My name is Laurens van der Leden and I am currently a master student at the Technical University of Eindhoven, where I am doing a master program Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion.
In November 2018 I went to Karlsruhe, Germany, to do an internship at Karlsruher Institut für Technologie(KIT). During my stay there I have worked at the Institut für Neutronenphysik und Reaktortechnologie(INR), where I worked on a project with the goal of making a database that stores descriptions and compositions for all kinds of materials relevant for fusion research. In addition, this database could be used to make material input charts for the neutronics software MCNP.
During the second part of my internship I worked on a second project in which I would use simulations of DEMO’s helium cooled pebble bed tritium breeding blanket to verify how material changes in DEMO would affect the tritium breeding ratio. For this I could use the database that I created during the first part of my internship.
At the start of February 2019 I returned to Eindhoven again. I had a great time at KIT. I learned a lot of things, some of which I did not expect to learn in advance. This internship helped me improve my skills in setting up a research project, which is the main goal of the internship from an educational point of view. But aside from that this internship also helped me improve my presentation skills, communication skills and my German. New things I learned are coding with C++ and SQLite, while I also learning a little bit about MCNP and a lot about fusion materials.
Of course I also got to know a lot of great people at KIT, all of whom helped me to feel at home from the very first day. I want to thank all these people for helping me whenever I needed help with something and making my time at KIT a lot of fun. I also want to thank the board of FuseNet for approving the project of my internship and providing me with financial support during my stay in Germany. All of this really helped me to get this experience, which made me grow not only in skills, but also as a person. A lot of thanks to all of you!
- Laurens van der Leden