The ENEN2plus 1st BSc and MSc Nuclear Competition and Summer School 2024 was a presentation competition organized by European Nuclear Education Network (ENEN). After submitting an abstract of his thesis, Serdar Yildiz was selected to give a 10 minute presentation about his work at the Slovenská technická univerzita v Bratislave (STU) in Bratislava, Slovakia. This in front of a jury with field experts in the nuclear industry. The score the jury gave him for his presentation counted for 80% of the final score. The remaining 20% was graded on daily quizzes about lectures and exercise sessions which he attended to during the summer school.
Serdar Yildiz was awarded first place among all bachelor participants; he achieved a 96% on his presentation and a 71.2% on the quizzes. Which gave him a final score of 91%.
Serdar wrote his thesis during an internship at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK CEN) in collaboration with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), under the guidance of Dr. Donald Houngbo and Prof. Jorgen D’Hondt. The thesis, titled "Heat Load and Inventory Simulation of the Proton-Beam Halo Monitor at ISOL@MYRRHA Under Different Scenarios", focused on the halo monitor within the accelerator of the MYRRHA project at SCK CEN.
The primary objective of his research was to develop an algorithm capable of calculating the residual nuclide inventory inside the halo monitor after irradiation by beams with varying parameters. This algorithm was subsequently transformed into a user-friendly tool, enabling researchers to compute activity inventories in seconds with the same level of accuracy that a Monte Carlo simulation would achieve after weeks of continuous computation.