Current Status of Nuclear-Energy Development and Role of University ...

Proceedings of International Symposium on EcoTopia Science 2007, ISETS07 (2007)

Current Status of Nuclear-Energy Development and Role of University Research and Education in US ٛ Joonhong Ahn Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1730, USA Abstract: It is widely shared that utilization of nuclear power is an effective measure for slowing down global warming and relaxing tight demand-supply situation for energy, as China, India, Brazil, and Russia are emerging as new economies. Challenges have also been recognized. Those are proliferation of nuclear materials, increase in environmental impacts, higher levels of nuclear safety, and uranium resources availability. To solve these hopefully simultaneously with minimum economic penalty, recycling of nuclear materials, or nuclear fuel cycle, has once again been considered to be essential feature of future nuclear utilization. While the United States currently apply the once-through policy for commercial nuclear-power utilization, the Bush Administration announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), and strongly supports development of advanced nuclear technology. Various different technological options for reactors, separation processes, repository concepts, etc, have already been proposed, but human and capital resources that can be used for such developments are limited. Because deployment of technologies will take as long as a century or longer, careful planning and decision making are crucial. Concurrently, we need to address the human resources issue, especially in the US. Many nuclear engineering departments in universities changed its name or merged with other departments. For more than three decades, few new textbooks have been published in major nuclear-engineering areas. We need a good plan to restore educational programs, this time, worldwide to share common culture for nuclear utilization. Keywords: Nuclear Engineering, University Education, Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Deployment will take as long as a century or longer. We need to make right decisions for selecting those technologies in an optimized way. We need to understand consequences of the present decision on future as much as we can. The downward trend in 1980’s and early 1990’s and emerging complicated issues of waste management, proliferation resistance and strong public skepticism negatively impacted university education. The numbers of enrollments and degrees awarded declined sharply in the 1990’s. Many nuclear engineering departments in universities changed its name or merged with other departments. For more than three decades, few new textbooks have been published in major nuclear-engineering areas. While this trend is being quickly reversed currently, we need a good plan to restore educational programs, this time, worldwide to share common culture for nuclear utilization.

1. INTRODUCTION At around the turn of the century, importance of nuclear energy was re-recognized. It is now widely shared that utilization of nuclear power is an effective measure for slowing down global warming and relaxing tight demand-supply situation for energy, as China, India, Brazil, and Russia are emerging as new economies. After more than three decades since the last new order for nuclear power plant construction, more than two dozens of new nuclear power plants are currently being planned. As nuclear energy utilization expands, challenges have also been recognized. Those are proliferation of nuclear materials, spent fuel and waste management, higher levels of nuclear safety, and uranium resources availability. For example, the United States currently applies the once-through policy for commercial nuclear-power utilization. All spent nuclear fuel is supposed to be disposed of in Yucca Mountain Repository, although its capacity is limited at 70,000 metric ton by the 1995 Nuclear-Energy Policy Act To solve these hopefully simultaneously with minimum economic penalty, recycling of nuclear materials, or nuclear fuel cycle, has once again been considered to be essential feature of future nuclear utilization. The Bush Administration announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), and strongly supports development of advanced nuclear technology. The impacts, economics, and risks of the nuclear fuel cycle are the most challenging policy issues facing the country. There are various different technological options for reactors, separation processes, repository concepts, etc.

2. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 2.1. Nuclear Power Electricity Generation After the peak in early 1990’s, the US commercial nuclear-power capacity decreased gradually more than a decade. Shut-down announcements were made almost every year. Figure 1 shows rapid increase in US nuclear capacity in 1970’s and 80’s, leveling off in 1990’s and 2000’s. In that decade, the capacity factor, defined as the percentage of time during the year that the plant is available for electricity generation, was as low as 55 to 70% (Figure 2). US nuclear power plants are largely unique, un-standardized facilities; in contrast, nuclear reactors

Corresponding author: J. Ahn, [email protected]

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4). Small utility companies that had owned only one or two nuclear reactors merged into a few large companies. These mergers reduced the overhead costs related to regulatory compliance and maintenance significantly. Thus, the production cost of nuclear electricity kept decreasing over the past decade (Figure 5).

built in France are grouped into three different sizes: 950, 1,360, and 1,500 MWe. This lack of standardization resulted in difficulty in accumulating experiences and in reducing the production costs. Two major accidents of Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl and issues of waste management and proliferation resistance further complicated the future of nuclear power.

