Innovations in University Nonproliferation Education through a Joint ORNL-NCSU Partnership

Given the identified need to recruit and train the next generation of nuclear safeguards and security specialists, a critical area for human capital development is in university programs. Several university nuclear engineering programs across the United States have recognized this need and have begun to develop a nonproliferation and safeguards curriculum for their respective departments. Yet one area that remains underutilized in this process is the abundant human capital resources available at the national laboratories, home to world-class safeguards experts. Transmitting the knowledge and experience of these experts is essential to facilitating the training of next-generation safeguards experts; however, key constraints to this process have been the logistical and financial hurdles in making it happen. While prior successful initiatives have focused on bringing safeguards experts directly to universities to facilitate student engagement, this process can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive; as a result, such a process does not necessarily \"scale up\" to multiple universities in a sustainable fashion. In response to this constraint, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and North Carolina State University (NCSU) have collaborated to strategically employ distance learning and teleconferencing capabilities in a new initiative that leverages the expertise of resident safeguards experts in a cost-effective, highly scalable training program. The ORNL-NCSU initiative complements the safeguards education initiatives at other universities and, by creating a distributable package of safeguards education lectures and course materials, creates an opportunity to expand safeguards education to interested candidate universities where such programs have otherwise been infeasible due to constraints such as distance or a lack of access to qualified experts. The ORNL-NCSU initiative offers the possibility of expanding access to nonproliferation education, thus widening the pool of potential next-generation safeguards specialists.