NC State Nuclear Engineering was awarded the leadership role for the new National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) academic Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities (CNEC).
CNEC will be a pre-eminent research and education hub dedicated to the development of enabling technologies and technical talent to meet the present and future grand challenges of nuclear nonproliferation.
The RADIANS team is a key element of the Consortium. They will develop new methods for detecting, finding, identifying, and characterizing special nuclear material (SNM) usable in nuclear weapons.
The Consortium is a partnership of 7 top-ranked US universities and 3 national laboratories:
- NC State University (NCSU, lead)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)
- Kansas State University (KSU)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
- University of Michigan (UM)
- North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T)
- Purdue University
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
CNEC will conduct ground-breaking research in 4 areas:
- Signatures and observables (S&O): identify the signatures of nuclear proliferation, and devise methods to observe them; led by Prof. Clair Sullivan of UIUC’s Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering Department
- Data fusion and analytics (DFAT): analyze ‘big data’ sources to detect signatures of nuclear proliferation; led by Prof. Alyson Wilson of NC State’s Statistics Department
- Simulation, analysis, and modeling (SAM): develop predictive models of proliferation signatures and analyze observable signatures of proliferation; led by Prof. John Mattingly of NC State’s Nuclear Engineering Department
- Replacement of dangerous radiological sources (RDRS): replace potentially dangerous radiological sources used in industry and medicine with new sources that are less ‘at risk’ for proliferation; led by Prof. William (Bill) Dunn of KSU’s Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Department
In addition to these research areas, CNEC will also
- Develop new science and engineering courses focusing on applications to nuclear nonproliferation
- Reach out to high school students and educators to engage them in the mission of nuclear nonproliferation
- Sponsor a research fellowship to financially support the research of outstanding graduate students
The Consortium is funded for $25 million for 5 years by the NNSA Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation R&D.
See these other posts:
- NC State News article at https://news.ncsu.edu/2014/04/nnsa-grant/
- WRAL News article at http://www.wral.com/ncsu-to-lead-25m-nuclear-security-program/13572918/
- NNSA’s press release at http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/ncstateconsortium