A new contract has been awarded to NC State’s nuclear engineering professor, Dr. Ayman Hawari, for the development of methods and evaluations of thermal neutron scattering in materials. The award totals at $1,375,000 and covers the period 2019-2024.  It is sponsored by the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) through the Nuclear Criticality Safety Program and in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

For nearly 20 years, Dr. Hawari has led the internationally recognized Low Energy Interactions Physics (LEIP) group, which has been sponsored by various US DOE programs and the Naval Reactors program. To date, LEIP contributed the largest set of thermal neutron scattering law (TSL) libraries to the Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF), and is developing the state-of-the-art FLASSH code for TSL analysis. In addition to computational analysis, LEIP also executes an experimental program for data measurements and benchmarks. TSL data is necessary for the analysis of thermal neutronic systems including current and advanced nuclear reactors.