biggest university research reactor

MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory

The MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (MIT-NRL) is an interdepartmental center that operates a high performance 6 MW nuclear research reactor known as the MITR. It is the second largest university research reactor in the U.S. and the only one located on the campus of a major research university. During its long and distinguished history, the NRL has supported educational training and cutting-edge research in the areas of nuclear fission engineering, material science, radiation effects in biology and medicine, neutron physics, geochemistry, and environmental studies.

It is the only university research facility in the U.S. where students can be directly involved in the development and implementation of nuclear engineering experimental programs with neutron flux levels comparable to power reactors. The MITR is an indispensable resource for developing the workforce for the future of nuclear power.

The MITR is equipped with experimental facilities available to users both within and outside MIT. The NRL staff provides technical assistance for research projects for high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, university researchers and faculty members, and national laboratory users.

The MIT Reactor

The MITR is a light-water cooled and moderated, heavy-water reflected, reactor that utilizes flat, finned, aluminum-clad, plate-type, fuel elements. The average core power density is about 70 kW per liter. The maximum fast and thermal neutron flux available to experimenters are 1.2x10 14 and 6x10 13 neutrons/cm 2 -s, respectively. Experimental facilities available at the MIT research reactor include two medical irradiation rooms, beam ports, automatic transfer facilities (pneumatic tubes), and graphite-reflector irradiation facilities. In addition, several types of in-core experimental facilities are available.

The MITR encompasses a number of inherent (i.e., passive) safety features, including negative reactivity temperature coefficients of both the fuel and moderator; a negative void coefficient of reactivity; the location of the core within two concentric tanks; the use of anti-siphon valves to isolate the core from the effect of breaks in the coolant piping; a core-tank design that promotes natural circulation in the event of a loss-of-flow accident; and the presence of a full containment. These features make it an exceptionally safe facility.

The MITR generally operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for planned outages for maintenance.

MITR-II is the second largest university research reactor in the U.S. and the only one located on the campus of a major research university. MORE ABOUT MITR

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The control room of MIT's Nuclear Reactor Lab with a student operator on console

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Tucked away behind a brick building on MIT’s campus sits a nuclear reactor. I’ve been hearing about this facility for over a decade, and it’s taken on a somewhat mythic quality in my mind. So I was excited to finally get to see it for myself last week.

MIT’s research reactor was built in the 1950s, and its purpose has shifted over the decades. At various points, it’s been used to study everything from nuclear physics to medical therapies, alongside its consistent use for teaching the next generation of nuclear scientists.

But I was most excited to hear about an energy-focused project, which is aimed at bringing novel reactor technology to reality.

While virtually all commercial nuclear reactors today are cooled using water, a growing number of startups are looking to molten salt as an alternative. MIT’s nuclear reactor lab is working on a new research space that could help illuminate how well alternative technologies withstand the intense conditions inside a nuclear reactor.

So for the newsletter this week, come along on my tour of MIT’s nuclear reactor lab. On the way, we can get into what all the buzz is all about with molten-salt reactors.

The first stop on my tour was the front desk, where I and each member of my group picked up a personal dosimeter to track any potential radiation exposure. We then handed over our bags and phones and got stern warnings not to touch anything or wander out of our tour guide’s sight.

Finally, we filed through a set of reinforced metal doors and into the lab. We passed rows of yellow lab coats as David Carpenter , the head of reactor experiments and our tour guide, walked us through some history and basic facts.

This is the second-largest university research reactor running in the US today, producing about six megawatts of thermal power. Commercial reactors tend to have capacities hundreds of times greater than that—around 3,000 megawatts (or three gigawatts) of thermal power.

(Speedy nuclear basics: nuclear reactors are powered by fission reactions, where uranium atoms break apart. These reactions produce neutrons, which are a type of ionizing radiation, as well as heat that can be harnessed and transformed into electricity.)

Reactors used on the power grid generate heat in the form of steam and turn it into electricity. But for this research reactor, the heat is basically a by-product, and the focus is all on the neutrons.

MIT’s reactor is better than most other university research facilities at mimicking radiation conditions in larger commercial reactors. For that reason, the facility is used today for a lot of engineering research and development, Carpenter says. Before companies use new materials or sensors inside or near nuclear reactors, they can test them at similar radiation, temperature, and pressure conditions in a controlled environment in the research reactor. Samples can either be put directly into the core or subjected to radiation that’s allowed out in controlled corridors called beam lines.

Chain reactions

I had the distinct feeling that I was about to get launched into space as we approached the entrance to the reactor room, though the doors were painted a surprisingly whimsical robin’s egg blue. After Carpenter went through a round of security checks, the first door swung open, revealing a small airlock chamber and a duplicate blue door.

After we waited a few seconds inside the airlock, the second door swung open and we were suddenly faced with the reactor. While the core where the fuel is contained is only about two feet tall (less than a meter), the whole setup is several stories high.

Carpenter walked us around the reactor, pointing out a chamber that used to be dedicated to medical neutron therapy in the early 2000s. That research has fizzled out, so now the space is getting a makeover. Its new purpose will be to test out aspects of molten-salt-cooled reactors.

Molten salt was a candidate for cooling reactors as early as the 1950s. Interest slowed as water-cooled reactors started entering commercial operation, but in the early 2000s, scientists—including some at MIT—revived the work.

Several startups, including Kairos Power and TerraPower , are working to bring molten-salt reactors into commercial operation. These companies are building demonstration systems of their cooling setups and seeking licenses for test reactors.

MIT’s lab won’t be operating a molten-salt reactor. Instead, it will help gather more data on how the technology will work in the real world . The space will allow companies and academic researchers to test not only small pieces of material used to build reactors and individual sensors, but a whole operating set of pumps and pipes to move hot salt around in a circuit and see how everything reacts to radiation. “Given where the new molten-salt reactor industry is today, we still need to investigate more basic functions,” Carpenter told me in an email after our tour.

Data from MIT and other research facilities could help determine how molten-salt setups will handle what it’s really like inside a nuclear reactor. The facility should be fully up and running in 2024.

Keeping up with climate

All this heat is wreaking havoc on agriculture . While the weather is affecting staple crops like wheat, the greatest challenge could be for specialty crops like peaches in Georgia and olives in Spain. ( Wired )

Skepticism is catching up to a US agency’s plan to push the country toward EVs. Critics argue that the new rules will be difficult to implement and might not have the promised results even if they take effect. ( Associated Press )

Planes powered by hydrogen could help cut emissions, though the technology will probably be limited to shorter flights on smaller aircraft at first. ( Canary Media )

→ Read more about why hydrogen planes were the readers’ choice on our breakthrough technologies list for 2023. ( MIT Technology Review )

New rules in Texas could force up to 50,000 megawatts of wind and solar power to disconnect from the grid . The rules aim to increase grid reliability, though critics say they could wind up harming operations. ( E&E News )

The “chasing arrows” symbol is used to symbolize recycling in the US, but it’s been used and misused so much that one government agency wants to ditch it. ( New York Times )

→ I loved this quiz from earlier this year about how to sort recycling. ( Washington Post )

→ New chemical recycling methods could cut out the need for sorting altogether. ( MIT Technology Review )

There’s a debate swirling about how to deal with e-bikes when they’ve reached the end of their lives: to repair or to recycle? The industry opposes laws that make the bikes easier to fix, citing safety concerns. ( Grist )

Remember when we all freaked out about that fusion news in December? Researchers repeated the experiments and say they got even more energy back from the reaction. ( Washington Post )

Climate change and energy

This classic game is taking on climate change.

What the New Energies edition of Catan says about climate technology today.

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Hundreds of looming projects will force communities to weigh the climate claims and environmental risks of capturing, moving, and storing carbon dioxide.

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The growing business of surf pools wants to bring the ocean experience inland. But with many planned for areas facing water scarcity, who bears the cost?

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Nuclear @ McMaster

Mcmaster nuclear reactor.

A 5 MW multi-purpose reactor that provides neutrons for research and medical isotope production. It is Canada’s most powerful research reactor and the nation’s only major neutron source.

The McMaster Nuclear Reactor (MNR) first became operational in 1959 and was the first university-based research reactor in the British Commonwealth. Originally designed to operate at a maximum power of 1 MW, MNR was upgraded during the 1970s to its current rating of 5 MW with a maximum thermal neutron flux of 1 x 10 14 neutrons/cm 2 s. MNR is classified as a medium flux reactor and it is by far the most powerful research reactor at a Canadian university – the handful of so-called “Slowpoke” reactors at other institutions typically operate at a power of 0.02 MW.

The core of the mcmaster nuclear reactor glowing blue.

The McMaster Nuclear Reactor is an open-pool type Materials Test Reactor (MTR) with a core of low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel that is moderated and cooled by light water. Primary and secondary cooling systems act to remove the heat that is generated in the core of the reactor, with external cooling towers acting as the ultimate thermal sink. The reactor is housed within a concrete containment building and generally operates weekdays from 8 a.m. until 12 midnight at a thermal power of 3 MW.

mcmaster nuclear reactors cooling towers, two small buildings. located outdoors.

The nuclear reactor was designed with its end use as a multi-purpose research facility in mind. Its open-pool design provides ready access to the reactor core and allows for easy insertion and removal of samples for neutron irradiation, imparting a degree of flexibility that many other classes of reactors lack. As well, several beam-tubes were built into the reactor structure: today, the neutron beams extracted by these tubes are used for applications including neutron radiography and neutron diffraction experiments. MNR also has an industrial hot cell inside the reactor containment building for handling highly radioactive samples.

Staff at the McMaster Nuclear Reactor conduct hundreds of thousands of neutron irradiations every year, many in support of industry (mining exploration, environmental samples). MNR is a world leader in the production of iodine-125, a radioactive isotope that is used in the treatment of prostate cancer, with hundreds of doses produced each week. Neutrons from MNR are also used by Nray Services Inc. to conduct quality assurance testing on turbine blades for jet engines using the neutron radiography facility at one of the beam-ports. Research activities at MNR continue to expand, with a new neutron diffractometer installed in 2009 and a state of the art positron beam facility currently being designed.

McMaster Nuclear Reactor is also involved in public outreach activities such as Doors Open Hamilton, providing opportunities for McMaster students and members of the public to participate in guided tours of the reactor facility. More than 1,500 visitors each year visit MNR to lean about nuclear sciences and observe “the blue glow” of the reactor core first-hand.

Want to know the McMaster Nuclear Reactor works?

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Education and outreach

Reed College: the only place in the US where students get to run a real nuclear reactor

Robert P Crease travels to Reed College in the US, which is unique for having the only nuclear reactor in the US run by undergraduate students

Toria Ellis stands over the pool and shuts off the lights. A half-dozen high-school students from a nearby Roman Catholic girls school gape down at the luminous blue glow that suddenly appears at the bottom. The glow reveals an object that looks like a futuristic car tyre, with a pockmarked white hub surrounded by two rings. “That’s the reactor core,” says Ellis. “The glow is called Cherenkov radiation.”

