Last week, we successfully delivered the trial run of our 1-week hands-on THOR Facility Training Course!
It was an intensive and rewarding week, giving participants the opportunity to gain practical experience with the THOR facility while developing their knowledge of Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics. A huge thank you to Barry Miller, Benjamin Collins, Celt Griffith, Cintia Leite Goncalves, Eddie O’Carroll, Patryk Labuda, and Thomas Scott for being the first cohort and helping us shape the future of this course through your enthusiasm, engagement, and valuable feedback.
We’re excited to continue refining the programme and look forward to offering it to Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) students, postdoctoral researchers, and industry professionals in the near future.
This course would not have been possible without an outstanding team effort. Huge thanks to James Macdonald for coordinating the course, delivering lectures, and turning ideas into reality. A big thank you to Harvey Plows for leading several of the practical activities, and to Iwan Vaughan Hughes for expertly leading the test section assembly and the THOR experiment.
Safety was at the heart of everything we did. Special thanks to Charlotte Baxter for leading the safety induction and providing daily safety briefings, ensuring that every activity was conducted to the highest safety standards.
A fantastic week of learning, collaboration, and hands-on experimentation, and we’re just getting started!
Below are some comments from the attendees of the training.
“Helping Dr Villanueva deliver the course was a great way to gain some teaching experience and I enjoyed sharing my skills and knowledge with people who had not used the rig before.” – Harvey Plows, PhD Student
“I found the course really useful and especially enjoyed the water sampling and construction side.” – Barry Miller, PhD Student
“The academic side of the course was great as I will be starting work at M-Sparc soon. It was interesting to see what the rig is, what is can do and what has already been done there. The hads on experience of THOR was a great way to learn and I thought the overall course flowed well.” – Ben Collins, Senior Technician