Nine Mile Point 1,2 (Cons tellation Energ y) $815 million

Exelon (PECO/Unicom merger) 17 reactors

Prairie Is land 1,2 Kewaunee Point Beach 1,2 Monticello Duane Arnold Palis ades (NMC)

Mills tone 1,2,3 (Dominion) $1.3 billion Diablo Canyon 1,2 Comanche Peak 1,2 Wolf Creek Callaway

FitzPatrick Indian Point 1,2,3 (Enterg y) $1.6 billion

South Texas Project 1,2 (S TARS ) Progres s Energy (CP&L/FPC merger) 5 reactors

Figure 4: Industry consolidation 10.0

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Figure 5: U.S. electricity production costs 1995-2006, In 2006 cents per kilowatt-hour

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Coal - 2.37 Gas - 6.75 Nuclear - 1.72 Petroleum - 9.63

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Figure 1: US nuclear electricity capacity [1]

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0.07 0.05 0.07 0.04 0.05 2002

Figure 6: Electricity generation 1957 to 2006 [3].

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Figure 3: Significant events at U.S. nuclear plants: Annual industry average, fiscal year 1988-2005

The impact of the change in the industry is significant. Over the past decade, the nuclear industry in the US has added the equivalent of 20 power plants to the fleet without building a single new plant. As Figure 6 shows, the electricity generation by the nuclear power plants in the US steadily increased since 1990, while the total capacity actually slightly decreased as shown in Figure 1. In addition to the improvement in the capacity factor and cost reduction, virtually every US nuclear power plant has or is expected to apply for re-licensing/license

The turnaround occurred in the middle of 1990’s when the capacity factor exceeded the 80% level (Figure 2) with improved safety records (Figure 3). It resulted from steady improvements in the operation maintenance of nuclear power plants and in regulatory frameworks as well as from changes in the nuclear-utility industry. Significant consolidation in the electricity industry occurred (Figure

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extension. In 2003, nearly half of the nation’s 103 power plants have either renewed their licenses, filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for license renewal, or officially informed the NRC that they expected to apply for license renewal over the next six years. In all, this will increase the life-span of the US fleet of nuclear reactors by roughly 20 years per plant (See Figure 1). In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provides important incentives for building new nuclear plants, including production tax credits, loan guarantees and risk protection for companies pursuing the first new reactors. The bill also includes an extension of the Price-Anderson Act, an insurance framework for protecting the public in the case of a nuclear incident. The legislation authorizes funding for nuclear energy research and development, as well as funding to build an advanced hydrogen cogeneration reactor in Idaho. As of September 2007, as shown in Table 1, 33 reactors rush to take advantage of generous federal tax incentives, streamlined application procedures and the surge in concern about greenhouse gas emissions from coal, oil and natural gas. Of these listed, NRG Energy filed on September 24, 2007, the first full application to build new nuclear plants since Three Mile Island accident in 1979. NRG Energy had asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to add two new nuclear reactor units with a total capacity of 2,700 megawatts to an existing nuclear facility in Bay City, Tex. It estimated that the project would cost between $5.4 billion and $6.75 billion and provide enough electricity for about 2 million homes. The company hopes to complete construction by 2015. 2.2. Accumulation of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel While the nuclear industry has had a clear turnaround, the issue of waste management has remained. The main issue in waste management is final disposal for spent nuclear fuel. As shown in Figure 7, approximately 55,630 metric tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel from the fleet of the nuclear power plants has accumulated as of July 2007 [4]. When Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA, P.L. 97-425), the Department of Energy (DOE) was given more than 15 years to begin taking commercial spent nuclear fuel. By amendment in 1987, the candidate site for a geologic repository was narrowed down to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and in 1990’s total system performance assessment (TSPA) studies were carried out by DOE to establish scientific and technological bases for the long-term safety of the prospective repository. Based on these studies, in 2002, President Bush recommended the Yucca Mountain site, and the Congress passed the resolution, with which site designation became effective. Thus, DOE was unable to open a geologic repository by the NWPA deadline of January 31, 1998. Currently the opening of a repository is scheduled in 2017. The NWPA as amended also states that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision approving the first such application shall prohibit the emplacement in the first repository of a quantity of spent fuel containing in excess of 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal or a quantity of solidified high-level radioactive waste resulting from the reprocessing of such a quantity of spent fuel until such time as a second repository is in operation. But, the total

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mass of accumulated spent fuel will reach this statutory limit of 70,000 metric tons by the time the current scheduled opening in 2017. Table 1: Status of New Plant Orders [5] Company

Site(s)

