Feb. 13, 2003

Students Check Out Nuclear Facility, with Limits

- The News & Observer

By Heather Moore, staff writer

© Copyright 2003 The News & Observer Publishing Company.

The country's code orange now means some areas of N.C. State University are off-limits.

The nuclear engineering school is hosting an open house Wednesday and Thursday. Originally, visiting students were going to tour the school's nuclear reactor. But administrators eliminated that from the schedule once the government raised the national security level.

Instead, students toured other areas of the nuclear engineering facility. Administrators hope the open house will lure visiting undergraduate students into the graduate program. They say with the nation on the brink of war, nuclear engineering is more important than ever before.

Dr. Man-Sung Yim is director of graduate studies at NCSU Nuclear Engineering.

“Nuclear engineering is very important for the country and world,” Yim said. “At the same time, we need to manage them responsibly and safely and to do that, we need to produce competent engineers.”

“There's a lot of media attention given to the dangers of nuclear warfare,” said Matthew Jessee, a nuclear engineering undergraduate student, “but it’s a great way of producing energy in a commercial power-type environment.”

North Carolina State University was the first school to develop a nuclear engineering program. It also has the first non-governmental nuclear reactor.

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