ENEC scholarship student helps to inspire award win at leading U.S. University

Pennsylvania: An Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) scholarship student has made a name for himself at one of America's top universities. Majed Al Maskri, who will graduate this summer from ENEC's "Energy Pioneers" scholarship programme to become a nuclear engineer, led a team who won first place in the Chair Award for the best Nuclear Engineering Design Project at the Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department of Penn State University. The annual competition is run in partnership with leading engineering and nuclear corporations which allows them to provide the university with demanding projects to be completed by student teams. Majed and his team worked on a project called: "Design and Modeling of a PWR Core Using pin-by-pin CIPRE Code" for Exelon, one of the largest competitive power generators in the United States, who was the project owner. The project focused on running simulations of a pin-by-pin core model to discover the spots' where nuclear boiling occurs in a reactor. "We worked hard to figure out a way to develop a shorter code using a programming language called MATLAB," said Majed. "The fact that we were able to make our time challenge work to our advantage is what amazed the judges the most. "Receiving this award was a very special honour and I was thrilled when it was awarded to our team. It feels good to know that our efforts were recognised by the university, Exelon and especially by Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation." ENEC's training and development programme has been running since the company's inception in 2009, and aims to attract and train the country's most talented science students, engineering graduates and experienced professionals to provide them with an opportunity to become pioneers of the emerging nuclear energy sector. To date, ENEC employs more than 500 people and has more than 250 students enrolled across its scholarship programmes. By 2020, ENEC will be one of the UAE's biggest employers, with a team of more than 2000 people, 60 per cent of whom will be Emiratis. "To witness the achievements made by Majed and other ENEC scholarship students is very reassuring and we are proud to see the level of progress being made by these young Emiratis," said Mohamed Al Hammadi, ENEC's Chief Executive Officer. "ENEC is focused on attracting the country's most talented students to provide them with the best training at the most advanced international academic institutions. We also send our students to diverse academic institutions in countries where nuclear energy is well established to ensure they gain access to various global expertise which will be used in helping to develop our own programme." The first UAE nuclear power plant is expected to commence operations in 2017, pending further regulatory approvals. As well as diversifying the nation's energy supply, with four plants online by 2020, nuclear energy will save the UAE up to 12 million tons of CO2 emissions each year. – Emirates News Agency, WAM