Photo by Jack Parker.
Three nuclear engineering faculty members recently received funding from the US DoE’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP), which seeks to maintain US leadership in nuclear research across the country. This year, the NEUP awarded more than $28.5 million to support 40 university-led nuclear energy research projects, with nearly $2.4 million going to UT-led research.
Professor Richard Wood, Assistant Professor and Southern Company Faculty Fellow Jamie Coble, and Associate Professor and Pietro F. Pasqua Fellow Maik Lang each received grants of approximately $800,000 to pursue their research.
Wood’s research project, entitled “Prevention of Common-Fault-Trigger Combinations for Qualification of Digital Instrumentation and Control (I&C) Technology,” aims to effectively design an evaluation approach based on the prevention of concurrent triggering conditions to eliminate common-cause failures (CCF) and enable qualification of digital I&C technology for application in nuclear plant modernization.
Coble is researching cyber security, with a research project entitled, “A Cyber-Attack Detection Platform for Cyber Security of Digital Instrumentation and Control Systems.” She aims to develop a robust cyber-attack detection system (CADS) for monitoring digital I&C systems. She is also a co-PI for a project entitled, “Economic Risk-Informed Maintenance Planning and Asset Management.”
Lang was funded for his project, entitled “Radiation-Induced Swelling in Advanced Nuclear Fuel.” He aims to clarify the microstructural evolution of advanced fuel (uranium carbide and uranium nitride) under fission-fragment type radiation.
Since 2009, NEUP has funded $334 million in outstanding, cutting-edge university research and collaborations between universities, national laboratories, and industry to address near-term significant needs for US nuclear research.