Most affordable Masters program in Nuclear Engineering Austin, Texas

We are delighted you are considering pursuing graduate studies in Nuclear Engineering.

The Master of Science program degree plans consist of nuclear engineering and College of Engineering courses with the total credit hour minimum set at 30 hours.

In addition, the Master of Science degree requires completion of a master thesis.

DISCLAIMER: These are sample degree plans and may be modified with department approval.

NUEN 605 Radiation Detection and Materials Measurement 1.

NUEN 610 Nuclear System Design (Capstone Course).

NUEN 623 Nuclear Engineering Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow 3.

NUEN 624 Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics and Stress Analysis.

Instrumentation prerequisite for NUEN 606 can be met by a 2 hour NUEN 685 or other appropriate course(s).

NUEN 605 Radiation Detection and Materials Measurement.

NUEN 606 Nuclear Reactor Analysis and Experimentation.

NUEN 651 Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Materials Safeguards.

NUEN 610 Design of Nuclear Reactors (Capstone Course).

CHEM 681 Radiochemistry Nuclear Forensics (Chemistry Department).

MATH 664 Inverse Problems in Nuclear Forensics (Math Department).

INTA 669 Nuclear Terrorism Threat Assessment and Analysis (Bush School).

These electives are designed to enrich students' educations by focusing their attention on issues that are key to the field these electives also bring some diversity to the students' degree program.

In addition, the master of science degree requires completion of a master thesis.

NUEN 662 Nuclear Materials Under Extreme Conditions.

MSEN 601 Fund. Materials Science and Engineering.

NUEN 612 Radiological Safety and Hazards Evaluation.

Thirty hours is the typical number of hours for a nuclear engineering degree.

Areas of interest for the applicants include (a) materials in nuclear and space environments (b) radiation interactions effects in materials and materials survivability (c) chemical engineering and processing of nuclear materials and (d) nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics.

The RadLab at The University of Texas at Austin focuses on research using radiation and radioactivity to improve security and quality of life.

The NETL reactor, designed by General Atomics, is a TRIGA Mark II nuclear research reactor. The NETL is the newest of the current fleet of U.S. university reactors.

The Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group is an interdisciplinary research group whose mission is to develop and deploy advanced robotics in hazardous environments in order to minimize risk for the human operator.

Dr. Derek Haas as Principal Investigator and Dr. Kevin Clarno and Dr. William Charlton as Co-Principal investigators, have received the single largest grant ever funded to the Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program to lead the design of the reactor bay experimental research facilities and collaborate on the design and safety analysis for the first university-based molten salt research reactor. The $3.8 million grant is part of $30 million dollars allocated to The Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Research Alliance launched in spring 2019 and also includes Abilene Christian University (lead university where the research reactor will be built), Texas A M University and Georgia Institute of Technology all who are partnering with Natura Resources. They are also recruiting students and hiring several positions to staff the project, including one research fellow, one senior research fellow and a research associate.

The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. The fellowship includes three years of including an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution. Khiloni will continue to work with Dr. Derek Haas in Nuclear Forensics.

The three-year, $161,000 fellowship includes a stipend for an internship at a national laboratory. Collin will continue to work with Dr. Kevin Clarno in computational nuclear engineering.

The Cockrell School of Engineering awards highly qualified first year graduate students one-year and partial fellowship.

Upayan Mathkari is First Student in NRE Integrated Bachelor and Master Degree Program.

We congratulate Upayan Mathkari as the first student in our Integrated Bachelor and Master Degree Program in our Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program. By applying AP and Credit by Exam courses, having students take recommended summer courses, and allowing seniors to enroll in graduate-level engineering courses reserved for graduate credit, the program enables graduates to complete both degree requirements in five years.

Dr. Pryor heads up the highly successful national and internationally known Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group and has graduated multiple PhD and MS students involved in interdisciplinary research programs for applied robotics in hazardous environments.

Ryan Lester, MS student working with Dr. Derek Haas is designing a facility on one of the neutron beam ports in the reactor bay for the production of gaseous radiotracers for nuclear forensics application. Using cryogenic technology allows the placement of the sample much closer to the reactor core thus receiving a much higher neutron flux.

Research Engineer Mark Andrews working with Dr. William Charlton is studying the impact of irradiation of electronic components by mixed-fields of neutron and gamma-ray radiation with specific interests in the impact of thermal neutrons and the change in degradation due to the order of radiation incidence (for example, gamma-rays followed by neutrons versus neutrons followed by gamma-rays). The specific modes of damage vary depending upon the type and energy of the radiation incident upon the device.

PhD Student Adam Samia working with Dr. William Charlton is studying enhanced radiochemical separation of reactor-produced medical radioisotopes using the well-known Szilard-Chalmers effect with capture of the activated products during irradiation. He is studying two pathways for capture of the products: (1) using a solid adsorber suspended in an aqueous target solution and (2) by chemical reaction with a chelator in solution with the target material in solid form. Both pathways lead to simplified post-irradiation separation of the no-carrier-added product material through simple filtration techniques.

Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Blake Anderson working with Dr. Mitch Pryor has developed a robotic system and analysis algorithms for locating unknown radioactive sources in nuclear environments. A scintillating detector on the robot collects a sequence of measurements at different locations, and the source positions and activities are estimated using statistical filtering methods. Gamma-ray spectroscopy identifies the species of the sources and enables robust background subtraction. The developed capabilities include modelling of attenuation by solid objects and decay of short-lived isotopes.

Tucker Sawyer and John Barlow working with Dr. Kevin Clarno are helping with the design and licensing of an advanced nuclear reactor, fueled with molten salt, that will be built in Texas in 2025. They are using the SCALE nuclear analysis code suite to model the transport of radiation throughout the reactor to determine the spatial distribution of the heat being generated from fission energy and assess how that distribution and magnitude will change as the fuel depletes and reactor operates.

This pilot program is to ascertain the provenance of fifteen ancient pottery samples using neutron activation analysis (Colin Brennan) and principal component analysis (Amaya Sinha).