The luminous blue glow of the Reed College Reactor

I’ve travelled to Reed College – a small, prestigious and progressive liberal-arts institution in Portland, Oregon, US. Located in an environmentally conscious city, Reed is unique in being the only purely undergraduate institution that has a reactor operated by students. The Reed Research Reactor has been running continuously since 1968 – a fact that the college proudly advertises on its website .

Ellis, a physicist who is the reactor’s operations manager , uses a laser pointer to highlight features for the visitors. “See that matrix of holes in the centre? They’re for the fuel elements.” The dot moves outwards to the inner ring. “That ring’s for samples to be irradiated. The outer ring is the graphite moderator.” Ellis sweeps the laser dot up and down some pipes. “These are for the control rods, those for experimental samples and detectors.”

As the students watch on, Ellis explains that shutting down a reactor is called “scramming”. Ellis says the term dates back to the first reactor built by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago in 1942, where the emergency switch-off method consisted of a control rod attached to a rope. Someone stood by ready to chop the rope with an axe if the rod failed: “scram” is supposedly an acronym of “Safety Control Rod Axe Man”.

Ellis then asks Irina, one of the students, to make a chopping gesture with their hands – the Reed reactor’s scram signal. On the other side of a large window is Vee, a 19-year-old Reed maths and physics student who is the operator on duty in the control room. Vee pushes the scram button, and the blue glow disappears. Almost; its haze lingers a few seconds. Ellis then turns the lights back on.

Open for all

The Reed Research Reactor is one of the few “open pool” nuclear reactors in the world, where you can peer down from the edge and see the Cherenkov glow. It’s also the only reactor anywhere, as far as I know, where they let visitors initiate a scram. What’s unusual too is the diversity of the students who operate the reactor.

Virtually all Reed students receive their reactor operator licences before they are legally permitted to drink (21 in Oregon) and many before they have even learned to drive a car. Stephen Frantz, a former head of Reed’s reactor, told me he once attended a conference of research-reactor directors where one lab boss proudly announced that the average age of his operators was just 50. Frantz made his audience’s jaws drop by saying that, at Reed, the average was 20.

A person stood on a gantry in an industrial space and a woman sat in front of a row of computing equipment

Reed’s licensed reactor operators are also unique in that men are a minority. On my visit, Reed students boasted that their reactor operators include more women, and more gender non-conforming people, than at all other research reactors in the US combined. Thanks to Reed’s reactor operators, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) no longer questions anyone who wants to change their names from one gender to another on their licences.

The reactor currently has 34 student operators, plus Ellis and current reactor director Jerry Newhouse . But the operators aren’t just those taking science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) subjects: about half are studying non-STEM subjects entirely. On my visit, I met operators majoring in economics, philosophy and studio art. Newhouse himself has a bachelor’s in history.

Some students come to Reed specifically because they want to be reactor operators. Others learn about the opportunity only after starting their studies or by word of mouth. It’s not a shoo-in though. Prospective operators have to take a year-long licensing class and pass a rigorous test administered by the NRC, which oversees the reactor as strictly as it does any other.

They get paid for their services, too. It’s not much – they earn only a bit more than minimum wage – but being a reactor operator is certainly the coolest job on the Reed campus. A common thread of all the operators I encounter is that they are hooked by the blue glow. “It never gets old,” one tells me.

TRIGA happy

Reed was founded in 1908, and its brick, Tudor-gothic, ivy-covered buildings, surrounded by lawns on one side and a nature reserve and wooded canyon on the other, were modelled on St John’s College, Oxford. The reactor, though, is in a nondescript, single-storey concrete-and-brick garage-like structure next to the psychology building and opposite the chemistry lab. One room houses the pool/reactor, visible from the control room on the other side of a large window. Nearby is a classroom and a radiochemistry lab.

Building the reactor involved a serious trade-off. But Arthur Scott insisted that it was essential to a liberal-arts education

The idea that the college should build its own reactor came from Reed chemist Arthur Scott in the early 1960s ( J. Chem. Ed. 47 612) . His plan was resisted by some staff, who felt the resources of the college – which still does not have an engineering department – were better spent on developing a degree in ethnic studies and supporting students of colour. Building the reactor involved a serious trade-off. But Scott insisted that reactor education was essential to a liberal-arts education. Reed’s trustees approved, and the reactor opened in 1968 at a cost of $321,000.

In terms of spec, it is a non-power “TRIGA” research reactor , designed and manufactured shortly after the Second World War by General Atomics . The core, which sits under 95,000 litres of cooling water, contains about 80 fuel elements in a circular grid array. The elements are made of zirconium hydride and uranium hydride, with the 20% enriched uranium-235 making up 8% of the mass of each element.

According to simple nuclear physics, neutrons of a certain velocity cause uranium-235 nuclei to split into pieces and release more neutrons. The outer, graphite ring that Ellis had pointed out reflects the neutrons back towards the core and slows or “moderates” them sufficiently to cause more uranium-235 nuclei to split, producing more neutrons. And so it goes.

By the standards of national lab facilities, the Reed reactor is a toy. Its 250 kW power is a tiny fraction of what’s found at, say, the Institut Laue–Langevin in France or the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US (60 and 85 MW, respectively). It’s also next to insignificant compared with commercial power reactors that supply electricity to national grids, some of which have outputs of over 1000 MW.

But the Reed reactor is used for real experiments. The ring inside the reflector is a rotating “lazy susan” holder that allows samples – metals, seeds, other materials – to be irradiated. There’s also a thimble – basically a pipe about 8 m long and 3 cm wide – leading into the core, allowing samples to be left for long exposures.

Then there’s the “rabbit” – a pneumatic device for short exposures, which shoots samples in and out of the core to a radiochemistry lab just behind the control room. Reed students are currently developing the thimble pipe to eventually allow a neutron beam to pass through to create another experimental facility at the bridge over the pool.

Portland’s high school, college and university students, as well as some local businesses and agencies, use the reactor for activation analysis . This involves putting water, soil or plant samples into one of the experimental facilities and exposing them to neutrons. Doing so “activates” – creates radioactive isotopes in – some of the samples, and the half-lives of the resulting isotopes help identify the materials.

Activation analysis has many uses, including testing for contaminants and identifying where the material in a sample is from. One Reed student’s project involved activating pottery shards and soil samples taken from the Silk Road in Western China to determine where the pottery was made. Another student got into forensics by irradiating fingernail clippings to see if you can tell which finger a wedding ring was on from the traces of gold in the clippings. (You can.)

One Portland dentist even sent in the material used to fill teeth, curious to know if its content was as billed. When the sample emerged from the pneumatic tube, it set off all the radiation monitors in the radiochemistry lab, alarming the students. Turns out the sample was largely silver, which is highly activating. The activated silver wasn’t hazardous, containing two isotopes with half-lives of 25s and 144s. Still, I’ll exercise greater caution the next time I put my teeth inside a reactor core.

Youngsters and pranksters

Reed College fully supports the reactor, meaning that it does not have to depend on outside funding. Reactor operators do sometimes conduct work for private labs – not for money, but in exchange for providing research opportunities for other students. They have, however, refused projects from companies involved in fracking, and the week before my visit, they turned down a military-defence contractor.

Mural of the tea party from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I find the atmosphere at the reactor to be industrious and serious, as you’d expect from a lab, but mixed with the playfulness and liveliness of college students. One wall of the control room has an Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland themed mural painted by a former art-student operator. It depicts a picnic, dotted with reactor imagery: cheese slices arrayed as a radiation symbol, a stopwatch indicating counts per minute rather than time, and plastic plates coloured uranium-glaze orange.

A big sign in another room outlines safety procedures, and scrawled underneath is the advice: “You look cooler wearing a lab coat anyway.” The reactor’s logo is a griffin – Reed’s mascot – emblazoned over the image of a Bohr atom. For many years operators placed rubber ducks in the reactor’s pool, allowing them to eyeball the water flow; if the ducks were swimming around it meant that the water was circulating. Sadly, one year a new NRC inspector said the ducks had to go. “He was probably right,” Frantz admits. “I should have filled out a 50.59 [an NRC form] .”

Another time a student crafted a mock certificate with the official NRC logo and signatures declaring Reed’s facility “The funnest reactor in the US” and hung the certificate on the wall. It had to be removed after the next NRC inspection. “Learning limits is part of student education,” Newhouse reminds me.

School for scandal

It’s not been entirely plain sailing for the Reed Reactor, especially as the state of Oregon has long resisted reactors. The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant , the state’s only commercial nuclear-power facility, started operation in 1975 and closed in 1992 after some technical issues, and vigorous and ongoing anti-nuclear protests and lawsuits. Yet Reed’s reactor has remained curiously uncontroversial, despite occasional breathless coverage in the local media of minor safety events.

In November 1991, for instance, the reactor was irradiating samples for three projects: a high-school project looking for traces of selenium in sediment; a Master’s thesis at a nearby university looking at geological samples in Oregon’s hot springs; and a PhD project testing air-filter samples. A small amount of gaseous fission products was released, triggering alarms on facility radiation monitors.

The reactor was shut down, but the reason for the release could not be determined. Even after the NRC let the reactor restart a few weeks later, hoping to locate the cause, it could not be found. The agency then allowed the reactor to return to normal operation – and the release never reappeared. The NRC formally labelled the episode an “unusual event.”

Despite being the go-to person for journalists seeking an angry quote, the only danger Lloyd Marbet could point to was the longevity of the Reed reactor

When local TV networks reported the incident, reporters scoured the campus and the surrounding neighbourhood seeking someone – anyone – who was truly concerned. One station contacted Lloyd Marbet , a vehement anti-nuclear activist and a central figure in the campaign to close the Trojan reactor. Despite being the go-to person for journalists seeking an angry quote, the only danger he could point to was the longevity of the Reed reactor. “All components age over time,” he warned, darkly. In fact, the reactor will probably outlive the building.

Upon being told what had happened, Reed students responded by designing and making T-shirts bearing the slogan “UNUSUAL EVENT”. (I tried to find one, but couldn’t trace anyone who keeps three-decade-old T-shirts.) “That probably sums up the cultural place of the reactor on campus,” one student tells me. A 1991 editorial about the event in The Oregonian , the state’s major newspaper, simply announced: “Reed passes the test”.

Later, in 2005, ABC’s Primetime news-magazine show sent a team of journalism graduate students around the US to report on how easy it was “to infiltrate nuclear reactors on college campuses…filled with just the kind of radioactive materials that terrorists want”. When members of the team got to what ABC called “the laid-back campus of Reed College”, they apparently could not find the reactor (who’d have thought it was behind the psychology building?) but did turn up a damning fact: Reed does not have a nuclear engineering department, or even any engineering department.

Scandalized, ABC’s national chief investigative correspondent Brian Roth dropped this bombshell finding on an unsuspecting NRC representative, demanding to know why they allowed a reactor at such a place. “What’s the useful purpose [of a reactor] at Reed?” Roth demanded, in a tone that implied it was like giving dynamite to children.