Design, # Early Site Permit COL of Units (ESP) Submittal

Alternate Bruneau, ID EPR FY 2009 Energy Holdings Amarillo Vicinity of EPR FY 2009 Power Amarillo, TX Amer- Callaway, MO EPR FY 2008 enUE Constel- Calvert Cliffs, EPR (3) Will go to COL First sublation MD plus two but submit siting mittal (UniStar) other sites information early FY 2008 Detroit Fermi, MI NYD NYD FY 2008 Edison Dominion North Anna, ESBWR Under review, FY 2008 VA (1) approval expected 2007 Duke William States AP1000 FY 2008 Lee, Cherokee (2) County, SC Duke Davie County, NYD Under considera- NYD NC tion Duke Oconee NYD Under considera- NYD County, SC tion Entergy River Bend, ESBWR FY 2008 LA (1) Entergy Grand Gulf, ESBWR Approved April FY 2008 (NuStart ) MS (1) 2007 Exelon Clinton, IL NYD Approved March NYD 2007 Exelon Matagorda and NYD FY 2009 Victoria County, TX Florida Turkey Point, NYD (2) NYD FY 2009 Power & FL Light NRG En- Bay City, TX ABWR Under ergy / (2) Review STPNOC PPL Susquehanna, NYD NYD NYD Corp. PA Progress Harris, NC; AP1000 FY 2008; Energy (2) Progress Levy County, AP1000 FY 2008 Energy FL (2) South Summer, SC AP1000 FY 2008 Carolina (2) Electric & Gas Southern Vogtle, GA AP1000 Under review, FY 2008 Company (2) Approval expected early 2009 Texas Comanche APWR FY 2008 Utilities Peak, TX (2) TVA Bellefonte, AL AP1000 FY 2008 (NuStart ) (2) FY - Federal Fiscal Year, CY - Calendar Year; NYD - Not yet determined; COL – Construction/Operating License; Updated: 9/07


Japan, China and other countries having both the will and the means to participate. The United States leads the formation of this global regime through GNEP (Figure 10). However, the US does not have the means to participate due to very low federal support for this area, resulting in practically no industrial infrastructure. Unless the United State implements the domestic aspects of the GNEP program, the US will suffer significant consequences in its energy security, industrial competitiveness and national security. Second, by material recycling, it is expected to utilize the limited repository capacity more effectively. 3000

2500

2000 Million USD in 2005

2.3. Federal Funding and Projects In general, the federal government plays the pivotal role in the encouragement and acceleration of innovation and development of new technologies. Not only are federal funds critical, but as Kammen et al. [6] shows, private funds follow areas of public sector support. As Figure 8 shows, the federal funding level for the fission energy technology R&D was at its peak in 1979, but after the Three-Mile Island accident, it sharply declined. The breeder-reactor budget vanished in 1985, and that for fuel cycle in 1992. The total budget for fission technologies became almost zero in 1998. In contrast to this trend in the US, Japan has funded to fission technologies at a constant level. Another noticeable difference is that nuclear supporting technologies as well as breeder and fuel cycle has been funded significantly. Figure 8, however, also shows that the federal funding turned around at the turn of the century. In the past three years, funding for nuclear fuel cycle has been increasing because of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) initiated by President Bush in 2004.

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Figure 9: Nuclear fission energy technology R&D budgets funded by the Japanese government [7]

Figure 7: Accumulation of commercial spent nuclear fuels in the US 3000

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Figure 10: GNEP R&D development [8]

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Figure 8: Nuclear fission energy technology R&D budgets funded by the US federal government [7] GNEP is currently strongly pushed by the federal government for several reasons. First, there is a rapidly expanding global demand for nuclear power. Without some global regime to manage this expansion many more unstable situations such as observed in Iran will likely appear. A global regime is forming up with Russia, France,

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3.1. Decline in 1990’s The decline in nuclear industry and federal funding support and the issues of waste management and proliferation resistance strongly and negatively impacted enrollment by new undergraduates. Figure 11 highlights the enrollment sharply declined in 1990’s. Figure 12 observes the number of BS, MS and doctoral degrees in nuclear engineering by US universities sharply declined in 1990’s. Kammen [9] pointed out that this was due to the statement by President Clinton in his 1993 State of the Union Address that nuclear energy will be largely removed from US energy policy, coupled with the lack of any clear prospects for new nuclear reactors. The number of nuclear-engineering programs in US universities declined from mid-70 to current 31. As Corrandini, et al. [10]


pointed out, there was: • A serious decline of nuclear science and engineering personnel, the relevant technical facilities and the needed institutional support for each of them; • A growing imbalance between the supply of qualified personnel and the demand; • A persistent lack of effective communication with the public, both technical and nontechnical, which leads to public opinion based on incomplete information Undergraduate Student Enrollment

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clear energy. Because of these positive trends in the industry and the federal government and because of the increasing concerns over the impacts of fossil-fuel plants, student enrollment also turned around. Figure 11 and Figure 12 clearly show the growth after 2000. Figure 13 shows the admission data for the graduate program at Nuclear Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. Over the past decade, the number of domestic students has increased steadily. The percentage of international students decreased from 70% level in 2000 to 40% in 2007. Another important observation is that the number of applications is increasing.

