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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.
J. I. Duo, Y. Y. Azmy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 162 | Number 1 | May 2009 | Pages 41-55
Technical Paper | dx.doi.org/10.13182/NSE08-28
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper analyzes the spatial discretization of the discrete ordinates (DO) approximation of the transport equation. A new method, the singular characteristics tracking algorithm, is developed to account for potential nonsmoothness across the singular characteristics in the exact solution of the DO approximation to the transport equation. Numerical results in two-dimensional problems show improved rate of convergence of the exact solution of the DO equations in nonscattering and isotropic scattering media. Unlike the standard weighted diamond difference scheme, the new algorithm achieves local convergence in the case of discontinuous angular flux across the singular characteristics. The method also significantly reduces the error for problems where the angular flux presents discontinuous spatial derivatives across these lines. For purposes of testing the performance of the new method, the method of manufactured solutions is used to generate analytical reference solutions that permit accurate estimation of the local error in case of discontinuous flux.