More than two decades on from the ABC report, I ask operators what they’ve learned from the reactor. “Problem-solving and communication,” says Vee, the maths-physics major who was on duty during the high-school tour I observed. “Of two kinds, scientific and social. You have to figure out how to handle and talk to different sets of people who are sometimes uncooperative on tours. You have to handle questions about meltdowns and terrorism.”

Auden, 19, another operator, says the reactor engenders confidence and good time-management. “The first times you operate you think, ‘Oh my god I’m operating a nuclear reactor!’ but the anxieties wear off and there’s continuous learning,” Auden says. “Also, you are responsible and there’s a lot of things to manage inside and outside the reactor. Time’s a valuable but limited resource. You have to be able to say ‘No’ to things. Set work–life boundaries.”

“Teamwork and trouble-shooting,” adds Meng-Wei, 21, a physics student working on the theory of open quantum systems. “It’s a big team with people of different skills where there may be a level of danger. You have to trust co-workers. You have to be able to challenge someone about safety – even your supervisor – if you feel uncomfortable, and also learn to be challenged.”

Meng-Wei also credits the reactor with helping her to react coolly to mistakes and surprises, and cope with anger and stress. “This is not the sort of thing you learn in an undergraduate class, or even a lab setting,” she says. When Meng-Wei applied last summer for an internship at Fermilab doing dark-matter research, the first thing the interviewer said was “You’re the one who worked at a reactor!” She got the job.

As for Johnny, a 22-year-old philosophy student interested in sustainability and global warming, the reactor is all about “negotiating idealism and practicality”. Johnny tells me that while nuclear-reactor training may not be directly philosophical, it has given him practical experience in making trade-offs between the ideal and the real.

“It’s the kind of choices we have to make to cope with global warming,” he says. “It also gives me a first-hand account of what working in nuclear technology is like.” Johnny’s experience puts him in a position to speak to others about the rigour, precision, care and importance of science, and of nuclear technology.

The critical point

Reed is a utopian bubble. Its reactor is a protected scientific facility in a place where nuclear fear is banished, science education is integrated with the humanities, and students operate a reactor while also reading Homer and Kant, performing Shakespeare and Brecht, and studying race and gender issues. Any pressure to close the reactor would not come from politicians or anti-nuclear activists but would have to come from Reed’s board of trustees.

A large redbrick building with neat lawn and hedges

One factor that makes this possible is that the reactor is small and harmless. I hear Reed students say that it has no more power than a washing machine and generates just enough heat to scramble eggs. That’s an exaggeration, but not by much; while the reactor core is about the size of a large washing machine, it produces about 10 times the heat of a home heating furnace. “They gave it to us because they know we can’t do anything bad with it,” says Ellis.

Another reason for the reactor’s success is that Reed encourages creative thinking, and integrates the reactor into the campus curriculum and culture. Those who operate it must learn a wide range of physics, work in interdisciplinary teams on a complex device, participate in a scientific project, and become familiar with the values of a scientific community. After the 1991 incident, Reed’s president briefly considered closing the reactor, but his office was promptly swamped by students of all majors who said that it had changed their lives.

Molten nuclear waste glass being poured into a mould

A glassy solution to nuclear waste

Reed has an open campus. Its gracious large front lawn is an uninterrupted community space where both students and neighbours walk dogs, play on tennis courts and then wander through the trails in the gorge, where they can see Portland’s only fish ladder for salmon to swim upstream. The reactor itself does not look intimidating – there’s no menacing cooling tower belching steam – but is a pool inside a one-storey building.

Reed is fully transparent about the reactor, which is a great asset in a reputable institution. The college gives about 100 tours a year. Visitors are taken to the edge of the pool – whose water is 10,000 times purer than drinking water – and see the core and the unforgettable blue glow. That glow should be a universal part of undergraduate education. If anything’s scandalous about Reed’s reactor, it’s that more liberal-arts colleges and universities don’t have one.

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MU Professor Leads Largest University Research Reactor in US

When thinking about the effects of radioactive exposure, most people’s minds may wander to nuclear power plant meltdowns or spider bites, but for Dr. David Robertson, Executive Director of the University of Missouri (MU) Research Reactor, the impact ranges from providing a better understanding of ancient cultures to giving cancer patients more time with their loved ones.

In addition to the role with MURR, Robertson is also a professor of chemistry specializing in radiochemistry. He uses radioactive materials to either study the effects of radiation on known items or to use these materials to provide an enhanced way of observing things in chemistry not ordinarily seen. Over the last decade, MURR has developed the processes and infrastructure to provide multiple radioisotopes for diagnosing and treating disease. These isotopes include the key ingredients used to treat thyroid cancer, the pain of metastatic bone cancer, a treatment for inoperable liver cancer, and a treatment for neuroendocrine tumors of the midgut. “Each and every week MURR is the sole domestic provider of these lifesaving radioisotopes.” Robertson said.

Another application that stems from the MURR facility is archaeometry, where the reactor is used to analyze ancient materials. This helps researchers understand how ancient people sourced their materials to create tools or ceramics. “Recently, Dr. Brandi MacDonald, a research professor at MURR, published an article on the oldest ochre mine in the Americas. As part of the investigation, a team had to dive through a cave in Mexico. Just to give a feel for the breadth of what is possible,” Robertson said.

In addition to teamwork and making this kind of practical, real-world impact, Robertson found his calling to be a teacher early and takes great pleasure in getting students engaged in the field. “In my junior year at MU, there was a need for teaching assistants in the Department of Chemistry. I did that for 3 weeks and then called my parents and told them that I had found what I wanted to do,” Robertson said.

Robertson is proud of the contributions of the MURR program for what it is doing and for what it will do. MURR worked closely with Advanced Accelerator Applications, a Novartis Company, to bring a lutetium-177-based therapy called Lutathera to market for treating neuroendocrine tumors. Following the success of this treatment, the collaboration is now focused on using the same isotope to treat metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The US Food and Drug Administration recently granted breakthrough therapy designation for this promising radioligand therapy. “We are investing in the Radiopharmaceutical Research Program, which will be part of the NextGen Precision Health initiative. We would like to see further development of the next generation of radioactive drugs right here at MU,” Robertson said.

Even though the reactor is going strong and contributing to the region and the country every day, there is an acknowledgment and awareness that the reactor itself is over fifty years old. “An ideal option would be to build a new 20-megawatt research reactor on Discovery Ridge in Columbia, MO. Our mission is to keep MURR running safely and reliably, as downtime this week has a national downstream effect on drug production for patients next week. The reactor is 54 years old, and we need to start the conversation of what’s next,” Robertson said. The MURR facility has had its operational license extended through 2037.

Robertson completed his undergrad at MU and would have been on the track to become a doctor without the exposure as a teaching assistant. “I just loved teaching. I love the opportunity to be in a classroom and guide people to understanding. I figured I would take some education courses and go teach science at a high school. But when faculty from the Department of Chemistry at MU heard that, they literally stopped me in the hallway and read me the riot act. They knew my record and told me I needed to go on and get my PhD and pursue an academic career,” Robertson said. Beyond his current roles, he likes to extend his learning to literature and history and work on his garden and acreage, reintroducing native Missouri trees and plants.

The range of benefits from nuclear science and radiochemistry is impressive and that is only with what is currently known. Using radioactive materials to view and treat diseases is only part of the equation. What Robertson wants to ensure is that the MURR, Missouri and the region can continue to contribute to this sector and lead the discovery in healthcare.

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June 28, 2024

Purdue leading $6M DOE-sponsored research for small modular reactor and advanced reactor technologies

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University’s longstanding leadership in nuclear energy technologies research has resulted in a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to lead a consortium that will revitalize nuclear research facilities and expand university-led research for small modular reactor (SMR) and advanced reactor (AR) technologies. The group consists of five universities and colleges and two national labs, which will work to upgrade research facilities, increase their capabilities and develop programs to educate the future nuclear energy workforce.

Purdue’s Seungjin Kim, the Capt. James F. McCarthy, Jr. and Cheryl E. McCarthy Head of the School of Nuclear Engineering, will lead the collaborative work with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and North Carolina State University. The project’s goal is to revitalize four existing nuclear reactor research facilities and expand research and educational programs.

The project will establish new cyber-physical capabilities that enable a wide range of SMR and AR technologies. The center will promote sharing equipment and instrumentation by universities, national labs, industry partners and other institutions for multidisciplinary research and demonstration.

Read more about Purdue's research into nuclear energy technologies here.

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Writer/Media contact: Amy Raley, [email protected]

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New Probe to Uncover Mechanisms Key to Fusion Reactor Walls - Nuclear Engineering - Purdue University

New Probe to Uncover Mechanisms Key to Fusion Reactor Walls

Dr. Jean Paul Allain and students in laboratory

A new facility developed by nuclear engineers at Purdue University will be hitched to an experimental fusion reactor at Princeton University to learn precisely what happens when extremely hot plasmas touch and interact with the inner surface of the reactor.

The work is aimed at understanding plasma-wall interactions to help develop coatings or materials capable of withstanding the grueling conditions inside the fusion reactors, known as tokamaks. The machines house a magnetic field to confine a donut-shaped plasma of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.

Fusion powers the stars and could lead to a limitless supply of clean energy. A fusion power plant would produce 10 times more energy than a conventional nuclear fission reactor, and because the deuterium fuel is contained in seawater, a fusion reactor's fuel supply would be virtually inexhaustible.

"One of the biggest challenges for thermonuclear magnetic fusion is understanding how plasma in the fusion reactor modifies the inner wall," said Jean Paul Allain, an associate professor of nuclear engineering. "This is a big unknown because now we can't see what happens in real time to the wall surfaces."

Purdue is working with researchers in the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which operates the nation's largest spherical tokamak reactor, known as the National Spherical Torus Experiment. This particular machine is ideal for materials testing.

The materials analysis particle probe, or MAPP, will be connected to the underside of the tokamak. Our students custom designed each aspect of the probe assembly to be small enough to fit under the reactor.

"This was an engineering feat, to fit a suite of instruments in a package only a few feet tall," Allain said. "It's a miniature materials characterization facility that will allow for a direct correlation between the plasma behavior and its interaction with an evolving wall material surface."

A major challenge in finding the right coatings to line fusion reactors is that the material changes due to extreme conditions inside the reactors, where temperatures reach millions of degrees. Scientists have historically used "wall conditioning," or applying thin films of materials to induce changes to plasma behavior.

"But it's been primarily an Edisonian approach," Allain said. "We don't know what mechanisms are primarily at work, and we need to if we are going to perfect fusion as an energy technology."

However, observing the surface interactions is daunting because of the extreme conditions inside the reactor vessel.

The probe will help researchers learn how the coating materials evolve under plasma conditions and how the interaction correlates with changes in the plasma itself. Data from the instrument will help researchers develop innovative materials for the reactor vessel lining.

