News & Events

There's a fresh bloom of nuclear engineers at Idaho

The inexorable search for more sustainable carbon-free energy resources is driving Idaho, the U.S. and the world to take a new look at nuclear energy.

Once considered an environmental pariah, nuclear technology is steadily emerging as one of the most promising near-term solutions - ironically, for its environmental strengths. Nuclear energy can cost-effectively produce the multitude of gigawatts needed to meet growing energy needs, without generating greenhouse emissions.

Today, after decades of limited construction, there is an international bloom of nuclear plants with some 30 facilities currently being built and more than 100 on the drawing board. In the U.S., a Texas utility recently filed the first complete request to construct not one, but two, new reactors. This marks the first such application in the United States in nearly three decades, and dozens of nuclear plant license applications are anticipated in the coming years. The nuclear industry refers to this movement as a "nuclear renaissance," and like its namesake from the Middle Ages, it has an intellectual component.

The University of Idaho's nuclear engineering program is centered in Idaho Falls at University Place, but also has students at the Moscow campus. Besides providing graduate education for the next generation of nuclear engineers, the program aims to support and complement ongoing research at the Department of Energy's nearby Idaho National Laboratory.

Working together with national laboratories, universities and international researchers, the program will help actualize nuclear energy to reach its full potential -providing safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy that is as sustainable as is technologically possible.

Emerging from Dormancy
Just a decade ago, the University of Idaho graduate program in nuclear engineering was nearly moribund. "We had one graduate student in 1995, and few prospects for future students," said Fred Gunnerson, director of the nuclear engineering program at the University of Idaho center in Idaho Falls. "With no enrollment, we put our program into a state of dormancy, like a desert flower awaiting a day when the rains would come again."

The situation was not unique to Idaho; the nuclear education and research drought was a national phenomenon in the 1980s and 90s, with precipitous declines in nuclear engineering programs across the country. Many graduate programs disappeared entirely. According to the American Nuclear Society, of 41 nuclear engineering graduate programs in 1980, less than 30 still existed in the late 1990s.

After the change of millennia, the winds began to shift. In 2002, after seven years of silent classrooms, interest re-emerged and new students began asking about the Idaho nuclear engineering program. But the real weather occurred in 2005, after a new contractor took over management of the U.S. Department of Energy's newly named Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

Designated by the Department of Energy as the lead laboratory for nuclear science and technology, INL's budgets for nuclear research and education began to grow and the University of Idaho's nuclear engineering program grew along with it. The new INL contractor arrived with a priority to work with universities to replenish the cohort of nuclear engineers nearing retirement age, a critical problem because decades of dormant interest had taken its toll on the pool of graduate students in nuclear engineering.

"By 2005, it was clear that our program was in full bloom again," said Gunnerson. "We had a clear mission, strong funding support, and quality students seeking advanced degrees in nuclear engineering." The following year, the University's nuclear engineering graduate program reached critical mass, with more than a dozen graduate students working on a wide variety of engineering problems.

With an Idaho undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, Rob Hoover of Caldwell is one of the latest crop of graduate students seeking a master's in nuclear engineering. "After taking an undergraduate class in nuclear engineering in Moscow, I decided it was a field with immense potential for the next 20 years, " said Hoover. "Idaho has a great engineering school in general and I was impressed with the faculty I spoke with here in Idaho Falls." Like a salmon heading upstream, Hoover moved from Moscow to Idaho Falls.

Jon Carmack of Idaho Falls saw the program as a chance to upgrade his graduate training to a Ph.D. "My graduate degree was in nuclear engineering," said Carmack, who also works at the Idaho National Laboratory. "But the resurgence in the nuclear industry created so many opportunities in the field, it made sense to get a more advanced degree." Carmack added that the new faculty and strong program support give the program the resources it needs to continue growing.

Today, less than a decade since the program had nearly disappeared, it boasts an astonishing 19 master's and nine doctoral students, with more students on the way to Idaho Falls

A Multi-institutional, Multi-disciplinary Approach
Dealing with such dramatic program growth requires new faculty and strategic leveraging of other academic resources in Idaho. So far, three new faculty members have been hired, whose expertise complements University of Idaho faculty, as well as the strengths of faculty at Idaho State University's robust undergraduate program in nuclear engineering and Boise State University's top-notch material science program.

Coursework is coordinated across all three institutions. "There was no way we could offer a nuclear engineering graduate program as rich and deep as the one we now have without coordinating and collaborating with other institutions," said Bob Smith, University of Idaho-Idaho Falls associate vice president. Students can use distance-learning capabilities to take classes in Idaho Falls, Moscow, Boise or Pocatello. "We fully expect students in our program to take a number of advanced courses from other institutions," said Smith, "but in the end, they will have a graduate degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Idaho. We are clearly the home organization and the Idaho Falls center now offers an impressive array of classes and research concentrations in nuclear engineering that is enviable."

