We are delighted to report the following from December’s UNENE R&D Workshop in Toronto. This is an annual meeting of UNENE/NSERC Industrial Research Chairs from across the province, their research groups, the UNENE Research Advisory Committee, and nuclear industry stakeholders, including OPG, CNSC, Bruce Power, CNL, CANDU Energy, NWMO, COG, and others.
PhD students working under the NWMO-sponsored Industrial Research Chairs of Profs. Dave Shoesmith (SSW Director) and Clara Wren in the Department of Chemistry at Western made a clean sweep of the poster session at the UNENE Workshop, winning 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes for their presentations, from a field of 47 excellent posters.
The 1st prize ($1000) was awarded to Shannon Hill for her presentation of “The Corosion Evolution on Carbon Steel under Deep Geological Disposal Conditions for Spent Nuclear Fuel Waste” (co-authors Mary Jane Walzak, Dmitrij Zagidulin, and Dave Shoesmith). This work contributes to the understanding of the corrosion of the internal steel components of a nuclear waste container after failure, and their propensity to generate corrosion products that can serve to protect the fuel waste from dissolution into the local groundwater.
Thalia Standish won the 2nd prize ($600) for “Galvanic Corrosion of Copper-Coated Carbon Steel for Used Nuclear Fuel Containers” (co-authors Vahid Dehnavi, Dmitrij Zagidulin, Sridhar Ramamurthy, Peter Keech, Andrew Nelson, and Dave Shoesmith), a report on investigations of how the presence of the outer copper coating might affect the corrosion rate of the inner carbon steel layer of a Nuclear Waste Management Organization Mark II-type spent fuel container if the container was emplaced in the repository with a defect in the copper layer.
Mojtaba Momeni won 3rd prize ($400) with his poster entitled “Effects of pH and Radiation on Galvanic Corrosion of Stainless Steel-Carbon Steel Welds” (co-authors Ryan Whyte, Mi Li, Otto Yong, and Clara Wren). Moji’s experiments are helping Ontario Power Generation to understand the corrosion implications of welding stainless steel to carbon steel in the calandria support structure within the containment building of their power reactors.
Congratulations to the student winners, their co-authors, and the proud professors. Nice work!
Surface Science Western 