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４. UNIVERSITY ROLE FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY

B.S. M.S. Ph.D.

4.1. University Programs by US DOE On March 20, 2007, “FY 2007 Advanced Reactor, Fuel Cycle, and Energy Products Workshop for Universities” was held by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE/NE). University faculty members, researchers from national laboratories as well as officials of US DOE participated in the workshop to share information about national policies and directions for nuclear technology development. To directly involve US universities in an integrated teaming relationship with DOE/NE, it was expressed that DOE/NE would continue to maintain a stewardship responsibility in the area of nuclear engineering and education research. It was indicated that the R&D requirements of the priority R&D programs of DOE/NE are: (1)Advanced Fuel Cycle Research and Development (AFCR&D) under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), (2) Generation IV Nuclear Energy System Initiative (Gen IV), and (3) Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI), and that the AFCI/GNEP University program will transition from its previously relatively small role to a significant part of the total program (>10%). Total support for university activities in FY 2006 ans FY 2007 was approximately $50M. Growth is expected in FY 2008 budget request (See Table 2). The breakdown for the AFCI for FY 2007 is shown in Table 3. On August 30, 2007, DOE/NE announced the selection of 11 U.S. university-led grant recipient teams for NERI for up to $30.7 million over three years (Table 4).

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Year Figure 12: Nuclear engineering degrees in US [12] 3.2. Growth in 2000’s Over the last several years the situation in the nuclear industry has changed dramatically, as observed in Section 2. US nuclear power plants have increased their capacity factor to the level of 90% or greater (Figure 2). The frequency of significant events has stayed at a very low level (Figure 3). The production cost of electricity continued to decline, and has become significantly lower than fossil-fuel plants (Figure 5). 33 reactors rush to take advantage of generous federal tax incentives and streamlined application procedures set by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, and the first full application to build new nuclear plants since Three Mile Island accident in 1979 has just been filed (Table 1). Also by the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the federal government started to fund research for nu-

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Table 2: FY 2006-08 University Funding by ($thousands) Program FY FY 2006 2007 University Reactor 26,730 16,547 Infrastructure and Education Assistance Research Reactor In0 0 frastructure R&D Program 24,391 34,252 Funded Research Generation IV 6,067 5,463 Nuclear Hydrogen Ini5,116 4,300 tiative Advanced Fuel Cycle 13,208 24,489 Initiative Total 51,121 50,799

DOE/NE FY 2008 0 2,947 58,572 5,772 4,300 48,500 61,519

Table 3: FY 2007 AFCI/GNEP University Programs – Funding Distribution ($millions) Program Funding Continuation of prior year NERI awards 6.0 Delayed FY 2006 new NERI awards 2.0 New FY 2007 NERI awards 8.0 AFCI Fellowships, grants and directed 2.5 R&D UNLV 4.0 Idaho Accelerator Center 2.0 Total: 24.5 Table 4: University Consortia Recipients of Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) (FY’07-’09) by US DOE Project Title NERI Consortium for Real-Time Detection of Actinide Compositions in the UREX+ Process Radiation Damage in Nuclear Fuel for Advanced Burner Reactors: Modeling and Experimental Validation Performance of Actinide-Containing Fuel Matrices Under Extreme Radiation and Temperature Environments Advanced Instrumentation and Control Methods for Small and Medium Export Reactors with IRIS Demonstration Advanced Aqueous Separation Systems for Actinide Partitioning

An Innovative Approach to Precision Fission Measurements using a Time Projection Chamber

Risk-Informed Balancing of Safety, Nonproliferation, and Economics for the SFR

Deployment of a Suite of High Performance Computational Tools for Multiscale Multiphysics Simulation of Generation IV Reactors Cladding and Structural Materials for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems

NERI Consortia Participants Texas A&M Univ.; Purdue Univ.; Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; ANL

Univ. of California, Davis; California Institute of Technology; Northwestern Univ.; Univ. of California, Los Angeles Univ. of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign; Georgia Institute of Technology; South Carolina State Univ.; Univ. of Michigan Univ. of Tennessee; North Carolina State Univ.; PennState Univ.; South Carolina State Univ.; Westinghouse (unfunded) Washington State Univ.; Hunter College (CUNY); Tennessee Technological Univ.; Univ. of New Mexico; Univ. of North Carolina–Wilmington; PNNL; LBNL; INL Georgia Institute of Technology; Abilene Christian University; California Polytechnic State University; Colorado School of Mines; Ohio University; Oregon State University; LANL; LLNL; INL Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Idaho State University; The Ohio State University

