EK-CER researchers develop more efficient wastewater treatment technology using electron accelerator

Researchers from the Radiation Chemistry Department of the Energy and Environmental Safety Institute at the ELKH Centre for Energy Research (EK-CER), in collaboration with their Chinese partner, have developed a highly efficient technology for wastewater treatment using an electron accelerator. The new process involves irradiating the effluent from sewage treatment plants with a low dose of accelerated electrons, which effectively breaks down drug residues, inactivates bacteria and genes, and reduces the toxicity of the wastewater. …

ESA JUICE mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moons with Hungarian participation launched today at 14:15

On April 14th, 2023 at 14:15 Hungarian time, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission’s spacecraft was launched on an Ariane 5 launcher from the European Spaceport located near Kourou, French Guiana. The power supply of the JUICE PEP, one of the spacecraft’s main instruments, was developed by the Space Technology Group of the ELKH Centre for Energy Research (EK-CER) in collaboration with SGF Kft., which manufactures the Electrical Ground Support …

Da Vinci’s impossible “Tokamak drawing”

The exploration of the now-digitized Leonardo Da Vinci notebooks continues to amaze the worldwide scientific community. A few weeks ago, engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) analyzed a series of drawings that clearly indicated that, two centuries before Newton, the Renaissance artist and polymath had devised experiments to investigate the nature of gravity. Today, a researcher at the Fusion Plasma Physics Department of the Hungarian Centre for Energy Research, Daniel Dunai, has dug …

IAEA Director General visit at EK-CER

Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), visited the Centre for Energy Research. During the visit, Ákos Horváth, Director General of EK-CER, presented the activities of the Centre, highlighting the results achieved in the framework of Nuclear Forensic Analytical cooperation. In 2016 and 2021, the Agency chose our Research Center as a Collaborating Centre in Nuclear Forensics. The staff of the Radiation Safety Laboratory support the Agency’s activities in various training …

The French Ambassador visited the Centre for Energy Research

Claire Legras, Ambassador of France and her delegation paid a visit to the Centre for Energy Research on 16 February on the invitation of Dr. Ákos Horváth, Director General of EK-CER. At the meeting, the Director General presented the strategic directions of the Research Centre. Special attention was given to the existing and planned collaborations with French institutes and companies in the field of nuclear energy. EK-CER has long-standing cooperations with CEA and IRSN institutes …

Balázs Zábori space engineer at EK-CER introduced the HUNOR Astronaut Program at PMI’s 10th “Art of Projects” Conference in Budapest

PMI’s 10th jubilee Conference entitled “Art of Projects” was organized by the PMI Budapest, Hungarian Chapter. Tony Appleby (MBA, CDir, PMP Chair Emeritus, PMI), Honorary Chairman of the Project Management Institute – PMI Board of Directors opened the event on November 3, 2022. Balázs Zábori, EK-CER’s space engineer and program manager of the HUNOR – Hungarian to Orbit Astronaut Program was the main speaker at this year’s conference. Balázs Zábori introduced the HUNOR Program announced by the …

A big step in a small community: first shattering experiments with large hydrogen pellets as required for disruption mitigation in ITER

The Fusion Plasma Physics Department of ELKH’s Centre for Energy Research has been collaborating with the ITER Organization to build a support laboratory to develop and test technology for ITER’s Disruption Mitigation System (DMS). After less than two years, the test bench is fully operational and producing large pellets to study their formation, firing and shattering. This project is a major part of ITER’s large-scale international effort to develop and validate the design of the …

High sensitivity to low doses – new study on old data

A team from the ELKH Centre for Energy Research, Hungary, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, has recently published work that may help provide insights into the variable response of cells to radiation exposure and cancer radiotherapy. Scientists have looked at the effect of irradiating cells in culture for some years now, measuring the fraction of cells capable of cell division after radiation exposure. Surprisingly, many cell lines show hyper-radiosensitivity at very low doses, …

Exotic magnetism in graphite, when electrons crowd together on the surface

The interaction of electrons with each other and their topological properties result in quasiparticles such as Majorana bound states, fractionalized spin and charge, etc. Understanding the physics of these emergent quantum systems promises the realization of topological electronics, robust quantum bits, high temperature superconductivity, etc. Deep insights into new physics nearly always result from studying the simplest possible systems. However, in the case of correlated states this is rarely the case, being hosted by binary, …

Launch of the “PIANOFORTE” European partnership: research and education for radiation protection

Paris, June 13, 2022. The European Partnership for Radiation Protection Research will contribute to improving the protection of the public, workers, patients and the environment from environmental, occupational and medical exposure to ionizing radiation. It brings together 58 partners representing 22 European Union countries as well as the United Kingdom and Norway, and is coordinated by the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). It is co-financed by the European Union’s EURATOM program …