Reactor Experiments Course of the Swiss Nuclear Engineering Master

Since September 2008, a new Master’s programme in Nuclear Engineering (NE) is being offered jointly by the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, viz. EPFL at Lausanne and ETHZ at Zurich. The present paper discusses the development and running of one of the key compulsory courses, viz. Reactor Experiments. This is centred mainly around the utilization of EPFL’s teaching reactor, CROCUS. The course is of seven weeks’ duration, with 10 contact hours per week, and is held during the second half of the first semester. Following an introductory session, the class is divided into six groups. With a total of 12 experiments to be carried out by each group, there are usually 2 half-day experiments to be conducted by a given group per week. Effectively, six experiments have to be running simultaneously at any given time. There are two basic types of experiments which constitute the course contents, viz. those related to radiation measurements and neutronics phenomena, and those conducted using the reactor itself. Details are provided concerning the practical realisation of the various experiments. For example, certain difficulties encountered in the context of achieving adequate counting statistics are discussed, and the corresponding solutions presented. The course has been conducted twice to date, and the feedback from the students has been very positive.