2020 ASEE UT NE Rankings
- #1 in PhD student enrollment
- #2 in BS student enrollment
- #2 in total student enrollment
- #2 in BS degrees granted
- #3 in federal expenditures per faculty
- #4 in federal research expenditures
Brief History
- Department founded in 1957, making it the first Department of Nuclear Engineering in the United States.
- Produced over 1,400 graduates in the past 60 years.
Faculty and Staff Profile
Faculty
- 16 tenure/tenure track faculty
- 3 assistants
- 5 associate
- 8 full
- 3 part-time emeritus
- 1 open faculty search
- 2 UT-ORNL Governor’s Chairs
- 2 Professors of Practice
- 3 non-UT Joint Faculty
- 2 ORNL
- 1 Y-12
- 1 National Academy of Engineering Member
- 8 ANS Fellows
- 12 research faculty, 28 adjunct faculty
- 9 research scientists, 7 post-doctoral research scholars
Support Staff
- 8 clerical staff members
- 2 technical staff members
Student Profile
2020–21 Graduates
- 81 graduates total
- 42 BS
- 24 MS
- 15 PhD
2021–22 Enrollment
- 350 total students
- 198 BS
- 42 MS
- 110 PhD
Graduate Student Support
- 24 UT fellowships (Chancellor, UT top 100, Tickle College)
- 16 graduate teaching assistantships
- 96 graduate research assistantships
- 20 external fellows (NEUP, NNSA, NRC, CIRE, CNEC, NNIS)
New Engineering Complex
The department moved into the new $129M engineering complex in Fall 2021. It supports their groundbreaking research with 23 new nuclear engineering laboratories including shielded rooms for the graphite pile and Approach to Criticality facility along with vaults for a 9MV LINAC and a neutron generator driven Fast Neutron Source. This triples their physical footprint.
Research
$13 million in expenditures
Research Focus Areas
- Nuclear Fuels and Materials
- Nuclear Security
- Radiological Sciences and Health Physics
- Nuclear I&C, Reliability, and Safety
- Nuclear Fusion Technology
- Nuclear Fuel Cycles
- Advanced Modeling and Simulation
- Radiation Detection and Measurement
Additional Facilities and Equipment
- Parallel Computing through Newton and local Beowulf clusters
- Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow Measurements Laboratory
- Data Acquisition and Instrument Characterization Laboratory
- Prognostics, Reliability, and Control Laboratory
- Radiochemistry and Nuclear Forensics Laboratory
- Ion Beam Materials Laboratory
- Micro-Processing Research Facility
- UT/ORNL Joint Institute for Advanced Materials
- 85 MW High Flux Isotope Reactor
- Spallation Neutron Source
- Nuclear Safeguards Laboratory
- Radiochemical Engineering Development Center
- Low Activation Materials Development & Analysis
- Center for Radiation Detection Materials and Systems
- Titan Supercomputer (world’s third most powerful supercomputer)
- Y-12 National Security Complex
- Reliability and Maintainability Center
- Scintillation Materials Research Center
- Thompson Cancer Survival Center
- Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors
- Provision Center for Proton Therapy
- Institute for Nuclear Security