"Currently we don't have the materials needed to sustain these large plasma and thermal fluxes," he said. "Some completely break down and melt. We need to understand how to operate and control the wall itself and the plasma together as they interact."

Researchers now analyze the effects of plasma on surface materials by removing test specimens from the lining after a year of running the reactor. Allain's group has worked with researchers at Purdue's Birck Nanotechnology Center to analyze tiles used in the Princeton tokamak. This approach shows only the cumulative results of hundreds of experiments, whereas researchers would prefer see the fine details associated with individual experiments.

"That's what this new probe can do," he said. "It's a new type of surface-analysis diagnostic system designed to be integrated in a tokamak."

The probe will allow scientists to study how specific materials interact with the plasma and yield data within minutes after completing an experiment. Data from the analyses will be used to validate computational models and guide design of new materials.

"The device is completely remote controlled, in principle from anywhere in the world," Allain said.

Researchers might be able to access the instrument using nanoHUB.com, based at Purdue.

"We will have a remote control GUI software, and people will be able to use it online, working with a partner at Princeton," Allain said. “-- Therefore someone from overseas will have the opportunity to use MAPP without leaving their home institution.” Allain added.

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the DOE's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.

The lead graduate student in the project is Bryan Heim, who has worked with Prof. Allain since he was a junior in undergraduate research. Additional students involved in the work are nuclear engineering students: Zhangcan Yang (Ph.D. student), Chase Taylor, (Ph.D. student), senior Sean Gonderman, junior Miguel Gonzalez, senior in electrical engineering Sami Ortoleva and electrical engineering technology senior Eric Collins.

Heim and Gonderman will spend six weeks at Princeton this summer to set up the instrument. Details of the MAPP system and its capabilities were recently presented at the 24th Symposium on Fusion Engineering held in Chicago, Illinois and co-located with the 38th International Conference on Plasma Science chaired by Purdue’s School of Nuclear Engineering Head, Prof. Ahmed Hassanein. The work will be published in a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science next year. Writer: Emil Venere, 765-494-4709, [email protected] Source: Jean Paul Allain, 765 496-9718, [email protected] Related website: Jean Paul Allain: https://engineering.purdue.edu/NE/People/ptProfile?id=34246

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US university builds facility for first-of-a-kind research reactor

18 September 2023

The Gayle and Max Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center (SERC) at Abilene Christian University (ACU) in Texas will host the Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory (NEXT Lab) and a first-of-a-kind advanced reactor facility.

Cutting the ribbon at the new facility are (L-R): Rusty Towell, director of NEXT Lab; ACU President Phil Schubert; Max Dillard; April Anthony, chair of ACU's Board of Trustees; Natura Resources President and founder Doug Robison; and Weldon Hurt, mayor of Abilene (Image: ACU)

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing ACU's August 2022 application to construct a 1 MW (thermal), low-power molten salt research reactor, also known as MSRR, at the NEXT Lab facility. The reactor is being designed by Texas-based Natura Resources and the effort is being supported by the Natura Resources Research Alliance of ACU, Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, and The University of Texas at Austin, supported by USD30.5 million in sponsored research agreements. A detailed design engineering contract has been awarded to Zachry Nuclear Engineering, part of Zachry Group.

Natura Resources said it is seeking to deploy its first molten salt reactor system in the new facility by 2026, and then to deploy larger systems of the factory-build modular reactors for commercial operations in the early 2030s.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Hardy transistor material could be game-changer for nuclear reactor safety monitoring

Man in a blue polo is standing over blue water

The safety and efficiency of a large, complex nuclear reactor can be enhanced by hardware as simple as a tiny sensor that monitors a cooling system. That’s why researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working to make those basic sensors more accurate by pairing them with electronics that can withstand the intense radiation inside a reactor.

The ORNL research team recently met with unexpectedly high success using a gallium nitride semiconductor for sensor electronics. A transistor made with the material maintained operations near the core of a nuclear reactor operated by research partner The Ohio State University.

Gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor, had previously been tested against the ionizing radiation encountered when rockets hurtle through space. Devices with wide-bandgap semiconductors can operate at much higher frequencies, temperatures and irradiation rates. But gallium nitride had not faced the even more intense radiation of neutron bombardment. “We are showing it is great for this neutron environment,” said lead researcher Kyle Reed, a member of the Sensors and Electronics group at ORNL.

That could offer a big boost for equipment monitoring in nuclear facilities. The information gathered by sensors provides early warnings about wear and tear on equipment, allowing timely maintenance to avoid broader equipment failures that cause reactor downtime. Currently, this sensing data is processed from a distance, through yards of cable connected to electronics with silicon-based transistors.

A man and a woman are looking at a computer, both dressed in blue

“Our work makes measuring the conditions inside an operating nuclear reactor more robust and accurate,” Reed said. “When you have lengthy cables, you end up with a lot of noise, which can interfere with the accuracy of the sensor information. By placing electronics closer to a sensor, you increase its accuracy and precision.” To meet that goal, scientists need to develop electronics that can better tolerate radiation.

Researchers irradiated gallium nitride transistors for three days at temperatures up to 125 degrees Celsius close to the core of The Ohio State University Research Reactor. “We fully expected to kill the transistors on the third day, and they survived,” Reed said. The team pushed the transistors all the way to the reactor’s safety threshold: Seven hours at 90% power.

The gallium nitride transistors were able to handle at least 100 times higher accumulated dose of radiation than a standard silicon device, said researcher Dianne Ezell, leader of ORNL’s Nuclear and Extreme Environment Measurements group and a member of the transistor research team.

She said the transistor material needs to be capable of surviving at least five years, the normal maintenance window, in the pool of a nuclear reactor. After the research team exposed the gallium nitride device to days of much higher radiation levels within the core itself, they concluded that the transistors would exceed that requirement.

This is an important technical advance as attention turns from the large-scale existing fleet of nuclear energy plants to microreactors that could generate from tens to hundreds of megawatts of power. Although these novel reactor designs are still in the development and licensing stage, their potential portability could allow them to be deployed on the back of a truck to a military or disaster zone.

Advanced reactors are being designed to operate at higher temperatures using different forms of fuel. Because microreactors will be so compact, all the operating components, including the sensors, will have to be able to function in the radiation field, Ezell said. Gallium nitride transistors could be the key.

Ohio State researchers built devices of different designs and sizes to meet specifications set by ORNL, and then the team compared their responses to radiation, finding that larger devices seemed less susceptible to radiation damage. Ohio State is now developing computer models to project how various circuit designs will perform under different temperatures and radiation levels.

A wire-bonded die consisting of over 20 gallium nitride high-electron mobility transistors, seen here under a microscope

Reed said the radiation testing at Ohio State showed that heat seemed to be more harmful to the gallium nitride than radiation. So, the research team wants to measure how gallium nitride reacts to heat alone. “Since the ultimate goal is to design circuits with these materials, once we understand the temperature and radiation effects, we can compensate for them in the circuit design,” Reed said.

Better nuclear monitoring means increased safety and reduced operating costs, Ezell noted. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars are lost every day a reactor is shut down,” she said. “If we’re going to make nuclear economically competitive with other energy industries, we’ve got to keep our costs low.” Plus, reducing the frequency of maintenance reduces human safety risks. “You’re able to avoid putting people in harsh radiation environments or handling radioactive material as often,” Ezell added.

Although gallium nitride has been commercially available for around a decade, it’s not widely used, Reed said. “We’re opening up different side avenues for using gallium nitride, so we can start to create a more reasonable market demand for investment, research and workforce development for subclasses of electronics beyond consumer-grade,” Reed said.

In the long run, researchers would like to demonstrate that gallium nitride circuits could be used to transmit data from sensors wirelessly. The material is already used for devices that support radio frequency applications, like cell phones, and for power electronics.

ORNL researchers, staff and interns including Nance Ericson, Brett Witherspoon, Craig Gray, Emma Brown, Adam Buchalter, Caleb Damron and former intern Kevin Deng also contributed to the project.

The research project was funded by the Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation program, and the irradiation was performed as part of a Rapid Turnaround Experiment funded by the Nuclear Science User Facilities program. Both programs are part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science .

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MU Research Reactor

University of missouri.

Pioneering progress in cancer treatments

From its research reactor to revolutionary therapies, Mizzou’s innovations are shaping the future of precision medicine.

Contact: Uriah Orland, [email protected] , 573-884-5139

Bringing a new medicine to market can be a long journey, but the potential to save lives makes it worthwhile.

Twenty years ago, the University of Missouri helped research and develop a little-known radioisotope called lutetium-177 (Lu-177). That innovation laid the foundation for clinical trials and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for a new class of drugs known as radiopharmaceuticals, resulting in thousands of successful cancer treatments.

More than 2,000 clinical trials for cancer treatments using radioisotopes like Lu-177 are now underway. In this burgeoning field, Mizzou is the essential first stop — because the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) is the only supplier in the United States creating the part of these drugs that destroys cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.

“Our research reactor has been at the forefront of the development and production of radioisotopes that are saving lives every day,” said Matt Sanford, MURR’s executive director. “MURR’s innovative design and year-round operating cycle allow us to reliably produce the active pharmaceutical ingredients in multiple FDA-approved drugs. What we produce today has a direct impact on the lives and well-being of patients around the world.”

Even though only two approved radiotherapies for cancer are on the market today, these treatment possibilities represent one of the fastest-growing fields in oncology research and testing.

What is a radiopharmaceutical?

Radiopharmaceuticals use highly targeted radiation to treat or diagnose a disease. To develop these therapies, a radioactive isotope, such as those produced at MURR, is linked to a targeting molecule that seeks out certain cellular features on a tumor. The isotope, linker and targeting molecule will form a radiopharmaceutical.

“The advancement of radiopharmaceuticals has created one of the most effective forms of precision medicine to date,” said Dylan Stoy, director of Therapeutic Strategy at PSI, a CRO with over a decade of experience working with these therapies. “With applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, or ideal theranostic pairings, radiopharmaceuticals give patients and providers a great option in an ever-growing list of cellular targets and indications — and I think we are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg.”

Leading-edge science and medicine meet when the radiopharmaceutical is administered to the body and sticks to cancer cells. The radioisotopes release energy that acts as a wrecking ball to cancer cells, eventually destroying them while leaving healthy cells unaffected, unlike the radiation therapies traditionally used in cancer treatment. As a result of this advanced treatment, used either on its own or in combination with existing therapies, patients typically face fewer side effects and have greater opportunities to resume a vibrant and healthy life.

A graphic showing a radiopharmaceutical with three parts--a radioactive compound, a linker, and a targeting molecule.

Making radioisotopes

The singular design, power and operating schedule of MURR allow the irradiation of stable isotopes to create the desired active pharmaceutical ingredient for treatments.

The center of the reactor has the highest concentration of neutrons, and these neutrons change less than one percent of a sample of ytterbium-176 to ytterbium-177 (Yb-177). Through radioactive decay, Yb-177 becomes Lu-177 in a matter of hours. A chemical process is then carried out under the FDA’s good manufacturing practices (GMP) to separate the lutetium from the ytterbium.

