The winners of the All-Ukrainian essay competition among high school students “Nuclear Energy and the World”-2023 have been announced

On November 6, the results of the All-Ukrainian essay competition among high school students “Nuclear Energy and World”-2023 were announced.

The winner and Grand Prix holder of the competition was a schoolgirl from the city of Kharkiv, winner of the qualifying stage in her city, Kateryna Chkuaseli with the abstract “Problems of the development of thermonuclear energy in the world and Ukraine.”

Based on the results of the evaluation of the works, the jury determined the other winners of the competition:

1st place – Sofia Kuzmenko with an essay “Power engineer is a promising profession in post-war Ukraine”, the city of Shepetivka.

2nd place – Vita Muntyan with the essay “Nuclear energy in Ukraine during the war: how can we protect ourselves”, the city of Mykolaiv.

3rd place – Evgeniya Ilyushkina with an essay “Comparison of the operation of a nuclear power plant with a Small modular and Pressurized water reactor”, the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk.

Additional prizes were awarded to Stanislav Zhurakivsky with his essay “Robots – Little Helpers of Nuclear Giants”, the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk; Solomiya Shpakovych, with an essay “Features of the development of the electric power industry during the war and its post-war restoration,” the city of Netishyn; Anastasia Kirchenko with an essay “Nuclear energy and climate change”, the city of Varash.

For several years now, the final of the competition for high school students interested in nuclear energy and nuclear physics has been held online and attracts a large number of participants.

This year, 25 finalists presented their essays, and 65 participants took part in the qualifying stages. In the city of Kharkiv alone, more than 30 applications for participation in the competition were received this year.

The qualifying stages of the competition took place in May-October 2023 in the satellite cities of Ukrainian nuclear power plants Varash, Netishin, Yuzhnoukrainsk, Slavutych, as well as the cities where nuclear higher education institutions are located in Kharkiv and Lviv, as well as a general selection of essays in Ukraine, where the finalists were participants from the cities of Kyiv, Dnipro, Mykolayiv and other regions, as well as from the Ivankovsky territorial community (the territory adjacent to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone).

This year’s competition was sponsored by the long-term partners of the Ukrainian Nuclear Society, the Energy Safety Group, which provides support in the implementation of many educational and scientific events of the Society.

The jury of the competition includes specialists from leading enterprises, scientific and educational institutions in the industry: Oleg Zeleny (Energoatom), Oleksandr Mazurok (Energy Safety Group), Valery Tuz (Department of Nuclear Power Plants and Engineering Thermophysics National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”), Valery Zuyok (National Scientific Center “Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology”), Vladislav Lesko (Department of Electrical Plants and Systems. Vinnytsya National Technical University), Evgen Maliy (Institute of Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), Danylo Lavrenov (Energoatom).

The evaluation of essay took place in two stages. Members of the jury carried out a preliminary assessment of the essay according to such criteria as the relevance of the topic, its compliance with the subject of the competition; the degree of disclosure of the essence of the issue: consistency and logic of presentation, compliance of the conclusions with the assigned tasks and goals of the work; sufficiency of coverage of literary sources, their relevance; compliance of the work design with established requirements, quality of the text.

The final of the competition – presentation of essays – took place on November 1 and 2, 2023. This time, the jury had to evaluate the participants’ speeches according to such criteria as informativeness of the speech, clarity in opinions, independence of thinking, ability to substantiate ideas and conclusions, quality of presentation materials, etc.

The winners and participants of the competition received fairly high marks for their essays and speeches, as well as many approving reviews from members of the competition jury.