The U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program recently awarded the Big 10+ Network for the Study of Nuclear Materials at the Microscale, a Penn State-led consortium, a $6 million University Nuclear Research Infrastructure Revitalization grant.
The consortium will use the funding for a project that will support the revitalization of nuclear facilities and equipment, and increase work force opportunities for students interested in pursuing careers in nuclear materials research and related fields.
Funding will support the creation of a shared facility that allows scientists and students to safely study nuclear materials on the microscopic scale using advanced microscopes. The samples can be analyzed in standard laboratories or remotely.
“Only the microscopic samples will be used for experiments and analyses,” Jon Schwantes, Penn State Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering acting head and the project’s principal investigator, said. “These samples will be 17 orders of magnitude smaller, or in numerical terms, roughly 100 quadrillion times smaller, than the bulk material, so the radioactive hazard represented by these samples is minuscule.”
The specialized facility would be located at Penn State’s Radiation Science and Engineering Center. Bulk radioactive materials would be sent to the facility and experts would create the microscopic samples.