After the GMP process is complete, the active pharmaceutical ingredient — Lu-177 — is shipped to a pharmaceutical company for inclusion in its drug. With a half-life of 6.6 days, the entire process is designed to ensure radioisotopes produced this week will be administered to patients next week.

The long road of clinical research

Researchers join a radioisotope such as Lu-177 with two other components: a targeting molecule, which will guide the radioisotope to a specific cancer cell, and a linker, which connects the two. Each combination is tested to determine its viability. Once proven in the lab, the treatment is ready for clinical trials.

Although the timeline is lengthy and the results are not guaranteed, research and clinical trials to identify new radiopharmaceuticals are ongoing. These studies require highly specialized expertise and face many challenges — something Stoy and PSI know well. Today, PSI manages 50% of the industry’s pivotal radiopharmaceutical studies, which generate the data for drug approvals by regulatory authorities around the world.

“As the space continues to grow, it will be important to work closely with regulators across the globe to ensure reasonable access and availability,” Stoy said. “Although mapping for these products has improved significantly throughout the course of development, there are still challenges. In addition, many regulatory authorities, including the European Medicines Agency and FDA, are now working with groups dedicated to ensuring the safety of these treatments, meaning that an in-depth understanding of each specific country’s requirements is essential.”

This can be a challenge for large global studies like those PSI runs, as can the complexities of transporting radioactive materials such as Lu-177 with very short half-lives across borders in time to reach patients. Only a few nuclear pharmacies can provide the needed expertise and support for such trials.

In such cases, it’s often passionate individuals who drive this important research forward. PSI has built strong relationships around the world with more than 1,000 clinical research sites with experienced nuclear medicine teams. It has even created specialized roles to help overcome common delays during the clinical trial process. Reliable sources of manufacturing, such as MURR, will be the keystone to scalability as the field continues to progress.

Looking to the future

The success of drugs like Lutathera® and Pluvicto® has opened the door for new treatments, and researchers and pharmaceutical companies are looking at different radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals that can be used to treat and diagnose other types of cancer as well as diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders. Potential isotopes include terbium-161, actinium-225, lead-212, among others.

The demand for radioisotopes is rapidly increasing, and the University of Missouri is meeting the challenge. The university plans to build a new, larger, state-of-the-art reactor — NextGen MURR — which will expand the university’s capacity to produce medical isotopes that will be used in advanced cancer medicines for decades to come.

Co-authors on this article are Jared Hager and Dylan Stoy with PSI-CRO.

What is nuclear energy and how does it work?

A graphic showing silhouettes of four teenagers standing on either side of a nuclear power plant with steam rising from it.

In June, the Coalition released the locations and timelines of proposed nuclear power plant sites, as part of its telegraphed stance on moving Australia towards nuclear as an energy source.

The debate quickly moved to costings, gigawatts and energy grids . But if this is all new to you, it can be hard to find a reputable source for the most basic of facts.

We break down a couple of your most commonly asked questions on nuclear energy, with the help of three experts.

What is nuclear energy?

In a nutshell, nuclear power plants create electricity by producing steam that's used to power a turbine .

"This is the same process that's used in a coal-fired power station, and the process of spinning a turbine is exactly the same as when you look at a wind turbine," said Bjorn Sturmberg, a senior research fellow at Australian National University.

"If you think of a mouse on a cartoon hamster wheel, you're just spinning something, and that gives you electricity."

While the process of using steam to spin turbines is the same as coal- or gas-fired power station, the heat source is different, said Edward Obbard, director of the University of New South Wales's Nuclear Innovation Centre.

" The heat to drive a nuclear power station comes from breaking up uranium atoms in the core of the reactor … then that hot nuclear fuel is used to boil water, like in a giant kettle," he said.

Uranium is a super-dense substance, and Dr Sturmberg said that makes it easy to split apart.

"That large atom is like a really blown-up balloon, you only need to give it a really little prick to burst that balloon into smaller pieces."

The process of breaking apart atoms to create energy is called nuclear fission. It's different from nuclear fusion, which is when two smaller atoms are smashed together to create a bigger atom.

"This is what happens in the sun, and in all other stars, and is what how they produce light. Humans have tried to harness the process [of nuclear fusion] … to create electricity. But so far, we've not had success," Dr Sturmberg said.

How many countries use nuclear energy?

There are 32 countries with operational nuclear reactors , with another 30 countries considering or starting their industries.

A chart showing nuclear power plants frequently finish building years later than expected.

The World Nuclear Association found nuclear energy accounted for about 10 per cent of the global energy mix , but as international nuclear energy lawyer Helen Cook said, some countries rely on nuclear more heavily.

"France today generates about 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear, and historically produced even more, up to about 85 per cent," said Ms Cook, who is also a board member of tech company Silex.

"The United States has the world's largest fleet, with 94 operating reactors."

What's a small modular reactor?

Edward Obbard acknowledged there's a lot of confusion around small-scale and large-scale reactors.

"The whole small modular reactor [SMR] thing has been talked up until we almost think that there are different kinds of technology. They're not; they're just small ," he said.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a SMR has a power capacity of 300 megawatts, which is about a third of a traditional-capacity reactor.

Unlike larger plants, which need a lot of water to cool, SMRs are small enough to cool themselves .

The idea with SMRs is that their size means they're faster and more cost-effective to build , Dr Obbard said.

"They're a kind of business model more than a new technology."

The drawback is that they don't actually create a whole lot of energy , Dr Obbard said.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation announced the funding of one of the biggest batteries in the world, to be built in Victoria, which will store 300 megawatts of energy.

It'll cost $160 million, a fraction of the cost of building a new nuclear power station.

Why is nuclear energy so expensive?

Most of the cost of nuclear energy comes from building a plant in the first place .

Dr Obbard said much of that cost is associated with safety measures around cooling down a reactor or stopping operations in an emergency .

"That makes the whole power station huge and expensive, because you need all these safety systems and backup generators and emergency water supplies," he said.

"Nuclear is just so much more expensive to build up front, and then does have ongoing costs in terms of it's a really high tech, really high risk kind of facility to operate," Dr Sturmberg said.

"And you still need a fuel source of enriched uranium to power, and then you've got to deal with the waste," he added.

In a recent report , national science agency the CSIRO, estimated nuclear power to be at least 50 per cent more expensive than wind and solar power backed by batteries, and estimated it would cost at least $8.5 billion to build one large-scale reactor.

However, reactors can have a long lifespan. The average age of operational reactors in the US is 42 years, with the oldest clocking in at 55 years.

By comparison, wind turbines last between 20 and 30 years.

How much waste does nuclear power produce?

In short, not much .

"If you were to use nuclear energy for your entire life, so one person for his or her entire life, the high-level waste generated would fit inside a can of Coke," Helen Cook said.

She added that much of the waste can be reused in future nuclear projects.

According to the World Nuclear Association , about 90 per cent of low-level waste with very small amounts of radiation, can be reused. Around three per cent of high-level waste with big amounts of radiation can be reused.

Associate professor Edward Obbard acknowledged that radioactive waste was " very hazardous ", but that the "hazard is controlled through engineering to be safe".

"You still have to worry about it because you create that stuff, and so you have to make sure that there are people and organisations and expertise around to look after it."

Bjorn Sturmberg said it was important to remember that radioactive waste is dangerous to humans and animals , and remains so for a very long time .

"The critical thing about these radioactive materials is that they're going to stay radioactive for thousands of years. And humans have never really undertaken the task of managing such dangerous material over thousands of years," he said.

Is nuclear power a 'green' technology?

While the process is the same in a nuclear reactor and a coal-fired power plant (creating steam from heating water), the outcome is quite different.

Creating nuclear energy produces zero emissions.

"Coal-fired power plants emit harmful carbon dioxide and other harmful substances into the air while they are producing electricity. Whereas … nuclear energy and its operating phase produces none of that harmful stuff," lawyer Helen Cook said.

Nuclear powe r creates as many emissions as wind turbines , and fewer than solar panels .

Both coal and nuclear require digging up natural substances but the quantities required differ significantly.

A research paper by the New South Wales Parliamentary Library Service found the energy released by 1 kilogram of uranium was the same as burning 22,000 kilograms of coal.

Four nuclear power station chimneys emit steam

But then there's the question of water.

Dr Obbard said nuclear and coal power plants used roughly the same amount of water .

"Coal uses a hell of a lot of water to dig up the coal as well. If we switch our coal to nuclear power stations, we'll use a lot less water," he said.

Research by Stanford University found American nuclear reactors used about 480,000 Olympic pools' worth of water in 2015 alone.

The paper concluded nuclear power used much more water than solar , a point Bjorn Sturmberg is keen to make too.

"Renewables don't do any heating of water, and therefore they don't need a reservoir of water, they don't consume lots of water," he said.

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The ongoing effort to convert the world’s research reactors

The 40-year effort to make research reactors safer and more secure has led to the conversion of 71 reactors worldwide from HEU fuel to LEU.

The Ghana Research Reactor-1, located in Accra, Ghana, was converted from HEU fuel to LEU in 2017. Photo: Argonne National Laboratory

In late 2018, Nigeria’s sole operating nuclear research reactor, NIRR-1, switched to a safer uranium fuel. Coming just 18 months on the heels of a celebrated conversion in Ghana, the NIRR-1 reboot passed without much fanfare. However, the switch marked an important global milestone: NIRR-1 was the last of Africa’s 11 operating research reactors to run on high-enriched uranium fuel.

The 40-year effort to make research reactors safer and more secure by replacing HEU fuel with low-enriched uranium is marked by a succession of quiet but immeasurably significant milestones like these. Before Africa, a team of engineers from many organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, concluded its conversion work in South America and Australia. Worldwide, 71 reactors in nearly 40 countries have undergone conversions to LEU, defined as less than 20 percent uranium-235. Another 31 research reactors have been permanently shut down.

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ANS Annual Conference: Nuclear waste

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ANS Annual Conference: Nonproliferation considerations about HALEU enrichment

The technical session “HALEU and Nonproliferation” on Tuesday at the American Nuclear Society Annual Conference focused on why increased nuclear fuel enrichment comes with increased...

ANS Annual Conference opening plenary: Full speed ahead

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Labs & Research Groups

Ners is home to an expansive network of laboratories, centers, institutes, and research groups., our extensive research infrastructure provides both undergraduate and graduate students with unparalleled opportunities for hands-on learning and cutting-edge research. .

We are proud to host over 20 state-of-the-art laboratories, with several facilities rivaling those found at national laboratories. Explore the full catalog of NERS laboratories, centers, institutes, and research groups below, organized by their primary research focus.

Classes involving the labs include NERS 315, NERS 425, NERS 499, NERS 515, NERS 535, NERS 575, NERS 586, NERS 990, NERS 995, and independent investigations.

