Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech is poised to receive a grant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to boost a recently revitalized nuclear engineering program.

The $849,948 grant, to be paid over a course of the next four years, is aimed at faculty development.

It will supplement a $300,000 grant Tech received last year that is being paid over the course of three years. Two new professors will be hired with $450,000 of this year's grant. The remainder will help support graduate student fellowships.

"It's allowing us to hire more faculty so we can have more classes that will accommodate more students," said Mark Pierson, mechanical engineering associate professor.

The program, which has grown rapidly since its re-introduction to Tech in 2007, currently offers a four-class undergraduate certificate in nuclear engineering. The university hopes that once more faculty are employed, curricula can be developed for an undergraduate minor, a master's and doctoral track for nuclear engineering.

"This (grant) has opened the door tremendously to grow our program at a rate to try to keep up with what students want," Pierson said.

Tech's nuclear engineering program was active between 1953 and the mid-1980s. There was even a research reactor on campus, which was completely removed in the early 1990's after a slump in the industry caused the program to close. Pierson said the school is not buying a new reactor.

What Tech has gotten, though, is a taste of the "nuclear renaissance" that is affecting the way the world thinks about nuclear energy as a source of inexpensive, clean power.

"All of a sudden, the nuclear industry is taking off," Pierson said.

Kenneth Ball, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, began investigating the possibilities of rekindling the nuclear engineering program when he arrived at Tech in the fall of 2004.

His background in nuclear research sent him looking for like-minded individuals among staff in the colleges of engineering and science. Ball also began building relationships with various nuclear power companies in the area, notably Areva, headquartered in Lynchburg, as well as Oakridge National Laboratories and Dominion Power.

The Office of Economic Development received state funding to develop programs that would allow more collaboration between Areva and Tech through research and development projects. Shortly after that, Tech was invited to become a member of the SUNRISE Consortium.

SUNRISE is the Southeastern University Nuclear Reactor Institute for Science and Education, headed by Georgia Tech. SUNRISE consists of various Southeastern universities and nuclear power companies cooperating in order to help their students become the next generation of nuclear engineers. Their eventual goal is to build two new nuclear reactors, one for research purposes and another for educational purposes.

"The consortium is working together to pool our collective strengths and to get more notice from the federal government for these kinds of programs," Ball said.

This notice was a large factor in the NRC's grants both this year and last year. Tech is one of several universities across the country receiving such grants for staff development.

"It's a good first step," Ball said. "There's still a relatively small amount of universities that have nuclear engineering programs, and we're probably in the top 15 size-wise."

This size a result of high student interest. Pierson said his undergraduate class this semester has an enrollment list of over 100 students. Two years ago he had around 40.

"Most of the students seem excited for this," Pierson said. "There are lots of jobs available, and students are of the generation that can look objectively at the facts about nuclear power."

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