While nuclear engineering is a legitimate discipline unto itself, the University program resides within the Mechanical Engineering Department. The operating philosophy is that the program and students are stronger when they train in other disciplines, such as mechanical or chemical engineering, or material science. "We always advise students to be careful not to over specialize," said mechanical engineering Professor John Crepeau, who is on the Idaho Falls nuclear engineering faculty. "Whether it is nuclear engineering or aeronautical engineering, it is good to have solid roots in a broad engineering field with an additional specialty providing a career bonus rather than career shoe-horn."

Strong Ties to the National Laboratory
Besides having strong relationships with other universities and disciplines, the University's nuclear engineering program also has strong ties to INL. "It is not a coincidence that our program is centered here in Idaho Falls," said Gunnerson. "INL has been an historic center for nuclear energy research, hosting some of the world's first generation reactors for power production, propulsion and engineering. This is where nuclear energy got its start, and it remains a dynamic hub for nuclear energy research and funding."

The Idaho Falls campus offers benefits for other institutions as well. The Center for Advanced Energy Study (CAES) is a public/private partnership among the University of Idaho, the State's other research universities (Boise State University and Idaho State University) and INL that combines the efforts of these institutions toward common energy-related research.

CAES is building a 50,000-square-foot research facility scheduled for completion next year. It will accommodate 150 researchers from the academic community and INL. The facility will offer an opportunity for faculty and students to work collaboratively in state-of-the-art laboratories, and provide INL researchers the freedom to work with international colleagues in an open, academic environment.

"There is an exciting nexus of institutions in Idaho Falls," said Harold Blackman, director for the Center for Advanced Energy Studies. "The role of CAES is to foster collaboration among institutions, both to maximize intellectual productivity at the INL, and for advanced next generation research."

Meeting Nuclear Energy's Technical Challenges
The technical challenges for next generation nuclear technology are the same ones that prompted the technology's past dormancy: the need to reduce waste, address proliferation concerns and increase safety. They are the three Ws - waste, weapons and worries - and some argue these are largely issues of perception, but each has an underlying technical challenge that demands advanced engineering and research. Current research efforts are finding innovative solutions to these challenges.

Fast reactor technology, a promising approach that tackles the three W's en-masse, has become a central focus for research programs at the University of Idaho. Most of the 438 nuclear power plants operating in the world today use thermal or "slow" neutrons to sustain the nuclear reaction process. Astonishingly, these plants use only one to two percent of the energy potential in their nuclear fuel before it is removed for disposal.

"It is like eating the peel and throwing away the banana," said Gunnerson. "We are throwing away fuel that has barely been used." A current joint research program with INL is studying ways to increase nuclear fuel utilization efficiencies closer to 50 to 70 percent. "Efficiency gains alone could significantly reduce the demand for waste management and geologic disposal, but the fast reactor approach offers much more."

Fast reactors - next generation reactors at the heart of the nuclear engineering program's research - use a different nuclear process that sustains the nuclear reaction with the high-energy "fast" neutrons. The process not only provides more efficient fuel use, it also produces excess neutrons that can be used both to refresh and extend the fuel life while converting or "transmuting" nastier long-lived components of nuclear waste into less troublesome isotopes. As an added benefit, transmuted waste from a fast reactor can be safely discarded after only 300 years, instead of requiring 300,000 years of long-term management required by spent nuclear fuel from traditional reactors. The elimination of weapons-grade byproducts in spent fuel also means reduced potential for nuclear proliferation.

Another current research focus is the development of robust fuel forms that substantially improve safety margins. The partial melt of the Three Mile Island reactor core exposed the vulnerabilities of nuclear fuel, but stands as an object lesson for nuclear engineers on the importance of fuel design, fabrication and survivability as a critical safety factor. Engineering forensic analysis of the Three Mile Island core debris was conducted at INL and the results of that work and the follow-on design improvement are helping University of Idaho researchers as they develop new fuel forms. Their ultimate goal is developing a form that is inherently safe.

"By inherently safe, we mean fuel in a form so robust that it is virtually indestructible, even in the most severe accident scenarios," said Gunnerson. The goal is not unattainable. Since the accident at Three Mile Island, there have been significant advances in material science, including development of advanced ceramics, composites, new alloys and nanomaterials. With advanced engineering techniques applied by graduating researchers, the safety margin built into fuel fabrication and design will continue to grow.

University of Idaho nuclear engineering researchers are also applying the green maxim - reduce, reuse, recycle - to the nuclear industry. "By recycling nuclear fuel, we can reduce waste volumes, and most critically, reduce the length of time waste must be managed in long-term disposal facilities," said Gunnerson. "Recycling nuclear fuel that has been irradiated is not simple, but it is definitely workable."

Building on work pioneered at the INL and other national laboratories, nuclear engineering graduate students are examining ways to improve the processing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel to separate reusable fuel from long-lived and short-lived radioisotopes. "Our program benefits from its proximity to the INL, and when the CAES Building is complete, we will have the state-of-the-art infrastructure required for the most challenging nuclear research."

"There are some tough problems in our field," said Gunnerson. "They demand advanced engineering solutions and the sharp, focused people who know how to find them. But it is an exciting time to be a nuclear engineer, and as I think our students would agree, engineering challenges are our raison d'etre."