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NC State celebrates 70 years of nuclear engineering education
An early picture of the research reactor building on the North Carolina State University campus. The Department of Nuclear Engineering is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its nuclear engineering curriculum in 2020–2021. Photo: North Carolina State University
The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University has spent the 2020–2021 academic year celebrating the 70th anniversary of its becoming the first U.S. university to establish a nuclear engineering curriculum. It started in 1950, when Clifford Beck, then of Oak Ridge, Tenn., obtained support from NC State’s dean of engineering, Harold Lampe, to build the nation’s first university nuclear reactor and, in conjunction, establish an educational curriculum dedicated to nuclear engineering.
The department, host to the 2021 ANS Virtual Student Conference, scheduled for April 8–10, now features 23 tenure/tenure-track faculty and three research faculty members. “What a journey for the first nuclear engineering curriculum in the nation,” said Kostadin Ivanov, professor and department head.
Stephen O. Dean
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | April 2005 | Pages 291-299
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Fusion Plenary and Overview | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A708
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Progress and Policy is traced over the approximately 55 year history of the U. S. Fusion Program. The classified beginnings of the effort in the 1950s ended with declassification in 1958. The effort struggled during the 1960s, but ended on a positive note with the emergence of the tokamak and the promise of laser fusion. The decade of the 1970s was the "Golden Age" of fusion, with large budget increases and the construction of many new facilities, including the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and the Shiva laser. The decade ended on a high note with the passage of the Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act of 1980, overwhelming approved by Congress and signed by President Carter. The Act called for a "$20 billion, 20 year" effort aimed at construction of a fusion Demonstration Power Plant around the end of the century. The U. S. Magnetic Fusion Energy program has been on a downhill slide since 1980, both in terms of budgets and the construction of new facilities. The Inertial Confinement Fusion program, funded by Department of Energy Defense Programs, has faired considerably better, with the construction of many new facilities, including the National Ignition Facility (NIF).