Fission Systems & Radiation Transport

Artificial Intelligence and Multiphysics Simulations (AIMS) Laboratory Prof. Majdi Radaideh (RAD) The AIMS Lab focuses on the intersection between nuclear reactor design, multiphysics modeling and simulation, advanced computational methods, and machine learning algorithms to drive advanced reactor research and improve the sustainability of the current reactor fleet.

Experimental and Computational Multiphase Flow Laboratory (ECMF) Prof. Annalisa Manera The lab was established in 2013 with the purpose of advancing and understanding thermal-hydraulics and fluid-dynamics phenomena of relevance for nuclear applications. In the ECMF lab, we perform fluid-dynamic experiments using in-house advanced state-of-the-art high-resolution experimental techniques such as wire-mesh sensors and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) combined with novel refractive-index matching techniques. Experimental facilities in the lab are used to investigate the propagation of stratified fronts, mixing in plena, and turbulence-induced thermal fatigue in isolated branch lines. The highly-resolved (in time and space) experimental data are used to establish a database for the validation and further development of Computational Fluid Dynamics models.

High-Resolution TH Imaging Laboratory Prof. Annalisa Manera In the high-resolution TH imaging laboratory, we develop and apply measurement techniques for quantitative imaging of single-phase and multiphase flows in complex geometries and high-pressure systems. The latest developments include an in-house, high-resolution gamma tomography system, and a high-speed X-ray radiography system. Additional high-resolution instrumentation employed in the lab includes wire-mesh sensors and fiber optic probes. The high-resolution experiments are being performed two investigate two-phase flows in fuel bundles, helical coils and for post-CHF two-phase flow regimes at high pressure/temperature. Additional experiments include setups to investigate the behavior of heat pipes for micro-reactors applications and hydrogen migration in nuclear fuel cladding materials.

Nuclear Plant Simulation Laboratory (NPSL) Prof. John Lee and Prof. Brendan Kochunas The Nuclear Plant Simulator Laboratory was recently established with the installation of the Generic Pressurized Water Reactor Simulator. This simulator represents the entire instrumentation and control (I&C) system of a three-loop Westinghouse PWR plant with all its gauges, knobs, recorders, and control systems. The Simulator satisfies the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements for licensed reactor operator training and is being modified to represent the I&C system of the six-unit NuScale SMR plant under development. The NPSL also includes an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) model of Michigan’s Ford Nuclear Reactor.

Nuclear Reactor Analysis and Methods (NuRAM) Group Prof. Thomas Downar and Prof. Brendan Kochunas There are two main areas of research for the NuRAM group. First, Prof. Downar, with several students, has developed and maintained the PARCS Nodal Simulator since 1996. PARCS is the primary neutronics auditing tool use by the US Nuclear Regulator Commission for reactor licensing and evaluation. More information can be found on the PARCS page. The second area of research is centered around MPACT within the CASL program. MPACT is an advanced, full core, 3D, transport solver. Originally developed by Prof. Kochunas for PWR analysis. MPACT is developed by several students and staff between the University of Michigan and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Nuclear Reactor Design and Simulation Laboratory (NRDSL) Prof. Won Sik Yang NRDSL aims to develop advanced nuclear reactor and associated fuel cycle concepts and core design and fuel cycle analysis methods by integrating the advances in reactor physics, thermal-hydraulics, materials, and computing technologies.

Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory Prof. Xiaodong Sun The Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory carries out separate-effect and integral-effects tests in reactor thermal hydraulics to support the improvement of light water reactors (LWRs) and the development of advanced non-LWR reactors, including molten salt reactors and high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. It has established a number of high-temperature test facilities, including molten salt and helium test facilities.

Materials & Radiation Effects

Computational Nuclear Materials Group Prof. Fei Gao The focus of our research involves multi-scale computer simulations of material performance under extreme conditions, including high temperature, high pressure, and high irradiation fields. aThe major focus is to combine experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches to fundamentally understanding-solid interactions, radiation effects in ceramics and reactor materials, interfacial and nanostructure evolution of semiconductors, radiation detector materials, and development and application of multi-scale computer simulation for materials modeling. The current research consists of four thrust areas:1) materials performance and microstructural evolution of nuclear fuels, cladding materials, and structural materials in fission and fusion reactor environments, 2) multi-scale computer simulations of nanoscale defect processes, ion-solid interaction, electron-solid interaction, mechanical and electronic properties of nanostructures in ceramics and waste forms, 3) atomic-level simulations of defect properties, doping effects, thermal, mechanical and electronic properties of one-dimensional nanostructures in wide bandgap semiconductors (GaN, SiC, GaAs …), and 4) large-scale Monte Carlo method to accurately study electron-hole pair production, specifically their spatial distribution and light yield in semiconductors and scintillators.

High-Temperature Corrosion Laboratory (HTCL) Prof. Stephen Raiman The High-Temperature Corrosion Laboratory gives researchers the ability to conduct corrosion, stress corrosion cracking, and hydrogen embrittlement tests of non-irradiated materials in high-temperature aqueous environments and, in particular, simulated light-water reactor environments. The corrosion laboratory has unique facilities for conducting both high and low-temperature corrosion, stress corrosion cracking (SCC), electrochemical testing, and mechanical testing. HTCL is a Nuclear Science User Facility .

Irradiated Materials Testing Complex (IMTL) Prof. Stephen Raiman At the Irradiated Materials Testing Complex, researchers can conduct high-temperature corrosion and stress corrosion cracking of neutron-irradiated materials to understand the effects of irradiation on corrosion and cracking. Equipment in the lab includes five high-temperature autoclaves, each with a circulating water loop, load frame, and servo motor for conducting constant extension rate tensile (CERT) and crack growth rate (CGR) tests in subcritical or supercritical water up to 600°C. Hot cells are available for experiments with radioactive materials taken from test reactors and commercial reactors. IMTL is a Nuclear Science User Facility .

Materials in High Temperatures and Extreme Environments (MiHTEE) Laboratory Prof. Stephen Raiman The MiHTEE Lab supports innovative nuclear technologies by recreating extreme environments and developing new materials that can withstand those extremes. By pushing materials to their limits, the MiHTEE seeks to understand the links between material properties and behavior and enable innovation to reach new frontiers in clean energy technology.

Materials Preparation Laboratory Prof. Lu-Min Wang The Materials Preparation Laboratory provides facilities for the preparation and characterization of materials for materials research studies. The lab houses a grinding and polishing table for metallographic sample preparation, a tube furnace for annealing and heat treating, an electropolishing and etching system, and a jet-electropolisher for making TEM disc samples.

Metastable Materials Laboratory Prof. Michael Atzmon In the Metastable Materials Laboratory, studies of the kinetics and thermodynamics of nanocrystalline and amorphous materials are conducted. The lab is equipped with facilities for x-ray diffraction, calorimetry, mechanical alloying, and annealing of samples. This laboratory is used in the senior laboratory course NERS 425, Applications of Radiation.

Michigan Center for Microstructure Characterization Prof. Gary Was (MC)2 houses state-of-the-art equipment, including aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes, dual-beam focused ion beam/scanning electron microscopes, an x-ray photoelectron spectrometer, a tribo-indenter, an atomic force microscope, and an atom probe tomography instrument. A few of the instruments contained at the laboratory include: Tescan MIRA3 FEG SEM, Tescan RISE SEM, FEI Quanta 3D e-SEM/FIB, FEI Nova 200 Nanolab SEM/FIB, and more.

Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory Prof. Kevin Field The Michigan Ion Beam Laboratory for Surface Modification and Analysis (MIBL) was established for the purpose of advancing our understanding of ion-solid interactions by providing up-to-date equipment with unique and extensive facilities to support research at the cutting edge of science. The lab houses a 1.7 MV tandem ion accelerator, a 400 kV ion implanter, and an ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD) system. This laboratory is used in the senior laboratory course NERS 425, Applications of Radiation. MIBL is a Nuclear Science User Facility .

Nuclear Oriented Materials & Examination (NOME) Group Prof. Kevin Field Our research focuses on three broad areas: (i) advanced manufacturing and alloy development: development of novel processing routes and compositions to obtain high-performance alloys for nuclear energy applications, (ii) radiation effects and characterization: examination of the materials changes induced through radiation using advanced characterization techniques, and (iii) emerging technologies: rapid exploration of disruptive technologies including data analytics for nuclear energy applications.

Radiation Effects and Nanomaterials Laboratory Prof. Lu-Min Wang The Radiation Effects and Nanomaterials Laboratory is for the preparation and analysis of materials for the study of radiation effects and nanoscience/technology. The laboratory facilities include a Regarku Miniflex x-ray diffractometer (XRD), a high-temperature furnace, a Gatan precision ion polishing (PIPS) workstation, an ultramicrotomy workstation, a carbon coater, and other standard equipment for TEM sample preparation.

Z Lab Prof. Yang Zhang (YZ) The Z Lab’s research can be summarized into two words: Matter and Machine. On the Matter side, the lab studies far-from-equilibrium physics. They synergistically combine and push the boundaries of statistical and stochastic thermodynamic theories, accelerated molecular simulations, understandable AI/ML/DS methods, and neutron scattering experiments, with the goal of significantly extending our understanding of a wide range of long timescale phenomena and rare events. Particular emphasis is given to the physics and chemistry of liquids and complex fluids, especially at interfaces, driven away from equilibrium, or under extreme conditions. On the Machine side, leveraging their expertise in materials and modeling, the lab advances the development of soft robots and human-compatible machines, swarm robots and collective intelligence, and robots in extreme environments, which can lead to immediate societal impact.

Plasmas & Nuclear Fusion

Center for Laboratory Astrophysics (CLA) Prof. Carolyn Kuranz Researchers at CLA study fundamental high-energy-density plasmas relevant to astrophysical systems, the National Nuclear Security Administration mission of science-based stockpile stewardship, and inertial confinement fusion concepts. They create these systems using high-energy laser and pulsed-power facilities and simulate them using the radiation hydrodynamics code CRASH. The research focus is hydrodynamic instabilities, radiation hydrodynamics, and magnetized flows. Researchers also fabricate and characterize experimental targets and research novel diagnostic techniques. This is a National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Center of Excellence .

Center for Magnetic Acceleration, Compression, and Heating (MACH) Prof. Ryan McBride Researchers at MACH explore hot, dense plasmas using powerful magnetic pulses, most commonly using z-pinch implosions that rely on magnetic fields to crush plasmas in cylindrical form toward the central “z” axis. The MACH team focuses on achieving symmetric compression, preparing to build more powerful fusion machines, and exploring fundamental physics. The center is an extremely flexible space that encourages student creativity to support research at national labs. Partner institutions include Cornell University, Imperial College London, Weizmann Institute of Science, Princeton University, UC San Diego, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of New Mexico, University of Rochester, University of Washington, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. This is a National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) Center of Excellence .

