October 12, 2004

Funding for Multi-University Consortium Benefits Nuclear Engineering at NC State

The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University has teamed with other universities and institutes to form the Multi-University Southeast INIE Consortium (MUSIC) funded by the Department of Energy’s Innovations in Nuclear Infrastructure and Education (INIE) program. The $11.3 million grant to be dispersed over five years supports programs at member institutions aimed at expanding the use of university research reactors in education and research activities.

NC State has received $1 million of the funding since the DOE began the program in 2003 and is expected to receive an additional $4.5 million. NC State’s portion of the grant supports programs that focus on using the university’s PULSTAR reactor to perform unique fundamental and applied research using radiation, according to Dr. Ayman Hawari, associate professor of nuclear engineering and director of the Nuclear Reactor Program.

“This focus includes development of a neutron scattering facility, a neutron imaging facility and a positron beam facility,” said Hawari. “All these facilities will be used as nondestructive probes of matter, which is highly needed to understand material properties and to design new materials to meet the technological needs of the twenty-first century.”

An additional effort funded by INIE and National Science Foundation grants will use the PULSTAR reactor site for the first university-based, ultra-cold neutron source in the United States. The project will involve the departments of nuclear engineering and physics.

The education initiatives supported by the consortium include establishing an Internet-based nuclear reactor laboratory course; creating Web-based, distance learning nuclear engineering education modules; and developing a minority education outreach program. The consortium will also explore research projects in the areas of radiation dosimetry, boron-neutron capture therapy for the treatment of cancer and research reactor modeling and simulations.

In addition to NC State, the other members of the consortium include Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Tennessee, University of Florida, University of Maryland, University of South Carolina, South Carolina State University and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute. The member institutions are partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Joint Institute for Neutron Scattering, the Spallation Neutron Source and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

— weston —

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