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Heritage Sciences at the Budapest Neutron Centre

Last week saw the first in-person round table discussion of heritage sciences at the Budapest Neutron Centre (BNC) for some time. Happily, 14 colleagues from across the BNC were able to attend including two new members who will also be contributing to research in heritage sciences: Zoltán Kovács has joined the Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science from Eötvös Loránd University, and brings his expertise in SEM analysis and geochemistry, while John Gait joins …

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European researchers set a fusion energy record with Hungarian participation

Record results announced today are the clearest demonstration in a quarter of a century of the potential for fusion energy to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy. Researchers from the EUROfusion consortium – 4,800 experts, students and staff from across Europe, co-funded by the European Commission and including researchers from ELKH Centre for Energy Research in Hungary – used the Joint European Torus (JET) device to release a record 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy. …

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First results emerging from the new European activity for standardisation of industrial residual stress characterisation

Since the beginning of 2021, Centre for Energy Research have been engaged in the EU-project EASI-STRESS with partners from industry, academia and research and technology organisations (RTOs). Now, the results of the first measurements are becoming public. Residual stresses in metals may lead to catastrophic failures under fatigue processes and they are of key importance across all industrial sectors where metals are used, e.g. within the transportation and energy sectors. Neutrons and synchrotron x-rays penetrate …

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Crucial Hungarian Development for the Lunar Gateway

The Gateway space station, to be built in orbit around the Moon in the mid-2020s, will not be protected by the Earth’s magnetic field or the atmosphere; hence, astronauts could be exposed to up to 700 times the radiation dose of an average human on Earth from space radiation. Therefore, Gateway will be provided with a radiation shield and the dose to the crew will be monitored continuously. The Internal Dosimetry Array (IDA) experiment of …

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Researchers from CER have successfully trapped visible light into graphene

The “Forefront” research group at the Centre for Energy Research of the Eötvös Loránd Research Network, led by Levente Tapasztó, has realized for the first time graphene plasmons in the visible frequency range, using nanoengineered graphene structures. The results have been published in the prestigious Nature Nanotechnology journal. As a first application of visible-frequency graphene plasmons, the researchers were able to demonstrate the optical detection of specific molecules with three orders of magnitude higher sensitivity …

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The Centre for Energy Research has been re-designated for another 4 years period as the Collaborating Centre for nuclear forensics of the International Atomic Energy Agency

The Centre for Energy Research (EK) was designated to be the first Collaborating Centre for nuclear security (nuclear forensics) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for 4 years in 2016. Recently, this year, the EK has been redesignated for the period of 2021 – 2025. The nomination ceremony was attended by Ms. L. Evrard, Deputy Director-General, Director of the IAEA Nuclear Safety and Security Department, Ambassador Károly Dán, Head of the Hungarian UN Mission, …

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Central European Training School of the Budapest Neutron Centre

On 28 October, CETS, the Central European Training School of the Budapest Neutron Centre (BNC) on Neutron Techniques has been successfully completed. The 2021 event was the 14th of the series since launched in 2001. The 15 hour on-line introductory theory course was organized from 4 to 8 October and the 15 hour in-person hands-on training at the BNC neutron instruments from 25 to 28 October. The web page of the school remains available with …

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Reconstruction of concrete microstructure using complementarity of X-ray and neutron tomography

In the framework of the Visegrád Group (V4)-Korea Joint Research Program RADCON, the researchers of the Centre for Energy Research, Hungary, the Yonsei University, Seoul and the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, achieved the successful reconstruction of the microstructure of concrete specimens by taking advantage of the complementary nature of X-ray and neutron computed tomography (CT). Neither tomogram alone was found to be suitable to properly describe the microstructure of concrete under …

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The first flight of the RadMag instrument

RadMag, developed by the Space Research Department, Centre for Energy Research (EK), is an instrument suite for space radiation and magnetic field measurements to study space weather. RadMag might be a key instrument to the Distributed Space weather Sensor System (D3S) of the European Space Agency (ESA) or utilized as hosted payload on navigation, communication or Earth observation satellites). On August 17, 2021, at 03:47 CEST, the European Vega launcher successfully launched the VV19 mission, …

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Trends of complex network properties are revealed in historic power grid data

In their recent work, Bálint Hartmann and Viktória Sugár have assembled the 70-year-long historical dataset (1949–2019) of the Hungarian power grid to perform complex network analysis, which is the first attempt to evaluate small-world and scale-free properties on long-term real-world data. These properties strongly correlate with the robustness of the infrastructure against attacks, e.g., cyber-physical attacks or malicious activities. The results were publised in Nature’s Scientific Reports. Study of complex networks representing real-world systems has …

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