A Research Program on Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTRs) Advanced Electrochemical Technologies for Hydrogen Production by Alternative Thermo chemical Cycles

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Columbia Univ.; State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook; BNL

Univ. of Michigan; Alabama A&M Univ.; Pennsylvania State Univ.; Univ. of California, Berkeley; Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison Univ. of Missouri, Columbia; North Carolina State Univ.; Washington Univ., St. Louis Pennsylvania State Univ.; Tulane Univ.; Univ. of South Carolina; ANL

4.2. University Capacity Great deal of concern has been expressed about the decline in the number of nuclear engineering programs and research reactors in the US. The current set of graduate nuclear science and engineering programs in the US can produce 70 new PhDs and 200 masters degrees annually, which would be enough to sustain the current level of the industry. However, the issue is not just the number of degrees produced. As we can observe in Table 4, research topics of current interest are well managed, analytically sound, relatively near-term extensions of currently available designs. It is in a sense inevitable because the US lost significant research infrastructure especially in GNEP related fields over the past decades. When necessity of capability to carry out GNEP initiative emerged, we realized that the US lost many of those, which have been developed in other countries, such as France, Japan, and Russia. This gap needs to be filled as soon as possible. While carrying out these, US universities need to identify ways to support highly innovative approaches to nuclear energy development. These innovative approaches should include ideas for how to integrate nuclear energy fully into the wider energy infrastructure. One of such examples would be nuclear hydrogen production. Many researchers pointed out superiority of combination of nuclear energy as primary energy source and hydrogen as an energy carrier. More detailed and innovative ideas with cross-disciplinary efforts will be highly necessary. Engineering programs in universities are already packed with technical subjects. To challenge students and faculty to think in new, innovative ways, a wider range of courses both in engineering and non-engineering areas should be offered, such as economics, public policy, and ethics. To support such broader education, development of university exchange programs, particularly with overseas schools could be an effective mechanism. At the Nuclear Engineering Department, University of California, Berkeley, collaboration with the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Management, University of Tokyo has just begun in August 2007 under the Global Center-Of-Excellence (G-COE) grant funded by the Japanese Government at the level of $2 million per year for five years. Exchange of colloquia and lectures via internet, exchange of students and faculty, and organization of international workshops and symposia are currently planned and carried out.

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5. CONCLUDING REMARKS After decades of negative feedback and declines, the nuclear industry, federal government policies, and university enrollment have turned around and now seem to be in a positive feedback. It occurred because of steady efforts in improving performance of commercial power reactors, in developing better regulatory frameworks and national policies as well as external needs such as global warming and increasing energy demands by newly emerging economics. While this turnaround occurred based on near-term extensions of currently available technologies, we now need to develop innovative solutions for complicated, coupled problems of energy resources, environmental impact reduction, nuclear security and safety, and economics. To answer such needs and situation, university needs to develop educational programs with innovative approaches. Cross-disciplinary training is critical in the energy field. The nuclear energy power sector should be more fully integrated into energy planning and evaluation across a wide range of energy technologies and systems. Another dimension of cross-cutting issues is equity and fairness between the current generation and future generations as well as developed and developing countries. REFERENCES 1. President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Tech-

nology, Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century (1997). 2. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0902.html 3. http://www.eia.doe.gov/ 4. http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats

/graphicsandcharts/usedfuel/ 5. http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/wallstreet/ 6. Margolis, R., and Kammen, D. M. (1999) Un-

der-investment: The energy technology and R&D policy challenge, Science, 285, 690-692. 7. http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/rd.asp 8. Slide shown at the NERI Workshop 9. Kammen, D. M., The Future of University Nuclear Science & Engineering Programs, Summary of Testimony for the June 10, 2003 Hearing at Committee on Science, United States House of Representatives, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~dkammen 10. Corrandini, M. L., et al., (2000) The Future of University Nuclear Engineering Programs and University Research & Training Reactors. 11. John Gutteridge, Director of University Programs, Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, Presentation to the North America Energy Working Group, June 29, 2006, www.unene.ca/newg/ Canada6_29_06 -gutteridge.ppt 12. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Nuclear Engineering Enrollments and Degrees Survey, 2006 Data, Number 60, 2007, http://orise.orau.gov/ sep/pubs.htm

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