North Carolina’s fiscal year 2024 budget for the state has allocated $3 million for North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, to conduct a study to assess the feasibility for the establishment of an advanced nuclear research reactor.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency is offering the first International School on Simulation of Nuclear Reactor Systems (SINUS) workshop in May this year, with the topic “Reactor Single- and Multi-Physics Simulations Based on Light Water Reactor (LWR) Uncertainty Analysis in Modeling (UAM) Benchmark.”

Registration for the workshop is available online.

Haghighat

Join North Carolina State University’s Department of Nuclear Engineering for the 2022 Nuclear Engineering Distinguished Technical Lecture on Thursday, October 20, from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Alireza Haghighat, professor and director of the nuclear engineering program in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, will deliver a presentation, “New Paradigm for Real-Time, High-Fidelity Particle Transport Simulation with Monte Carlo Accuracy.”

NSCU's PULSTAR research reactor. (Photo: NCSU)

The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University marked the 50th anniversary in September of its PULSTAR research reactor, a milestone that was featured in the department’s fall newsletter. The nuclear reactor, located in the Burlington Laboratory on university’s north campus, has been in use since 1972 by research faculty and staff in the University of North Carolina system and other academic institutions, as well as by government agencies and companies in North Carolina and throughout the United States.

One further reason the university is celebrating this year is the infrastructure award that the PULSTAR reactor just received from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). This financial award will help “facilitate an upgrade and enhancement to safety, operations, and utilization infrastructure.”

Nuclear Reactor Program: The PULSTAR reactor and its associated instrumentation are administered by NCSU’s Nuclear Reactor Program (NRP), which is a partner of the Nuclear Science User Facilities of Idaho National Laboratory. The NRP’s mission is “to enhance, promote, and utilize the PULSTAR research reactor and associated facilities in an exemplary manner, leading to national recognition as a premier 1-MW Nuclear Reactor Program dedicated to research, teaching, and extension.” The NRP began in 1950 with the construction of the R-1 reactor, the first academic research nuclear reactor in the world. The current director of the program is Ayman Hawari, distinguished professor of nuclear engineering.