.g. 137Cs, 134Cs and 154Eu.
- In-Core Fuel Management optimization using evolutionary optimization algorithms such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, ant colony algorithms, etc. This study is done in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Computer Science at BGU.
- The effect of missile impact on the safety of nuclear power plants (NPP) and the development of required protective technologies. The NPP designs considered in this work are a generation III+ PWR (e.g. AREVA EPR or Westinghouse AP100) and small modular reactor (SMR). This study is done in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Structural Engineering and the Protective Technologies Research and Development Center (PTRDC) at BGU and is funded by the Israeli Ministry of Energy and Water Resources.
- Continuous extension of BGCore system capabilities. The main effort is currently devoted to improving the neutronic-thermal hydraulic coupling of BGCore with THERMO module.
- Development of modelling capabilities of Research Reactors (IRR-1) using the code system Serpent-DYN3D. In this study we are planning to generate a comprehensive homogenized cross sections library for IRR-1 at NRC Soreq using Serpent code and then, create and benchmark the IRR-1 core model using DYN3D.​

Ben-Gurion University launched in 2012 the BGU Energy Initiative program, which seeks to promote advanced fundamental research in the fields of renewable and alternative energy, search for potential applications through recruitment of excellent researchers in relevant fields, increased R&D budgets, enhanced national and international cooperation and improved research infrastructure. Furthermore, BGU develops specific undergraduate and graduate multidisciplinary programs in diverse areas of energy.