from Engineering Communications | April 26, 2019   

In the center of NC State’s campus, the university-operated 1-megawatt PULSTAR reactor facility — the only reactor of its type still in operation — powers one of the most exceptional nuclear facilities in the world, where researchers conduct experiments to explore questions about the constituents of matter and the creation of the universe.

Over the last 15 years, the Nuclear Reactor Program (NRP) has added state-of-the-art instruments to its reactor, including two facilities that are the only ones of their kind in the United States — an intense positron beam that makes it possible to observe the energy created when positrons (i.e., antimatter electrons) and electrons annihilate, and an ultra-cold neutron source that can generate rare species of neutrons and slow them down to answer questions about major physics models.

“It’s a very unique facility in that it is used standalone on its own, and that is the sort of spirit we have here,” said Dr. Ayman Hawari, distinguished professor of nuclear engineering and director of the NRP. “Researchers either can’t do some of the things that we do here elsewhere, or can do it just as well here.”

Since Hawari started at NC State in 2002, the PULSTAR reactor has shifted from a staging ground that ran only a few hours a week to a renowned facility that often runs for months at a time. Major universities are regularly using the reactor for research. NC State pioneered the internet reactor lab, which allows students at universities around the world to learn, using a remote cyber-secure connection to the PULSTAR, how to operate nuclear reactors.

Just as NC State is leading the way now — ahead of other leading engineering universities, and with even more advanced capabilities than those available at reactors affiliated with major research centers — it was also the first to have an on-campus nuclear reactor.

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