On Saturday, 25th March 2023, PhD students from the 3rd Cohort of the Nuclear Energy Futures Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT), including two PhD students from Bangor University (Harvey Plows and Conor Buchanan), travelled to Cambridge University for the 2023 Cambridge Festival. At this event, hosted at the New Museum site, the CDT students ran the Nuclear Energy Futures (NEF) Carnival. This was an interactive outreach event designed to grow public interest in nuclear engineering, inspire people to explore careers in the nuclear sector, and to showcase the work of the CDT. The NEF Carnival was extremely well attended throughout the day by members of the public of all ages and backgrounds; providing the PhD students with an excellent opportunity to gain experience in communicating science.
Stalls included: Prince Rupert Droplet demonstrations to explore material science considerations relevant to the design of reactor components, a “Seesaw of Criticality” game; showing how a pressurised water reactor responds to changes in reactivity, a coconut shy to demonstrate the defence-in-depth principles of deep geological repositories, and a bubble column to introduce nuclear thermal hydraulics and multiphase flow imaging techniques.
