Research Facilities

The Department of Nuclear Engineering occupies 23,000 square feet in the Burlington Engineering Laboratories building along with a PULSTAR reactor facility completed in 1973 and a Scaled PWR Facility (SPWRF) completed in 1990. Both the reactor and SPWRF are used for student instruction and research, reactor operator training for nuclear utilities, and as a service facility for other university and industrial organizations.

The PULSTAR reactor is the fourth to be built at North Carolina State University and operates at one megawatt thermal power. It uses low enrichment UO2 fuel and is moderated and cooled by light water, which gives it many characteristics analogous to those of power reactors. It has a multiple array of vertical and horizontal beam tubes which are useful for research and for analytical services such as neutron activation analysis, isotope production, neutron radiography, capture gamma-ray spectroscopy, and neutron depth profiling.

The SPWRF, a fully operational 1/9 - scale model of a two-loop commercial PWR, is capable of operating under both normal and accident conditions with full operator interaction. Freon is employed as the working fluid, and electric heater rods simulate the coreÕs behavior utilizing a reactor kinetics model to determine feedback effects. Extensive instrumentation, flexible control and protection logic, and accident simulation capability make the SPWR a unique facility.

Plasma engineering laboratories contain several unique facilities for research for plasma-surface interaction studies, for plasma guns, and plasma propulsion.

The following laboratories and equipment are available to faculty and students:

• Radiation detectors and supporting electronics
• Low radiation level alpha counting
• Isotope production
• Nuclear materials
  • creep machines
  • micro-hardness tester
  • closed loop hydraulic tester
  • tensile test equipment
  • biaxial creep machine with Laser and LVD Textensometers
  • impression creep machine
  • sustained high-pressure [15 ksi] gas system
  • optical metallograph with on-line camera
• Plasma generation and diagnostics device
• Plasma mirror confinement machine
• Plasma accelerators for investigation of high heat flux erosion
• The electrothermal plasma accelerator, SIRENS, a universal device for high heat flux, disruption, and fusion accident scenarios simulation; a fusion pellet injector; a material test facility; and a hypervelocity mass accelerator.
• The Electrthermal-chemical facility, PIPE, for plasma-propellant interactions and micro behavior under combustion conditions.
• The electromagnetic launch facility, MAAT, for boundary layer phenomena and plasma armature analysis; integrity studies of launcher components; and in-bor/ex-bore diagnostics development.
• The Magnetized Co-axial Plasma Gun, CPS-1, for helicity injection, disruption simulation, astroplasma simulation, and space thrusters.
• The plasma torch facility, MAGTOR, for volume reduction and treatment of various waste forms.
• Neutron radiography
• Neutron activation analysis
• Radioisotope applications
  • 3D microtomographic scanner
  • eight Ge(Li) detectors coupled to a computerized gamma acquisition and data processing system
• Heat transfer and fluid flow teaching laboratory
  • single and two-phase flow experiments, including boiling and condensing heat transfer and fluid circuits
• Scaled PWR Facility
• Prompt gamma analysis systems
• Proton-recoil detection and analysis systems for fast neutron spectroscopy
• Energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis system
• Reactor instrumentation, control and diagnostics laboratory
  • control system modeling and testing
  • interface to Scaled PWR Facility
  • instrumentation electronics development
  • high speed data acquisition and processing
• Nuclear Steam Supply System scale model

Nuclear Engineering has traditionally been a leader in the use of computers for teaching and research purposes:

• Students can have network access to all the national supercomputing centers through the Department's in-house facilities, as well as to the super-computers located at the North Carolina Supercomputing Center.
• The College of Engineering's EOS system provides access to a state-of-the-art workstation-based network computing environment consisting of over 700 engineering workstations for educational use.
• A number of computers ranging from high power engineering graphic workstations to high speed data systems are associated with individual faculty research projects within the Department.