nuclear-news

Faculty in the physics department will receive funding from the Department of Energy to develop new nuclear science and engineering programming for international students.

Faculty said they are working to form a Nuclear Education Hub that will teach aspects of operating nuclear reactors to graduate students in a partnership with Virginia Tech. The efforts, which faculty aim to complete this fall, will focus on recruiting Ukrainian graduate students by offering them the opportunity to learn about nuclear physics unconstrained by outdated Russian safety standards for nuclear power plants, the standards most Ukrainian plants were built on.

Andrei Afanasev, the director of the project and an associate professor of theoretical physics, said faculty are primarily designing the program for Ukrainian students because Ukraine relies on nuclear power plants to generate electricity and because American nuclear companies have shown increasing interest in Ukraine’s nuclear operations……..

William Briscoe, the chair of the physics department, said the partnership was partly inspired by the desire to separate Ukraine from Russian influence ……He said the program is designed to train students who will likely work at Ukrainian nuclear power plants in the future……. https://www.gwhatchet.com/2019/05/13/physics-department-to-develop-nuclear-science-program-for-graduate-students/