Year
2017
Abstract
Nuclear nonproliferation and safeguards are important topics to expose students in nuclearengineering (NE) programs to during their undergraduate years. Students (at all levels) areincreasingly interested in these topics based on the university enrollment/graduation numbers andprofessional society student activity in this area. Some nuclear engineering undergraduate(bachelor’s, minor, or certificate) programs still lack any recurring courses or substantial coursecontent related to nuclear nonproliferation and international safeguards. Over the past few years,the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Next Generation Safeguards Initiative(NGSI) Human Capital Development(HCD) subprogram has beensupporting various efforts by nationallaboratories in order to better integratenonproliferation and safeguards topicsinto the mandatory curriculum ofnuclear engineering programs. Bytargeting the mandatory introductory,senior design, and laboratory coursesthat are part of almost every nuclearengineering program in the US, this gaphas been getting progressively smaller.Specifically, progress has been made byintroducing an Integral NonproliferationIntroductory Teaching and Learning (INITIAL) class module in various nuclear engineeringprograms that is serving as a primer at the undergraduate nuclear engineering level. The onelectureINITIAL class module allows simple integration into mandatory introductory nuclearengineering courses providing recurring and sustainable academic course content for programsthat either have no courses or no course requirements in this topical area. The module includesreadied slides and problem sets created from existing resources such as those developed underNGSI HCD. In addition, three INITIAL laboratory (neutron, gamma, and reactor based) modulesare also under development. The lab modules can be delivered in tandem with the INITIAL classmodule (as demonstrated during pilot implementation), but as a more technically advancedsafeguards-based experimental addition to the senior–level mandatory laboratory courses whereapplicable. The laboratory module is based on LANL-International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) laboratory material but has been modified to allow simple integration into mandatorynuclear engineering laboratory courses that utilize equipment or facilities commonly available tonuclear engineering programs e.g. basic radiation sources, detector systems, or research reactors.Finally, mandatory senior design courses have provided another suitable platform for these efforts.Figure 1: US Nuclear Engineering Degrees (1966 -2015) [1]2This year, a pilot nonproliferation senior design challenge – with a safeguards-by-design focus –was posed to a handful of programs. This challenge is providing students an opportunity to workon a real-world safeguards-related design project as part of their engineering capstone requirement.