Computational Plasma Science and Engineering Group Prof. Mark J. Kushner The Computational Plasma Science and Engineering Group investigates fundamental and applied processes in low-temperature plasmas through the development and use of computer models. The group emphasizes multi-scale models (nm to meters, ns to seconds) and plasma surface interactions using advanced computational techniques. The goal is to develop fundamentally based simulations to investigate the science which is also able to be used as computer-aided design tools by collaborators. Current emphases are on microplasmas, microelectronics processing, real-time control of plasma properties, and environmental/biomedical use of plasmas.

Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS) Prof. Karl Krushelnick CUOS researchers develop optical instrumentation and techniques to generate, manipulate, and detect ultrashort and ultrahigh-peak-power light pulses. They use these ultrashort pulses to study ultrafast physical phenomena in atomic, nuclear, plasma, and materials physics, in solid-state electronics, in high-energy-density physics, and in biomedicine. When amplified to even modest energies, such short pulses can achieve the highest peak powers: the HERCULES laser at CUOS holds the world record for on-target laser-focused intensity. The center has recently finished constructing ZEUS, the most powerful laser in the U.S.

High Field Science Group Prof. Alec Thomas The High Field Science group at the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS) is a world-leading group researching the science and applications of relativistic plasma. We are engaged in a number of ongoing key research projects involving the generation of relativistic plasmas. Our experiments include table-top acceleration of high peak energy electron beams using plasma bubbles, acceleration of high-quality energetic ion beams, the generation of high brightness x-ray pulses, and laser-driven neutron sources, in addition to numerical modeling of laser-plasma interactions. We are also involved with other studies, ranging from the investigation of phenomena related to generating fusion energy using lasers, to the use of laser-plasmas to study astrophysical phenomena. In addition, we are working on the development of ultra-high power laser technology.

Plasma Science and Technology Laboratory Prof. John Foster The Plasma Science and Technology Laboratory’s focus is on understanding and applying plasma science to real-world problems. The lab has four major thrust areas: plasma/nuclear-derived space propulsion, environmental hazard mitigation( water treatment, surface sterilization, sanitation), and basic plasma science such as self-organization and the mysteries of the plasma liquid interface. Particular attention is paid to those applications that protect the environment and those that improve the quality of life in underdeveloped countries. Here, research focuses on using plasmas to achieve sustainability and reuse of resources here on Earth—the resulting technologies have applications in space exploration as well, supporting in situ resource utilization. The laboratory houses a number of vacuum tanks and associated power systems such as DC, rf, and microwave power sources for plasma production. Advanced laser diagnostics are also used to probe fields and particles in the plasmas under test.

Plasma, Pulsed Power, and Microwave Laboratory (PPML) Prof. Ryan McBride , Prof. Nicholas Jordan , Prof. Ron Gilgenbach , Prof. Y.Y. Lau PPML uses powerful electromagnetic pulses to generate plasmas and charged particle beams. The lab features three premier pulsed power facilities: MELBA, MAIZE, and BLUE. These machines produce momentary bursts of electrical power (hundreds of billions of watts) to study high-power electromagnetic phenomena. Areas of interest include nuclear fusion, extreme material states, and extreme radiation generation (x-rays, neutrons, and high-power microwaves). Lab research efforts include experiment, theory, and computation.

Plasma Theory Group Prof. Scott Baalrud The fundamental plasma theory group conducts research in basic and applied plasma physics. Current focus areas include kinetic theory, strongly coupled plasmas, warm dense matter, plasma-boundary interactions, wave-particle interactions, and magnetic reconnection.

Policy & Climate

Fastest Path to Zero Initiative Prof. Todd Allen The Fastest Path to Zero Initiative is dedicated to addressing challenging questions about how policymakers, researchers, and communities can collaborate to achieve ambitious climate goals in Michigan and nationwide. The initiative focuses on building and maintaining external and cross-campus collaborations to optimize the use of nuclear energy in the 21st century. It emphasizes participatory research by developing inclusive approaches to the design and deployment of nuclear energy infrastructure. The team also creates user-friendly decision-support tools to assist advanced nuclear companies in locating potential host communities. A significant aspect of Fastest Path’s work involves researching historical and current nuclear equity and justice issues, as well as understanding community needs and societal preferences.

Radiation Measurement & Imaging

Applied Nuclear Science Instrumentation Laboratory Prof. Igor Jovanovic The Applied Nuclear Science Instrumentation Laboratory features approximately 1000 sqft of quality space and supports the development of advanced instrumentation for a wide range of projects. Some examples of current research include the development of novel neutron and antineutrino detectors and detection methodologies for applications in nuclear security, nonproliferation, nuclear power, and fundamental scientific research.

Detection for Nuclear Nonproliferation Group Prof. Sara Pozzi The Detection for Nuclear Nonproliferation Group (DNNG) develops new methods for nuclear materials identification and characterization for nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear material control and accountability, and national security programs. These activities have applications in many areas including homeland security, medical imaging, and nuclear fuel cycle monitoring. The DNNG is fully committed to the education and professional development of undergraduate and graduate students and has strong research ties to nuclear physics and mathematics. The group collaborates with national laboratories, industry, and other academic institutions. See also: the DNNG Labs and the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification (MTV) .

Neutron Science Laboratory Prof. Igor Jovanovic The Neutron Science Laboratory is dedicated to advancing the fundamental understanding and applications of neutron science, particularly the development of radiation detection materials, devices, and systems. The lab space is equipped with DD and DT neutron generators, radioisotope neutron sources, and a variety of standard and advanced radiation detectors and nuclear electronics.

Nuclear Measurements Teaching Laboratory Prof. Igor Jovanovic The Nuclear Measurements Teaching Laboratory is used for both NERS 315 and NERS 515, to introduce the student to the devices and techniques most common in nuclear measurements. Experiments include the operation of gas-filled, solid-state, and scintillation detectors for charged particles, gamma-ray, and neutron radiations. The laboratory has three stations, each with an oscilloscope and PC equipped with a multichannel analyzer. This laboratory is used in the junior and graduate radiation measurements laboratory courses NERS 315 and NERS 515.

Position-Sensing Semiconductor Radiation Detector Laboratory Prof. Zhong He The Position-Sensing Semiconductor Radiation Detector Laboratory is dedicated to the development of room-temperature semiconductor radiation detectors. These instruments are being developed for applications in nuclear nonproliferation, homeland security, astrophysics, planetary sciences, medical imaging, high- energy physics experiments. This lab is home to the Orion Radiation Measurement Group.

Radiation Detection and Measurement Group Prof. David Wehe Exploring semiconducting radiation detector materials, integrated circuits for processing detector signals, and radiation imaging with gamma rays. The primary goal of this research group is to enhance the available options for the detection of radiation in a wide range of applications: homeland security, medical and industrial uses, and scientific research.

Radiological Health Engineering (RHE) Laboratory Prof. Kimberlee Kearfott The Radiological Health Engineering (RHE) Laboratory includes equipment and space for the development and testing of new instruments and systems for application to specific radiological health problems. Work is concentrated on practical systems and radiation measurement methods deployable within the immediate future. This laboratory is used in the senior laboratory course NERS 425, Applications of Radiation.

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Texas A&M Hosts Nationwide Showcase of Students’ Nuclear Safety Research

June 29, 2024 By Julianne Hodges

Campus Community
Energy and Power
Nuclear Engineering

More than 250 people, wearing business attire and conference lanyards, sit on a wide set of stairs.

Over 150 students from universities across the country gathered at Texas A&M to share their latest research in detecting and monitoring the use of nuclear materials at a program review meeting run by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) R&D office and its university partners. The meeting gathered close to 300 attendees from each of NNSA’s funded university consortia in one location on June 4 through 7.

NNSA’s annual University Program Review (UPR) includes four university consortia, each covering different aspects of nuclear security and nonproliferation. These include the Consortium for Enabling Technologies and Innovation (ETI), led by the Georgia Institute of Technology; the Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification, led by the University of Michigan; the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, led by the University of California, Berkeley; and the Consortium for Nuclear Forensics, led by the University of Florida. Texas A&M is part of all four consortia and was selected to host the UPR meeting as a member of the ETI consortium.

The annual UPR meeting brings together DNN R&D leadership, representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers and university faculty, and students who are working on NNSA-funded research. These students are required to attend each UPR meeting to present the latest progress on their work, either through posters or 15-minute talks. This year, 265 people attended the meeting at the Zachry Engineering Education Complex, the largest UPR meeting to date.

“We are very grateful to Texas A&M University for hosting our annual University Program Review at the fantastic Zachry Engineering Education Complex,” said Craig Sloan, director of the Office of Proliferation Detection within NNSA’s DNN R&D. “UPR provided an excellent opportunity for students and faculty to showcase their research, and a highlight was seeing the extensive collaborations between the students and their national laboratory partners.”

Sixty students from institutions across the country gave talks on their research projects. The first evening of the meeting also included a poster session featuring 96 more students and their research. The week concluded with tours of some Texas A&M facilities, including the nuclear reactor at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, the Cyclotron Institute, engineering laboratories at the Zachry Engineering Education Complex, and Disaster City.

UPR provided an excellent opportunity for students and faculty to showcase their research, and a highlight was seeing the extensive collaborations between the students and their national laboratory partners.

Typically, a university that leads a consortium hosts the annual UPR meeting; Georgia Tech hosted the 2021 meeting. For the first time, however, the torch was passed to a partner institution — Texas A&M — to host this year’s meeting.

“Because we hosted one at Georgia Tech in 2021, we decided maybe it's time to shift gears a bit and have one of our partners host the workshop, and bring some visibility to Texas A&M,” said Anna Erickson, a Georgia Tech professor and the director of the ETI consortium.

Erickson said that the consortia members are grateful for the work by Texas A&M nuclear engineering professor Pavel Tsvetkov and his students, who worked hard to coordinate the event.

The organization of the meeting, and using the Zachry Engineering Education Complex as the venue, was perfect for fostering communication and networking between students, faculty, and laboratory representatives, she added.

“This is a very tight community,” Erickson said. “We all have a common goal to prevent nuclear proliferation, and our students have this much bigger vision when they join this community. The students got to not only see faculty and students but also collaborate with national lab partners.”

Hosting the UPR meeting at Texas A&M also gave consortia members from across the country the opportunity to see what Texas A&M has to offer, especially for the guests who toured the facilities.

“There's just so much going on, and it was nice to get some more people into the university to understand just how big it is and how much is going on here,” said Daniel Watson, a Texas A&M nuclear engineering doctoral student who helped run the event. “I only wish that we could have taken more time to really show them much more of the university.”

A learning and career-building opportunity for students

During the meeting, Watson also presented his work on remote surveillance of nuclear activities. For Watson, even more important than the presentation was the networking opportunities and conversations about his work.

“Like all the other conferences, seminars, workshops, it's an opportunity for you to sell yourself,” he said. “You're meeting the leaders within the community, meeting the various stakeholders, getting a grasp on the pulse right now. You're getting that name and face connection, something that's so tangible and very important in advancing one's career.”

A man in a gray and maroon suit speaks to a crowd in a conference room.

