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[cdn-nucl-l] Science article on Research Reactors
To appear in the March 22, 2002 issue of Science Magazine, Volume 295,
Number 5563, pp. 2217-2218.
(Membership in the AAAS is required)
Looks like an excellent article - terrific publicity.
That 1994 Nobel in physics the article mentions is of course that of
Bertram Brockhouse and Clifford Shull, work done at NRU and MITR-1.
If you are interested to put a Canadian spin on the article through a
letter to Science, see their contact info at:
The Past and Future of University Research Reactors
Kenneth C. Rogers*
On 20 December 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor at the Department
of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory
generated the first electricity produced by a nuclear fission reactor in
the world. A totally new technology for the commercial production of
electricity had arrived, which would require many highly trained
engineers capable of designing and building future nuclear power plants.
Federal funding flowed, and universities established nuclear research
reactors as an important teaching tool for nuclear engineering and
science students, with benefits even for liberal arts students. At North
Carolina State University, on 5 September 1953, the first
university-based "openly operated" nuclear reactor went critical.
By the late 1960s, there were 58 University research reactors (URRs).
However, URRs have steadily declined in numbers from the early 1970s (1)
to the 28 of today. This decline, which has not been planned or
coordinated, has implications for education and training and for a wide
variety of research activities. Today, URRs are on a path to extinction.
Partly because of the breadth of their possible applications, no single
federal entity has been charged by the Congress with maintaining them.
They appear to have suffered unduly from the vicissitudes of the nuclear
power industry. Here, I discuss the causes of this decline and what role
URRs can and should play in the future.
URRs and Education
All URRs operate under Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses, which
must either terminate or be renewed after 20 years. These licenses limit
the steady-state power rating of URRs to no more than 10 megawatts (MW).
Half of the extant URRs are rated at 500 kilowatts (kW) or higher.
Nuclear materials at URRs are subject to Nuclear Regulatory Commission
security requirements (now under review), which consider theft,
diversion, and sabotage. All the URRs are used in varying degrees for
both research and training.
Universities having an on-campus reactor have been in the strongest
position to compete for scarce new faculty talent. University
administrators regarded their research reactors as valuable, although
However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the projected growth of
electricity demand failed to materialize, while costs of nuclear power
plants under construction soared. Power reactor projects were canceled,
from 4 in 1974 to a peak of 10 cancellations in 1980 alone. Prospective
engineering students immediately interpreted these cutbacks as signs
that nuclear engineering was an unpromising field, so that undergraduate
and master's degree enrollments began a steady decline of about 3% per
year for the next 10 years until 1992, when the decline abruptly
increased to more than 15% per year. Ph.D. enrollments were hit much
less hard (2). Beginning in the late 1960s, many universities decided to
close their nuclear engineering departments and to shut down their
Numbers of University Research Reactors, 1950-2000.
Nevertheless, URRs are important, perhaps critical, for successful
nuclear engineering and science programs (3). URRs provide an
opportunity for young faculty and students to hone their research skills
in preparation for entering the competitive arena of large multiuser
research reactors. Furthermore, when such facilities are down, URRs
provide possible back-up laboratories for work that does not require a
URRs have advanced research in fields other than nuclear science and
engineering and have provided for science education (4). The 1994 Nobel
Prizes in physics were awarded to two individuals for work carried out
at URRs. Applications of reactor-generated radiation (principally
neutrons) to academic research have continued to grow. URRs have had an
impact on research in radiopharmaceuticals, diagnosis of cancers and
arthritis, and neutron-capture cancer therapy; development of new
high-technology materials--metals, semiconductors, ceramics, and
polymers; analysis of works of art; geochronology and geochemistry; and
basic physics studies, such as the charge neutrality of the neutron and
the linearity of wave mechanics.
Federal government sources of funding for most of these studies, such as
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science
Foundation (NSF), do not provide URR maintenance and operational costs.
The URR host university has had to cover operating costs from its
general funds. Because academic researchers must pay for use time,
technical assistance, and the special equipment their research requires
at a URR, they often prefer to use national laboratory reactors, where
neutrons and technical assistance are provided at no cost. But this
means that they have to travel to an often-distant national laboratory
and to compete with other researchers for scarce user time and that
their own home URRs are underutilized.
