“What we do here is apply nuclear science and technology to various fields”, says Isabel Santos, professor and researcher at the Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear (CTN) – formerly known as the Instituto Tecnológico e Nuclear (ITN), summarizing the activity developed at the most recent campus at Técnico.
Created in 1956, with the name Laboratório de Física e Engenharia Nuclear (LFEN), the CTN was integrated into Técnico in 2012, and remains the reference institution in the field of nuclear science and engineering in Portugal. “There is a very large set of equipment that only exists here, or if it exists elsewhere, it is used differently”, explains José Marques, vice president of IST for the CTN. “There is a know-how, a culture around the applications of radiation that result from fifty years of experience.”
Actually, in the campus facilities there is the only research nuclear reactor of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the only particle accelerators in the country, which allows unique investigations in the field of radioactivity and nuclear engineering, whose applications, from medicine to electronics, are numerous.
The nuclear reactor also has dozens of applications, and numerous research projects are based on it: it does not produce energy, but it is used to date ancient artefacts, analyse materials or develop radiopharmaceuticals, for example. “These techniques outperform others because they are very sensitive and are not destructive”, explains Isabel Santos.
This is exactly what Eduardo Alves, director of the Laboratório de Aceleradores e Tecnologias de Radiação (LATR), and one of those responsible for the research made with the particle accelerators, says. “The studies we carry on here have very practical applications in the fields of medicine, biology, conservation and restoration, environmental studies…”, explains the researcher. “The fact that we use a non-destructive and quantitative technique gives us a huge advantage over other techniques, namely chemical, which often require the destruction of the sample.”
In fact, practically all projects developed at the CTN integrate multidisciplinary teams, which is one of the great advantages of the research done there. And the future of science is to work on the cutting edge of some areas, according to Manuel Almeida, president of the newly created Departamento de Engenharia e Ciências Nucleares. A researcher in the area of chemistry, he says the projects developed at the CTN could revolutionize, in the future, the world of electronics. “Chemists can develop materials and molecules with specific properties that can revolutionize, for example, electronics.”
All the research, however, requires many years of work and competent human resources to develop it. Therefore, the general opinion is that the integration into Técnico will benefit the school and the campus, as it will allow a steady stream of students who can develop projects in these areas. “When we were integrated into Técnico, there was no redundancy. We brought in new things, new areas, infrastructures that are now available to everyone”, says José Marques.