One Texas A&M presenter, Lavanya Upadhyaya, is a second-year master’s student researching the corrosion of metal alloys in molten salt nuclear reactors under different conditions. Beyond participation in UPR, Upadhyaya has benefitted from career-boosting opportunities offered by NNSA, such as receiving internships at Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge national laboratories and connecting with a mentor at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

“Getting a chance to attend these conferences has been a great experience, not just to speak or present work, but also to talk with so many people and learn different perspectives,” she said. “There are just so many opportunities, and I feel very fortunate to be part of this.”

Jenna Garcia, a doctoral student from Texas A&M developing chemistry processes to analyze radioactive sources, presented a poster at the UPR meeting. She was able to connect and reconnect with colleagues from LANL, where she has worked for three summers.

“I was surprised at how small the world seems whenever we're all going to these events,” she said. “That was a very positive experience.”

Patrick O’Neal, who recently received his doctorate at Texas A&M for work using machine learning to identify the origin of plutonium samples, also participated in the poster session. He said that sharing his work at events like this helps him make talking about his research more effective for a wider audience.

“It's fun doing a poster session because people can be much more specific with their questions and get into the nitty-gritty details that interest them the most,” he said. “I also like that you can gauge their understanding to see if you need to re-emphasize something.”

Although Upadhyaya has been learning about nuclear engineering in classes, interacting with peers and their research has brought that knowledge outside of the classroom.

“Through conferences and other events, I've seen some topics that I have learned in my classes being applied in other people's research,” she said. “I've broadened my knowledge by learning what everybody's working on,” she said. “It’s a nice experience, not just to talk or to present work and receive feedback, but also just to be in this community.”

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IMAGES

The National Organization of Test, Research and Training Reactors
Nation’s first digitally operated nuclear reactor dedicated at Purdue
MU Research Reactor
University of Missouri Research Reactor
First all-digital nuclear reactor system in the U.S. installed at
University of Missouri Research Reactor Core.

VIDEO

RBWR U1 Startup Guide (Roblox)
Ondrej Chvala a Nuclear Engineering post-doc at University of Tennessee Knoxville for THORIUM REMIX
Nuclear reactor core!
What if the world's biggest fusion reactor imploded
Hiroaki Koide: "The Trouble with Nuclear Power"
The Gen 4 Nuclear Research Reactor

COMMENTS

About
The MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory (MIT-NRL) is an interdepartmental center that operates a high performance 6 MW nuclear research reactor known as the MITR. It is the second largest university research reactor in the U.S. and the only one located on the campus of a major research university. During its long and distinguished history, the NRL ...
MIT Nuclear Research Reactor
The MIT Nuclear Research Reactor (MITR) serves the research purposes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.It is a tank-type 6 megawatt reactor that is moderated and cooled by light water and uses heavy water as a reflector. It is the second largest university-based research reactor in the U.S. (after the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center) and has been in operation since 1958.
PDF Nuclear Reactor Laboratory
medicine, geochemistry, and environmental studies. It is the second-largest university research reactor in the United States, and it is the only research reactor located on the campus of a major research university that provides students with on-campus opportunities to participate in power-reactor-relevant materials and fuels irradiations
Inside MIT's nuclear reactor laboratory
MIT's research reactor was built in the 1950s, and its purpose has shifted over the decades. ... This is the second-largest university research reactor running in the US today, producing about ...
MU Research Reactor
Operating at 10-megawatts, MURR is the most powerful university research reactor in the United States ... 1513 Research Park Drive, Columbia, MO 65211. General Inquiries [email protected]. Customer Service 573-884-3183 [email protected]. Facebook; Twitter; About; News;
University of Missouri Research Reactor Center
The University of Missouri Research Reactor Center ( MURR) is home to a tank-type nuclear research reactor that serves the University of Missouri in Columbia, United States. As of March 2012, the MURR is the highest-power university research reactor in the U.S. at 10 megawatt thermal output. The fuel is highly enriched uranium.
McMaster Nuclear Reactor
The McMaster Nuclear Reactor (MNR) first became operational in 1959 and was the first university-based research reactor in the British Commonwealth. Originally designed to operate at a maximum power of 1 MW, MNR was upgraded during the 1970s to its current rating of 5 MW with a maximum thermal neutron flux of 1 x 10 14 neutrons/cm 2 s.
New TRIGA fuel delivered to a U.S. university reactor for the first
Breazeale capabilities: The Breazeale Reactor is one of 17 TRIGA reactors in operation in the United States, including 12 at universities. In 2018, the Breazeale gained five new beam ports, and in 2022 research was expanded with a new neutron beam hall, making room for a small angle neutron scattering (SANS) instrument that is soon to be installed.
Purdue leading $6M DOE-sponsored research for small ...
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University's longstanding leadership in nuclear energy technologies research has resulted in a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to lead a consortium that will revitalize nuclear research facilities and expand university-led research for small modular reactor (SMR) and advanced reactor (AR) technologies.
IAEA Missions Highlight Potential of Research Reactors for Innovative
At the MIT laboratory, a 6 MW research reactor is used for materials irradiation and testing, research and development, as well as education and training. MIT's nuclear research reactor (MITR) is the second largest university-based research reactor in the USA (after the University of Missouri Research Reactor) and has been in operation since ...
List of nuclear research reactors
Research Reactor,100 kW, built 1962 (decommissioned) KRR-2 Seoul: TRIGA Mark III: Decommissioned 2,000 1972-04-10 KAERI: Research Reactor, 2MW, BUILT 1972 (decommissioned) AGN-201K Yongin: Homog (S) Operational 0.01 1982-12-04 Kyung Hee University: Aerojet General Nucleonics Model 201 Research reactor, 0.01 kW commissioned 1982. HANARO: Daejeon ...
The Past and Future of University Research Reactors
At North Carolina State University, on 5 September 1953, the first university-based "openly operated" nuclear reactor went critical. By the late 1960s, there were 58 University research reactors (URRs). However, URRs have steadily declined in numbers from the early 1970s ( 1) to the 28 of today. This decline, which has not been planned or ...
Engineers develop faster, more accurate AI ...
Purdue University research reactor serves as test bed for optimizing performance of small modular reactors. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — To expand the availability of electricity generated from nuclear power, several countries have started developing designs for small modular reactors (SMRs), which could take less time and money to construct compared to existing reactors.
Reed College: the only place in the US where students get to run a real
The Reed Research Reactor has been running continuously since 1968 - a fact that the college proudly advertises on its website. ... Ellis says the term dates back to the first reactor built by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago in 1942, where the emergency switch-off method consisted of a control rod attached to a rope. ...
Exploring research reactors and their use
Given their important role in research and development, many research reactors are housed at university campuses and research institutes. The power of research reactors is designated in megawatts (MW), with 1 MW being equal to 1 million watts, with watts being a unit of power. The output of research reactors ranges from 0 MW, such as that of a ...
MU Professor Leads Largest University Research Reactor in US
Since 1967, the MU Research Reactor (MURR) has been the highest-powered university research reactor in the United States. Operating year-round at 10-megawatts output provides the opportunity for a reliable source of both research and production of life-saving radiopharmaceuticals. Robertson leads a team of nearly 200 employees and students on ...
Purdue leading $6M DOE-sponsored research for small modular reactor and
Purdue University's longstanding leadership in nuclear energy technologies research has resulted in a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to lead a consortium that will revitalize nuclear research facilities and expand university-led research for small modular reactor (SMR) and advanced reactor (AR) technologies. The group consists of five universities and colleges and two ...
New Probe to Uncover Mechanisms Key to Fusion Reactor Walls
A new facility developed by nuclear engineers at Purdue University will be hitched to an experimental fusion reactor at Princeton University to learn precisely what happens when extremely hot plasmas touch and interact with the inner surface of the reactor. ... which operates the nation's largest spherical tokamak reactor, known as the National ...
US university builds facility for first-of-a-kind research reactor
The reactor is being designed by Texas-based Natura Resources and the effort is being supported by the Natura Resources Research Alliance of ACU, Georgia Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, and The University of Texas at Austin, supported by USD30.5 million in sponsored research agreements.
Hardy transistor material could be game-changer for nuclear reactor
A transistor made with the material maintained operations near the core of a nuclear reactor operated by research partner The Ohio State University. Gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor, had previously been tested against the ionizing radiation encountered when rockets hurtle through space.
Nuclear research reactors
Research reactors are nuclear reactors used for research, development, education and training. They produce neutrons for use in industry, medicine, agriculture and forensics, among others. The IAEA assists Member States with the construction, operation, utilization and fuel cycle of research reactors, as well as with capacity-building and infrastructure development.
MU Research Reactor
Twenty years ago, the University of Missouri helped research and develop a little-known radioisotope called lutetium-177 (Lu-177). That innovation laid the foundation for clinical trials and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for a new class of drugs known as radiopharmaceuticals, resulting in thousands of successful cancer treatments.
Backgrounder on Research and Test Reactors
Research and test reactors - also called "non-power" reactors - are nuclear reactors primarily used for research, training and development. These reactors contribute to almost every field of science including physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, geology, archeology, and environmental sciences. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ...
What is nuclear energy and how does it work?
Research by Stanford University found American nuclear reactors used about 480,000 Olympic pools' worth of water in 2015 alone. The paper concluded nuclear power used much more water than solar ...
Research reactor
Purpose. The neutrons produced by a research reactor are used for neutron scattering, non-destructive testing, analysis and testing of materials, production of radioisotopes, research and public outreach and education.Research reactors that produce radioisotopes for medical or industrial use are sometimes called isotope reactors.Reactors that are optimised for beamline experiments nowadays ...
The ongoing effort to convert the world's research reactors
July 10, 2020, 2:17PM Nuclear News Christina Nunez. The Ghana Research Reactor-1, located in Accra, Ghana, was converted from HEU fuel to LEU in 2017. Photo: Argonne National Laboratory. In late 2018, Nigeria's sole operating nuclear research reactor, NIRR-1, switched to a safer uranium fuel. Coming just 18 months on the heels of a celebrated ...
Natura Resources pushes forward with plans for ACU's Molten ...
Natura Resources is backing the construction of a molten salt research reactor at Abilene Christian University. The reactor, named the Natura MSR-1, is expected to be the first Nuclear Regulatory ...
Labs List
We are proud to host over 20 state-of-the-art laboratories, with several facilities rivaling those found at national laboratories. Explore the full catalog of NERS laboratories, centers, institutes, and research groups below, organized by their primary research focus. Classes involving the labs include NERS 315, NERS 425, NERS 499, NERS 515 ...
Texas A&M Hosts Nationwide Showcase of Students' Nuclear Safety Research
Over 150 students from universities across the country gathered at Texas A&M to share their latest research in detecting and monitoring the use of nuclear materials at a program review meeting run by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)'s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) R&D office and its university partners.
Map of Research and Test Reactor Sites
Map of Research and Test Reactor Sites. Page Last Reviewed/Updated Friday, July 17, 2020.