Early support for URRs came mostly from the Atomic Energy Commission
(later the Department of Energy) with some state, other federal agency,
and industrial funding. The NSF at one time provided support for some of
the "at reactor" costs of research, but that eventually disappeared. DOE
support for URRs gradually became based largely on their relevance to
the nuclear engineering and the nuclear power infrastructure rather than
to basic science or other academic research and training. DOE funding
for URRs now comes entirely from the Office of Nuclear Energy Science
and Technology, with none emanating from the Basic Energy Sciences
In 1988, a National Research Council report (5) recommended that federal
funds be provided for base support for the nation's URRs and that the
federal government, in partnership with the universities and the
national laboratories, develop and implement a national research reactor
strategy. A single federal agency would be designated to administer
support programs and a standing advisory structure would be created to
advise, on a continuing basis, on all aspects of the program. The panel
further recommended that $20 million be made available annually for
operational support and facility upgrades of university research and
educational reactors. In today's dollars that would be more than $30
million. None of these recommendations were followed, although DOE did
provide some funding at a lower level. The URR situation continued to
In a 1994 report to the Senate (6), the Secretary of Energy, Hazel
O'Leary, stated that the URRs could be sustained by the infusion of a
relatively modest but assured base of funding and that the total
operating costs of all URRs were equivalent to the cost of operating
just one DOE research reactor. She recommended that $6 million per year
for 5 years be provided for the upgrade of the 36 reactors then in
operation. She also suggested exploring a network of university reactors
that would provide a feeder system to support national and DOE research
program requirements. These recommendations, likewise, were never
In 2000, the Corradini panel (7) recommended that DOE continue its
University Reactor Fuel Assistance and Support program at the level of
$4.3 million per year, and that it add to this a program under which a
university or a group of university collaborators would be able to
compete for grants to improve instrumentation and upgrade facilities and
training. This was not to cover ordinary operating costs. The
recommended programs would rise to $15 million annually. The panel
recognized that not all URRs would be successful in this competition,
and that their proposal might not completely stem the continuing demise
Recent Funding Recommendations
Three major universities, Cornell, University of Michigan, and MIT,
recently announced that they were considering the permanent shutdown of
their research reactors. In response, a DOE panel (8) recommended that
these three universities apply for $250,000 one-time grants to avert an
immediate shutdown. The panel further recommended the establishment of
geographically distributed regional facilities: five URRs for reactors
operating at a power level of 500 kW or higher and three University
Training and Education (T&E) reactor facilities operating at lower power
levels. Up to $20 million of federal funds would be made available
annually for the entire group. The final outcomes of the DOE panel
report are yet to be clear, but the recommendation of a one-time offer
of funds to Cornell, University of Michigan, and MIT was rejected by
A new DOE program to save the URRs (9) is an award of $100 thousand to
$2 million per year, renewable for up to 4 years, to universities or
university collaborators. Under this program, called the Innovations in
Nuclear Infrastructure and Education, Research and Education Grants
(INIE), creating integrated programs among associations of university
research and training reactors is encouraged. Because some URRs or T&E
reactors not winning in the first round may lose support from their own
administrations and may be slated for elimination, DOE intends to retain
the Fuels and Reactor Sharing and the Reactor Upgrade programs and will
give priority in these two areas to non-INIE participants.
The INIE program will have to grow rapidly and substantially (by a
factor of 10) from its initial funding level if it is to approach the
funding levels recommended by earlier panels. The program is not
structured to provide base operating funds, so that the problem of
prospective users having to pay for their neutrons at the URRs, while
getting them free at the national laboratories, remains.
There are additional possibilities for reversing the central problem of
underutilization at URRs: The DOE approach to funding could be
broadened, although the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy Science and
Technology funding of URR improvements and outreach should continue, but
it should be augmented with DOE Basic Energy Science (BES) Division
funding for research in fields other than nuclear engineering and
science. The BES Division is already the steward of several other types
of national multiuser facilities.
Another possibility is to establish formal pairings between URRs or
groups of URRs and DOE laboratories with research reactors. I would
encourage the National Institutes of Health, National Science
Foundation, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include support for URR
operational and maintenance expenses in their support for projects that
plan to use a URR facility.
Although these changes might very well put the URRs on a thoroughly
sound footing, they are unlikely to occur unless some new kind of
federal mechanism for coordination is created and a transparent
evaluation process is established and applied to every URR and T&E
reactor. A cooperative stewardship model advocated by a National
Research Council Committee on Developing a Federal Materials Facilities
Strategy (10) could provide a starting point for developing a collective
A number of URRs serve numerous users beyond their campus and local
communities. Taken together they are of considerable importance. URRs
will be particularly important in a feeder system when the new National
Spallation Neutron Source multiuser facility opens in 2006. It is likely
that their continuation requires a totally new approach to assuring base
level support. Recent new efforts by the DOE to save them need to be
applauded and endorsed by Congress and executive branch leaders and
augmented by new interagency agreements and commitments that enable
their sustained use for beneficial purposes as first envisioned by the
Atoms for Peace Initiative (11).
References and Notes
International Atomic Agency, Research Reactor Database; available at
M. Corradini et al., U.S. Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Panel Report
to the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC) on The Future
of University Nuclear Engineering Programs and University Research and
Training Reactors (2000); available at
J. M. Bernard, L. W. Hu, Nucl. Technol. 131, 379 (2000).
P. B. Perez et al., National Organization of Test, Research and Training
Reactors Report to the NERAC: University Research Reactors: A Critical
Component of the National Scientific and Engineering Infrastructure
(2000); available at www.trtr.org.
D. A. Shirley et al., University Research Reactors in the United
States--Their Role and Value (National Academy Press, Washington, DC,
H. R. O'Leary, Secretary of Energy Report to the Congress on The
Condition and Status of University Research and Training Reactors
(Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1994).
M. Corradini et al., U.S. Department of Energy Blue Ribbon Panel Report
to the NERAC on The DOE Program for University Research and Training
Reactors (2000); incorporated into (2) at www.nuclear.gov/
R. L. Long, J. L. M. Cortes, A. L. Sessoms, Report of the University
Research Reactor Task Force to the Department of Energy NERAC (2001);
available at http://www.nuclear.gov/nerac/Final_univ_rea_ttf.pdf.
Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, DOE, Innovations in
Nuclear Infrastructure and Education: Research and Education Grants
(2001); available at http://nuclear.gov/planning/INNOV.pdf.
National Research Council, Cooperative Stewardship: Managing the
Nation's Multidisciplinary User Facilities for Research with Synchrotron
Radiation, Neutrons, and High Magnetic Fields (National Academy Press,
Washington, DC, 1999).
D. D. Eisenhower, Address before the General Assembly of the United
Nations, 8 December 1953, Atomic Power for Peace (U.S. Department of
State Publ. 5314, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1953).
M. Fleishman organized the data for the graph and provided valuable
The author, a member of the Corradini panel (2, 7), is a former
Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1987-1997) and
President Emeritus of the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ
07030, USA. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.org